Day 268: Mitski – Puberty 2

I’m having a day where I’m a bit down in the dumps, a bit moody, a bit tired, I feel like I’m not really understood. That’s about as adolescent of a sentence you can say, so Mitski’s Puberty 2 seems like a fitting album for me to sulk to. I also feel like her and Fiona Apple are like my sad girl north stars, I look to them for guidance when I feel so inclined.

Album cover courtesy of Dead Oceans

Released in 2016, Puberty 2 was Mitski Miyawaki’s fourth studio album about the disorienting second adolescence of your mid-20s. It’s such a raw snapshot into where she was at the time that it’s occasionally almost difficult to listen to, with the general feeling of unsteadiness from struggling with your identity, relationships and emotions translates from the album so viscerally that it’s impossible not to feel it too.

I said it before when I wrote about her newest album, but Mitski just has a way of writing that makes me feel a little bit more like a person. This album is almost so perfect to me that I struggle to say anything about it – clearly a skill issue on my part, but there’s such a vulnerability to her as a lyricist that it’s hard for me to write about how much it means to me without going a little bit too earnest for my casually detached little blog.

Mitski is arguably a generational artist and I hope she never stops making music. Strangely, I think the more I like an artist, the worse I get at writing about them. Maybe I could have come up with something better with a bit more time, but it’s 23:36, this’ll have to do. Puberty 2 is a rare 10/10.