Was there something empowering about walking away for a moment, thinking about yourself and coming back and realizing people still wanted to hear the music you were going to make, even if you took a moment for yourself? You know what? I need to buckle up in a sense, and just take all of the good that comes with the bad. But eventually, I kind of looked around and realized just how lucky I was to get to create the music I want to make and have my music reach other people. So I decided to leave the industry for however long it would take for me to get my heart and soul back. Mostly I was uncomfortable with being in the public eye. But I think it was about whether I should do this as a job. Well, to clarify, I never intended to leave music. There was a moment in 2019 where you intended to leave music. And I almost feel like a majority of Americans are actually other, and that's kind of what makes America what it is. ![]() I am an other in America, even though I am American. And so I don't really fit into either community very well. And I kind of think maybe that's also very uniquely American. ![]() I feel like I've always been seeing my own identities through the eyes of other people who haven't lived my identities. But especially with this album, I think I'm trying to reconcile all my various identities with being American today. I'm always trying to figure out what it means to be American. You've called it your most American album. But I'm just putting it through a character that doesn't exist or a narrative that didn't happen because that happens to be the best way to express how I really feel. In my mind, all of these songs are true in essence. Sometimes fiction or made up stories is actually the best path towards speaking some sort of personal truth. Mitski: On one hand, most of the narratives in the songs I write are narratives that didn't happen in my real life. Leila Fadel: What makes you want to inhabit all these different characters like that, in each of the songs that you sing? ![]() You can hear this conversation using the audio player at the top of the page. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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