Mitski: 'I just need to dance. And that's where the sound came from'

Mitski joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss her new song “The Only Heartbreaker” from her forthcoming album ‘Laurel Hell’, due out next February. She tells Zane about the song’s origins and subject matter, co-writing it with Dan Wilson, channeling an ‘80s dance sound, the long process of making her forthcoming album and its various iterations, the meaning of the album title, and more.

Mitski Tells Apple Music About Her New Song “The Only Heartbreaker”...
Well, I don't know if you've ever been in this position, but sometimes you are just the bad guy in the relationship. Sometimes you're the one who keeps making mistakes, whos breaking your favourite person's heart, and there's nothing you can do about it because you can't just suddenly be a better person. But I also wanted to capture, I'm not sure if I was able to, but I wanted to capture a deeper, sadder feeling. You kind of realize, oh, maybe I'm the one always making mistakes because I'm the one always trying, and I'm the one who ends up looking… I’m the one whos always looking ugly in the relationship because I'm the only one revealing myself, you know? So I was hoping the first chorus was sincere. Like, I'm the bad guy, I'm the only heartbreaker. And the second chorus was hopefully ironic. Like, sure, I'll be the only bad guy in this relationship.

Mitski Tells Apple Music About Co-Writing “The Only Heartbreaker” with Dan Wilson…
This is the first song in my entire discography of however many albums I've made where I have a co-writer, and it's because this song was this puzzle that I couldn't solve. And I was just sitting on it forever. I have so many iterations of it. Nothing felt right. And right when I was stewing over it, I was actually in LA, doing co-write sessions for other artists. And we had this one day, or I had this one day with Dan Wilson. I had every intention to write for somebody else, but then I just sat down at his piano, and I was like, he's one of the best, smartest songwriters in the world. Maybe he can help me with this song. And so I brought the song to him, and it turned out he's really good. He helped me solve so many of the problems and kind of led me out of the labyrinth of it. And yeah, I'm really glad that I took that chance with him.

Mitski Tells Apple Music About The Process of Making Her Forthcoming Album...
It's the longest album process I've ever been through. I mean, a lot of these songs are written, you know, 2018, and then the demoing process started January 2019 before everything. And then I really thought that it would be done sooner. It just, it was really hard to make anything during the pandemic. And so it's just like we started recording May 2020, and then just kept mixing up until May of this year. It just took so long.…and this album went through so many iterations. Me and the producer, Patrick Hyland, just kept finding different sounds. At some point, it was a country record. At some point, it was a punk record. And then towards the end, just because we were mixing during the pandemic and I just got this feeling, even though a lot of the songs are sad and this one is, as well, I need something that's peppy, that's this feeling of we are doing well. And I thought, okay, the eighties, eighties dance, right when everyone was in that bubble and everyone was feeling great. Everyone just needed a pick me up, including myself. I just needed something that was like, I just need to dance. And that's where the sound came from.

Mitski Tells Apple Music About The Title of Her Forthcoming Album ‘Laurel Hell’…
So Laurel Hell is a term from the Southern Appalachians in the US, where laurel bushes basically grow in these dense thickets, and they grow really wide. And I mean, I've never experienced it myself, but when you get stuck in these thickets, you can't get out. Or so the story goes. And so there are a lot of Laurel Hells in America, in the south, where they're named after the people who died within them because they were stuck. And so the thing is, laurel flowers are so pretty. They just burst into these explosions of just beauty. And I just, I liked the notion of being stuck inside this explosion of flowers and perhaps even dying within one of them.