The Album That Changed My Life: Mitski's Puberty 2
Not only do I absolutely love everything about Mitski’s music - the tone, the intensity, and the alarmingly vulnerable lyrics - but her album names are a particular favourite of mine. Her third studio album, Bury Me At Makeout Creek, makes the Simpsons fan inside me very happy every single time I see it. The title of her fourth album, and the album that I’m going to gush about for the next while, is Puberty 2, a name which on the surface is also just a funny title, but is also a really great set up for the tone of the album.
Mitski was 25 when this album came out; I was 20 when I first heard it. I think the title Puberty 2, and the music contained within it, perfectly encapsulates what it feels like to move through your early 20s. This movement from teenagehood to adulthood - moving away from home, starting work or third level education, meeting new people, having (semi-) adult relationships - can often bring up feelings of angst, anxiety and confusion which can feel like a second run at puberty (as if the first go wasn’t enough). Through her lyrics on songs like Happy, Fireworks and I Bet on Losing Dogs, Mitski explores, in an incredibly honest way, the depression she has lived with throughout her teens and early twenties. These complicated emotions haunt the album just as they have haunted her through her life, and highlight the difficult fact that many people come to learn around this time: that the angst and confusion of your teenage years often fossilise rather than disappear as you enter adulthood. The strength of the music when coupled with the radical transparency of the lyrics reveals a kind of stoicism, of settling into your emotions and getting to know them, rather than lashing out at them as you might have as a teenager.
It was this strength that first hit me when I heard the lead single from the album, Your Best American Girl. You know in The Sims when you could get a cheat code that meant you could fill up their power bars really quickly? That was literally what it felt like hearing that song for the first time- like all my power that I didn’t even realise I needed was filling up rapidly. I had just finished my second year of university and just as I had settled into my new life I was preparing to move away for my year abroad. I remember thinking that I could use this song whenever I needed a bit of strength, and it’s always a bit of a relief knowing that it’s there. Mitski’s lyrics are often equal parts cryptic and completely open, and every time you listen to it you find another part that seems to apply to whatever you’re going through at the time. The emotions she sings about are both intimately personal and also absolutely universal, just like so many aspects of the experience of your puberty mark 2 - aka your early twenties.
Another reason this album changed my life is the fact that it opened up my musical taste to so many amazing female artists who I had been unconsciously overlooking during my formative music-listening years. While I had spent my late teenage years frantically consuming as much art and media as I could, thinking that I was gaining a wide ranging view of the world, the music I was listening to was a little skewed in the male direction. Despite thinking that I was a super cool 17 year old because I listened to Mac DeMarco, The Smiths, The Libertines, Pixies, Arctic Monkeys, The Strokes etc (I’m sure you can fill in the blanks), until I heard Mitski I hadn’t even realised that, apart from a few exceptions, the only music going into my ears for the past few years had been made by men. Even considering myself a passionate feminist, for some reason I had forgot to put my money where my mouth was when it came to the music I listened to. As ‘male’ is often seen as the default of so many art forms, it was only when I started making a conscious effort to listen to music made by women that a whole new world of music was opened up to me. This album was really the catalyst which directed my music taste into an area that can only be described as a quote from the seminal movie 10 Things I Hate About You; “angry girl music of the indie-rock persuasion”.
Mitski’s album is so important to me as it gave me exactly what I needed at an important moment in my life. It also taught me to really appreciate the benefit not only of consuming art from a wider range of perspectives, but of actively seeking out art made by women. These artists speak to my personal experiences so much more than any music made by men, but it’s also so exciting that after so many decades of the indie music scene being so entirely male-dominated, that there are so many exciting and unique stories to be told about female experiences. I for one will be right there listening to all of it.
Written by Ellen McVeigh
Ellen is a recent graduate in English & History from Belfast, about to start an MA in September.