Mitski poses at Coachella Valley Music And Arts Festival on April 16, 2017, in Indio, California | ... [+]
Singer-songwriter Mitski has been known to bare all in many of her songs, from 2018’s “Geyser” to 2013’s “Class of 2013.” The raw emotion in songs like these are about more than just pursuing your dreams; they’re honest revelations about the rocky road along the way.
Now, after a three-year hiatus, Mitski is back with “Working for the Knife,” her latest entry into this catalog of emotional tracks.
Mitski’s fifth album, 2018’s Be the Cowboy, introduced her to more audiences than every before following the success of her 2016 LP Puberty 2. In 2019, after she wrapped up the Be the Cowboy tour, Mitski left social media and announced that she’d played her “last show indefinitely.”
“Working for the Knife” feels like a comeback in every sense of the word, and Mitski is fully self-aware and acknowledges that all her fans’ eyes are on her after she practically dropped off the face of the earth for two years. Throughout the track, she’s brutally honest about feeling empty and lost during that time, much of which was spent at home during the COVID pandemic. The song’s release was accompanied by the announcement that she’s going back on tour in 2022, presumably in support of a new album for which “Working for the Knife” serves as the lead single.
"I cry at the start of every movie," she sings in the song's opening lines, "I guess 'cause I wish I was making things too." The music video is just as introspective, as she wanders alone around the Egg performance venue in Albany, New York. After the song cuts out, the last minute of the video consists of her breathing heavily and throwing herself around before finally collapsing to the ground — a physical expression of the gamut of emotions she explores in the song.
“It’s about going from being a kid with a dream, to a grown up with a job, and feeling that somewhere along the way you got left behind,” Mitski said in a statement about the song. “It’s being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity, and seeing no way out of it.”
