米茨基

Mitski Miyawaki (born Mitsuki Laycock; September 27, 1990), known professionally as Mitski, is an American musician and singer-songwriter. She self-released her first two albums, Lush (2012), and Retired from Sad, New Career in Business (2013), while studying composition at Purchase College's Conservatory of Music. Her third studio album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek, was released in 2014 on the label Double Double Whammy.

In 2015, Mitski signed with Dead Oceans and released Puberty 2 (2016), Be the Cowboy (2018), and Laurel Hell (2022), the last of which made the top ten in several countries. In 2022, The Guardian dubbed her the best young songwriter in the US. That same year, she co-composed "This Is a Life" with Son Lux for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song. Her seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, was released in 2023. Its single "My Love Mine All Mine" was Mitski's first to chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Her eighth studio album, Nothing's About to Happen to Me, was released on February 27, 2026.

Early life

Mitsuki Laycock was born on September 27, 1990, in Mie Prefecture, Japan, to a Japanese mother and White American father. She has a younger sister. Mitski's mother, wanting her daughter to be born a Japanese citizen, flew while pregnant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to Japan so Mitski would be born there, nearly giving birth mid-flight. She learned Japanese as her first language, and later adopted her mother's last name, Miyawaki.

Due to her father's career in the United States Department of State, she frequently relocated throughout her childhood, living in 13 different countries and changing schools on a near-yearly basis. She later recalled the constant moving as creating "a permanent sense of being a foreigner and an outsider." Her childhood musical influences included her father's extensive Smithsonian Folkways collection and her mother's Japanese pop albums. Growing up listening to American pop artists who gained popularity abroad such as Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera, Britney Spears and NSYNC, Mitski's music tastes developed after discovering Jeff Buckley, and later, Björk, M.I.A. and Sheena Ringo.

After arriving in the United States for the first time when she was 15, she attended high school in Alabama and Virginia. She graduated from high school in Ankara, Turkey a semester early, and began songwriting at the age of 17 or 18 during her spare time, writing what would become "Bag of Bones" from her debut album, Lush, as her first song. She moved to New York in 2010 and majored in film at Hunter College for a year, though she left the program due to a perceived lack of creative job opportunities in the field, instead favoring music.

Career

2012–2017: Student albums, Bury Me at Makeout Creek and Puberty 2

After her time at Hunter, Mitski transferred to Purchase College, where she studied studio composition at the Conservatory of Music. Making use of the recording studios available at the conservatory, she recorded there for her end-of-term project during her junior year. She self-released it as her debut studio album, Lush, through Bandcamp on January 31, 2012. While at Purchase, she met longtime musical collaborator Patrick Hyland, who has produced all of her albums after Lush.