The Mitski Discography Rate | winner revealed

What is your favorite Mitski release?

  • Lush

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Retired from Sad, New Career in Business

    Votes: 2 6.9%

  • Bury Me at Makeout Creek

    Votes: 5 17.2%

  • Puberty 2

    Votes: 9 31.0%

  • Be the Cowboy

    Votes: 11 37.9%
  • Total voters
    29
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

Let's get to our next one then?























---



















2GuEejw.png


#49 - Abbey
7.333

High scores: 9.5 (@aux), 9 (@Phonetics Girl, @DinahLee, @Coochi, @pop3blow2, @Trinu 3.0)
Low scores: 4 (@Cutlery), 5 (@Euphoria, @LE0Night)
fatyoshi's score: 6

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #59
10 voters - #47 (+12)
Final placement - #49 (-2)

Abbey is the next one out as we say goodbye to yet another Lush track. This one originally saw a much worse placement early in (at its lowest point being #59) with the first set of voters but mostly improved until it settled here. It's a bit surprising to see this place over a few tracks that had one or two 10s but this did have a ton of 9s (in addition to the 9.5).

I can see why this one might have been a bit more challenging for some. This forgoes some of the mainstays of this album's material (the piano focus, in particular) instead choosing to begin with an acapella vocal performance with increasingly building harmonies. It can be a bit of a Theatrical or even quirky moment and we know how polarizing reactions can be in those cases. I had a difficult time with the sound of the track, myself.

Abbey sees Mitski contemplating a hunger. What that hunger refers to is as always debatable and up to one's intention. Is it about being unsure about yourself as a person or what you want for your life, is it another disguised track about her music career, was she waiting for her food to be finished at McDonald's and it was taking forever? All completely valid interpretations. Personally as someone who hasn't (yet, at least) dabbled in creating music, I lean towards it being a hunger for purpose or direction in life but it might be different from person to person and that's great.

I'll leave us for the day with the two bits of commentary the track received.

Remorque with a 7 said "Though her delivery kinda stays the same for the entire song, I'm absolutely here for that production build-up."

Cutlery with a 4 said "This acapella choir of one is not my cup of tea. And the few melodies that are present throughout aren’t awfully memorable for me either."

---

Tomorrow we'll shift gears slightly and eliminate a track from one of our two untouched sections. I wonder which one it will be.​
 
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

Cutlery said:
Finally. If I'm being honest she served me jazz x Medúlla but not in a nice way. Now, can we leave the remains of Lush to dry for a while and get into the other non-Bury Me/Puberty 2 sections?
Click to expand...

I agree with the bulk of this post but just wanted to say that you could've cut the first part a bit short. Medúlla in and of itself already gives off the vibes of something being unpalatable when mentioned. ":)"
 
pop3blow2

pop3blow2

Oh, I lost a couple of my 10s. Well.

'Circle' is fantastic & just goes with 'Square'... they are a packaged geometric deal, though, for me. I like 'Square' a tad more, but still gave them both 10s.

'Jobless Monday' has some of my fave lyrics on Bury Me at Makeout Creek. Especially this couplet:
"Oh, I miss when we first met
He didn't know me yet"
 
DinahLee

DinahLee

I never listened to Medúlla but "Abbey" is exactly what I expect from reading about it dd.


I don't understand why "Liquid Smooth" is still here since it's one of the weakest from Lush for me... nice lyrics and one of the most boring melodies\productions at all dd. Maybe being the first piano ballad out of like 7 others did help it.
 
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

Let's see which section sees its first elimination. Will it be Puberty 2 or Be the Cowboy?





























---
















sp3ZBQ8.png


#48 - A Horse Named Cold Air
7.342

High scores: 10 (@pop3blow2), 9.5 (@Trinu 3.0)
Low scores: 5 (insolentire), 5.5 (@finito)
fatyoshi's score: 6

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #58
10 voters - #58 (=)
Final placement - #48 (+10)

At #48 we lose our first Be the Cowboy track with A Horse Named Cold Air. Lingering around #58 through a majority of the voting period it saw a leap to where it is now with the last set of voters. They really came through for this one.

A Horse Named Cold Air is a sparse piano based piece that in context of the album in full eases the listener into the final set of tracks. A calm before the storm, if you will. Piano based compositions have not had the warmest reception in this rate if you look at how Lush has been doing among other things so it isn't particularly surprising this was the first Cowboy track out. The more formless song structure and lyricism might not have helped either.

