Mitski has officially announced her first album in three years, Laurel Hell.
The Be the Cowboy followup is billed as “a soundtrack for transformation, a map to the place where vulnerability and resilience, sorrow and delight, error and transcendence can all sit within our humanity, can all be seen as worthy of acknowledgment, and ultimately, love” and is named after the mountain laurels. She shared, “I wrote what I needed to hear. As I’ve always done.”
Mitski admitted, “I got to a point where I just knew that if I kept going this way, I would numb myself to completion.” She added, “I needed love songs about real relationships that are not power struggles to be won or lost. I needed songs that could help me forgive both others and myself. I make mistakes all the time. I don’t want to put on a front where I’m a role model, but I’m also not a bad person. I needed to create this space mostly for myself where I sat in that gray area.”
In addition to the album announcement, Mitski dropped an accompanying music video for the single “The Only Heartbreaker,” co-directed by Maegan Houang and Jeff Desom. “The worst pain I’ve experienced is when I’ve fully understood the pain I’ve caused another. It’s one of the hardest parts of being human, that no matter our intentions, we’ll inevitably do something hurtful to our fellow man, if not someone we love,” Houang explained. “In this case, the harm Mitski enacts in the video is to the world. It’s unstoppable and destructive, but worst of all, she doesn’t even want it to happen. She’s a stand-in for humanity as we collectively do so little to save ourselves and our planet.”
Watch Mitski’s “The Only Heartbreaker” above and take a look at the tracklist of Laurel Hell, which drops February 4, below.
Laurel Hell Tracklist
1. Valentine, Texas
2. Working for the Knife
3. Stay Soft
4. Everyone
5. Heat Lightning
6. The Only Heartbreaker
7. Love Me More
8. There’s Nothing Left For You
9. Should’ve Been Me
10. I Guess
11. That’s Our Lamp
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