Mitski Miyawaki ’13
“Probably the most advanced American songwriter that I know.”
—Punk icon Iggy Pop
Born in Japan to an American father and Japanese mother, singer-songwriter Mitski (Miyawaki) ’13 moved around during her youth, living in over 13 countries around the world, before graduating from high school in Turkey.
She wrote her first two albums here at Purchase in the studio composition program, She self-published her first, Lush, in 2012. She collaborated with a 60-person orchestra on her second album, Retired from Sad, New Career in Business. It was her senior project.
After graduating from Purchase in 2013, Mitski Miyawaki (monomonymously known as Mitski) moved to NYC and went on to release her third critically acclaimed album, Bury Me at Makeout Creek (2014), on the label Double Double Whammy. Rolling Stone magazine listed her as one of the “10 New Artists You Need to Know” in its February 2015 issue.
In 2016, Mitski’s fourth album Puberty 2 appeared on many Best of 2016 lists, including at #3 on Time Magazine’s Top 10 Best Albums. Her song “Your Best American Girl” landed at #2 on NPR’s list of Top 100 songs for 2016 and was named the 13th best song of the 2010s by Rolling Stone magazine.
“The first spin through the song [“Your Best American Girl”] proves that Mitski is a rock star. The second listen proves that she is a poet. The third listen shows that she is still learning to join those out-sized talents together and carve out a space for herself in a world that hasn’t always accepted her…. Mitski has primed herself to become the kind of rock star we need now: open-hearted, full of questions, experimental, searching, funny, equally messy and wise, and most importantly, armed with pristine riffs that will blow out your speakers.”
—Brooklyn Magazine
“For as skilled a lyricist as Mitski is—and for as often, on “Be the Cowboy,” as she sets her lyrics at odds with her arrangements—the songs can come off like pure sound, so aesthetically coherent that you can’t tell the words apart from the melody at all.”
In 2019, Mitski declared “her performance at Central Park’s SummerStage in 2019 would be her ‘last show indefinitely.’” (vulture.com)
She moved to Nashville, then released her 6th album, Laurel Hell, in 2022.
Mitski opened for Harry Styles in the summer of 2020 on his Harry’s House tour. She opened for Lorde in 2018 on her Melodrama tour.