Mitski’s voice is soft, precise, and just shy of apologetic. The kind of tone you might use to describe your own heartbreak while standing on a crowded escalator. Which is fitting, because Be the Cowboy—her 2018 album—is the sound of someone balancing poetic ruin with restraint, collapsing inward in a sequined dress. It’s disco for the chronically disassociated. “I was very tired,” she says, not dramatically. Just fact. “I’d been on tour forever. And trying to write in the middle of that—it takes something out of you.”
So she leaned into the exhaustion. “The lyrics are desperate, but the music is upbeat,” she says, like it’s an inside joke between her and the mirror. Nobody, the album’s pulse-skipping standout, layers loneliness over a danceable beat like lipstick over a bruise. “It’s that feeling of being empty inside, but saying: here, let’s dance.”
And for Mitski, Be the Cowboy was about writing from a persona—though she’s hesitant to call it that. “I don’t think of it as fiction,” she says. “I’m not telling my life story word for word. I’m trying to express a feeling. Sometimes what happens in life is boring. But the emotion? That part isn’t.”
To be clear, the emotions in Be the Cowboy are not subtle. Longing, detachment, desire—they’re all amplified through reverb and restraint, whispered across synths like secret prayers. The album’s concept was sparked, partly, by loneliness on the road. “It’s constant travel. You’re always waiting,” she says. “There’s only so many ways to turn that into a metaphor.”
So she didn’t. She just leaned into it. “I wanted to write from the weird little world I live in,” she says. “Touring life, isolation, being on a stage. All of it.”
Which makes it ironic that she was playing arena shows opening for Lorde and Run the Jewels while finishing the album. “I had 25 minutes. I didn’t have visuals or context. I was just... background music while people found their seats.” She doesn’t sound bitter about it. In fact, she’s almost amused. “I was just happy to be there. And the catering was amazing.”
The fiction of Be the Cowboy, if you can call it that, is in the framing—cinematic gestures that suggest grandeur without revealing too much. “I wanted just one good movie kiss,” she sings on one track. “I meant the idea of a movie kiss,” she says now. “The kind that doesn’t even exist. Just the image your brain conjures that real life can never match.”
Other images sneak in—like Venus, the planet. “I read that Venus once experienced global warming,” she says. “And I thought... what if it was a civilization that wanted too much and destroyed themselves? That seemed like a good metaphor for desire.” She makes it sound casual, but it’s myth-making in miniature. Be the Cowboy is full of that—tiny science fictions disguised as late-night confessions.
And somehow, it reached Iggy Pop.
“I have no idea how he found my music,” she says, still sounding stunned. “He said YouTube? Just imagine Iggy Pop quietly surfing the web, finding my songs.” She laughs at the absurdity of it, but you can tell it matters. “He’s one of my heroes. When I don’t know what music should be, I watch his live videos. He reminds me.”
She pauses, letting that land. “It hasn’t fully registered. I don’t know how to feel about it.”
The rest of us, though, are feeling plenty. Be the Cowboy hit like a laser-guided mood swing—an album that dances through the void and makes it feel okay. Maybe even glamorous. Mitski may not be aiming for fame, but she’s building something better: a mirror for all the feelings we didn’t have the words for.
So go ahead. Dance with your emptiness. Just don’t expect a happy ending.
Listen to the interview above and check out the video below!
