Mitski’s Tiny Desk performance: A reaction by Hair & Comb
Mitski is a famous singer/songwriter and musician, known for her brutally honest lyrics and unique style of vocalising. On the 31st of August, Mitski performed on Tiny Desk. We reacted to this performance on YouTube and Patreon, here are our key moments and take aways:
The first song introducing us to Mitski is called ‘Townie’. As she concludes this song the first thought that pierced Shaquilla’s mind was “what a way to start a Tiny Desk.” Amina described Mitski’s ability to make everything feel guttural, super emotive and extreme, using vocal techniques such as yodelling whilst maintaining a ‘distressed’ style of singing. It is quite amazing how much a listener could interpret similar emotions of state of minds just from vocal melismas. In this case, the ‘distressed’ vocal makes you feel like you are literally about to lose your marbles but you just holding on by one singular thread; that’s carrying you all the way through. Shaquilla spoke about the vocal techniques that Mitski used during this song such as the yodels, the voice cracks and flips, described as articulate. To a fresh pair of ears, this vocal style might sound messy or ‘unlistenable’. It is definitely an unconventional way of singing but paired with the fact that that vocal style is intentional, makes that skill a lot more harder to acquire as an asset. It is not widely common for singers to portray unconventional vocal techniques and have that authentic feel to it.
Striking harsh guitar cords and leaving a beat before the arrival of the first lyrics, Mitski sings her song ‘Class Of 2013’. Singing softly but with heartbreaking lyrics, leaving the impression that we are listening through Mitski’s teenager eyes as she pleads with her mother for acts of love and service. The requests starts small and grow with the music throughout the song, eventually climaxing to the height of the song where Mitski screams into her guitar with simple lyrics as ‘mom would you wash my back this once and then we can forget it all’. To Shaquilla, she interpreted that lyric as ‘inner child’ needs. “when I had rage or some sort of emotion that I wish to scream. So I’ll just scream into my pillow like crazy. That part just gave me reminders of my inner child..what do you think?” Amina responds directly after with “It’s such a simple like ‘mum can you wash my back?’ It’s so guttural. Something as simple as ‘can you just care for me?’ Maybe it’s the shock coupled with it that made me feel so emotional in that moment. Audibly it sounds like a child screaming to be heard, like a kid banging on the glass”.
By surprise, Mitski announced the last song she’ll play titled, ‘Last Words Of A Shooting Star’. In a dreamlike style, Mitski eases us through the lyrics of expectations she and women around the world face daily. The juxtaposition of her angel-like vocal and calm strumming paired with realistic experiences decorated as turbulence is something that would bring out emotions from you and force you to take an outlook on society today. “And you'd say you love me and look in my eyes
But I know through mine you were looking in yours” was the take home lyric. This is followed by Amina {quite literally crashing out}, saying “They do this to our women, they take beautiful, kind women and they take them at their most vulnerable and they do the most awful shit to them because all they think about is their selfish actions and their selfish behaviours. And it’s different because Milo J said the same thing- I could see myself reflected in your brown eyes- which was one of his lines. It’s different when he was saying it because he was saying it in the context of being in love (I existed within your eyes). She {Mitski} is saying it in a context that is- you like looking at me because you can see yourself-” Amina poses a key point of forgiveness. It was commonly taught that we should forgive and forget or forgive and not forget when someone has negatively impacted us. Especially as women, it is palatable for them to not have an outburst or create a scene, whereas it is a stereotype that is praised as manly. In Christianity, it is practiced to be more Christ-like -Luke 6:37 “Forgive, and you will be forgiven". In response to her experience of being mistreated by men, she says “They don’t deserve forgiveness! You cannot hurt someone a million times and expect forgiveness. I’m not a god. I don’t have to forgive you.” Shaquilla ends by noting the harsh reality, “It’s painful that you will never know until you experience it.”
Our closing thoughts
We love how Mitski was singing so slow in the final song because each word had to land. Each word held its own importance. Any time a woman exists; the second that she is seen as ugly, or dirty or messy, she is immediately demonised. Mitski phrases these realities in the perfect way. Her lyrics are much more real. because she isn’t portraying herself as the conventional, acceptable woman. She is bare faced in the performance which is a barrier broken since women are expected to enhance their features with makeup when they perform.Mitski doesn’t care to have this appeal, somewhat a sex appeal or male gaze. The performance left us speechless and we admired how short the duration was. There was so much heaviness with it that we just had to settle with it and think about..and relate to. Yes, a lot of female artists talk about feminism, femininity and struggles as a woman but nobody actually formats it in the way Mitski does. She says it in poetry so it forces you to think and dissect. Another admirable feature of Mitski is that when she sings, she doesn’t try to be pretty. The biggest complaint that we have about the music industry is that women are not allowed to sing ugly, women are not allowed to be bad singers. There’d be male singers like male leads of a band who can’t sing- who sings awful and doesn’t have to be pretty singers and they are revered as some of the best vocalist of our generation. But when it comes to women, they can’t be guttural, they can’t be expressive otherwise they are viewed as bad singers. Mitski is incredible and we feel like this is just a scratch to the surface of her catalog .