Speaking to The 405, Mitski once pondered if A Horse Named Cold Air was perhaps the "most cowboy" track on the album. Especially with the image of someone who has weathered significant events through their lives now looking back on it. I can see this in a literal sense 100%, which is different from some of the more metaphorical cowboy vibes of other ones. I'll get into my thoughts on the idea of being the cowboy and what that might mean depending on the characters in the songs as the time comes. Gotta leave some stuff for later dddddd.

A Horse Named Cold Air is one of the three Be the Cowboy tracks that never saw a live performance so we're once again left without any visuals. I'll leave us with our single piece of commentary from @Cutlery who gave the track an 8.

"Unexpectedly calls back to Lush and Retired from Sad, but does their shtick with plenty more somberness, she really hammered the minor scale chords and the left-hand side of the piano huh? I love that it's one of her most abstract lyrics ever though on the other hand I can't brush the feeling that it threatens to sound like Rupi Kaur musings, maybe with a drawing of a horse corpse floating in water."


---

You know the drill. See y'all tomorrow for the last elimination of the week.​
 
Last edited:
pop3blow2

pop3blow2

fatyoshi said:
#48 - A Horse Named Cold Air
Click to expand...

Oh no... no, no, no, no.

This one had me with its title & it didn't disappoint upon my first listen. It's certainly takes on whole other feeling when you play it lot in that part of the season where winter is just creeping in. I love that kind of music. Gives me Vanessa Rabbits On The Run vibes, so that's a big win for me.

Not me being the only one to ride in with a 10 for this one.

tenor-3.gif
 
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

For our next elimination @constantino asked "Has anyone checked on @ohnostalgia ?" in his commentary. Now might be the time for that. ":("






















---
















vnu2flD.png


#47 - Fireproof
7.528

High scores: 10 (@Serg., @ohnostalgia), 9 (@pop3blow2)
Low socres: 5 (@Phonetics Girl), 5.5 (@Remorque)
fatyoshi's score: 8

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #49
10 voters - #49 (=)
Final placement - #47 (+2)

At number 47 we lose Fireproof and with it the last of our covers in the rate. Originally an album track on One Direction's Four, Mitski's cover saw release on Japanese CD copies of Puberty 2 and as day 78 of the Our First 100 Days compilation.

When premiering the song with Billboard, Mitski said the following:

"We seem to de-legitimize music that has a majority of young girl fans and think of it as having less cultural value," she tells Billboard. "Isn't that strange? I'm not down with the elitism of indie rock music, where it considers itself to be more 'serious' or 'intelligent' than mainstream pop. That thought often has nothing to do with the composition or political motivations of the music as it's conveyed to be about, and more to do with its production, 'aesthetic,' and just another kind of branding.

I think this is something that can resonate with all PJ users. It isn't anything particularly unique or groundbreaking at this point in sentiment but it is nice to think about how much progress or movement (no matter how slow or incremental) we have seen even in the time since this cover first came to be.

I wonder how much this being an extra (and a cover at that) influenced our result. Sonically this doesn't feel too far off from a lot of other Puberty 2 moments and I'd say it's one of the extras that gets the closest to sounding like the main rate material even if it isn't a Mitski original. This wasn't a favorite of mine by any means but with an 8, I definitely have some lower scores slinking around yet. Maybe those will leave soon, maybe not. I guess we'll have to see.



See you on Monday.​
 
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

hey















127885b8b337d422874c4048a3789e80.gif





---























XhhNrE6.png


#46 - Humpty
7.55

High scores: 10 (@Remorque), 9.5 (@Phonetics Girl), 9.4 (@pop3blow2)
Low scores: 4 (@Euphoria), 5 (insolentire)
fatyoshi's score: 6

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #55
10 voters - #54 (+1)
Final placement - #46 (+8)

Retired from Sad, New Career in Business gets caught in our crosshairs again and loses another track at #46. It had a good run in terms of leaderboard movement (jumping a whole 9 spots overall) but that can only carry it so far. Goodbye to Humpty.

Like many Lush and Retired tracks before it, Humpty once again serves piano balladry with some strings cropping up in the back half. In hindsight it's kinda a miracle that some of these tracks have done as well as they have with how material of this kind fares in other rates. Especially since this might not quite be what Mitski is known for with most. Perhaps I did a bit much with my score but this was again a song where I enjoyed the lyricism and imagery more than the end result musically.

In a shocking development, this is yet another Mitski track that our host can find relation to. The idea of wishing to live in a bathtub/find stability in the midst of chaos everywhere else is an eternal mood. There's some mild energies of that cartoon/comic of the dog sitting in a burning room saying "this is fine" among other things. Whether one springs to apply the idea of "eggshells" as seen here to navigating hardships in life or an actual relationship, it can fit both nicely. The versatility of it all...

Nobody sent any commentary for this one so I'll leave us off with the visual which also features a bathtub, we love cohesion.




Our next elimination has a minor connection to this one (a reference, thematic or musical similarities, etc.)

See you tomorrow.​
 
Last edited:
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

I'll live in the bathtub
Surrounded by tiles
All so square and so steady

















---












A0kwLQM.png


#45 - Square
7.694

High scores: 10 (me, @DinahLee, @pop3blow2, @LE0Night), 9.5 (@Serg.)
Low scores: 3.5 (@Cutlery), 4 (@Euphoria)
fatyoshi's score: 10

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #52
10 voters - #40 (+12)
Final placement - #45 (-5)

Picking up from our previous elimination, today we get rid of Square. This was another track that saw some leaderboard movement as the votes came in. Originally placing at 52 with our first set of voters, it jumped as high as 40 before settling in here. It worked out as Square both as a song title and with its lyrics can connect directly to Humpty. We love some accidental cohesion in our rate results.

This wraps up our set of geometrically based song titles leaving A Pearl and Pearl Diver as the only themed pairs/sets of song titles left (we had a set of first name based songs on Lush but they're already gone). Even on these early albums it always feels like there's so much going on conceptually. It makes even the songs I'm not as wild about rewarding to listen to every once in a while because there's so much narrative or thematic richness that one can choose to get in to.

As one can see from my score, I liked this one a lot. The verses have a bit of a sinister feeling to them that aren't too unlike numerous tracks on Lush but they give way to a more sweet but obviously still downbeat sounding chorus. At a glance there's only two songs on the album that I prefer to this, one of which is already gone (I Want You). Things are going so well for me xx

There's a bit of commentary for this one so I'll leave us with that.

@Cutlery who should probably be watching out for @LE0Night right about now said "The 1-2 Disney punch of this with the next track… Much like with Covid, let me tell you, I was tested."

@constantino said "The composition is gorgeous, especially with the woodwinds (?), like Disney on xanax."

See y'all tomorrow.​
 
DinahLee

DinahLee

When listening to the songs for the rate, Square (and its "Solo Piano Version" especially) caught my attention. There's something so unnerving about the verses and the way it glides to the chorus. The whole drama and build up across the whole song that flows for that lonely "well that's my ride. Hope you had a good night". So bittersweet as both saying goodbye after something nice or actually realizing the whole thing wasn't worth it.

"God's very simple and love shouldn't burn" that turns to "doesn't burn" as finally having sure. Her voice is very beautiful too. I didn't connect it to "Disney" but replaying now I can see (hear) it too.

Ugh it should have lasted longer.........
 
fatyoshi

fatyoshi

Another day, another elimination.























---


















h4xeVck.png


#44 - Crack Baby
7.744

High scores: 9.25 (@Cutlery, @aux), 9 (me, @Phonetics Girl, @constantino, @Crisp X, @Serg.)
Low scores: 4 (@Coochi), 6 (@Euphoria)
fatyoshi's score: 9

Leaderboard trajectory:
5 voters - #21
10 voters - #32 (-11)
Final placement - #44 (-12)


At number 44 we lose our first Puberty 2 track with Crack Baby. This means we no longer have any sections of the rate untouched. Not content to let An Atrium steal the spotlight in regards to tracks crashing and burning on the leaderboard as the votes came in, this one dropped a whopping 23 spots to its final ranking. This might be the biggest drop between a track's original placement and end result in the whole rate. A mess.

This definitely wasn't my ideal first cut for Puberty 2. It's not my highest score but there's two definite weak points I would've rather seen gone. As the longest album track in her discography, it also features a spine chilling key change with some of the strongest lyrics on the album. All of which helps distinguish the track and keep it from blending in with the rest.

Crack Baby is one of the two Puberty 2 tracks to never see a live performance and it wasn't a single so you know what that means. No visuals or supplementary materials to share with y'all today.

I'll be back tomorrow for another. Sorry this elimination was so brief.
​
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Top