Mitski is an editor. Yes, she’s a singer and songwriter, but she understands concision. Her brief songs barely reach three minutes, and the words are terse. Her songs, any one of them, could be used as a quick introduction to this vivid artist.
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Her pithy songwriting is also a force of emotions. “Washing Machine Heart” says so much in its title using only three words. The rest of the lyrics won’t fill a single page, but Mitski’s brevity offers a profound statement on intimacy. It is, at once, confessional and poignant, and it’s easy to see why her fans obsess over her.
The structure of her compositions is uniform and beautifully mechanized. But lurking behind the straight-laced arrangements is a fury of heartbreak and longing.
Johann Sebastian Bach understood the science of music. He was a practitioner with the tools required for mining emotional responses from his audience. Mitski has this same skill. Her music—short, quick bursts of emotional fury—is built for her time.
Dirty Shoes Banging in The Tub
Mitski explained “Washing Machine Heart” to her producer, Patrick Hyland, during an episode on BBC Radio 6 Music. She imagined the sound of shoes banging around a washing machine, inspiring the metaphor of a beating heart.
Though it might be frowned upon, many people launder their shoes in the washing machine, and the opening rigid stomps and claps of “Washing Machine Heart” sound like sneakers banging in the tub.
Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart
Baby, bang it up inside
I’m not wearing my usual lipstick
I thought maybe we would kiss tonight
Baby, will you kiss me already and
Toss your dirty shoes in my washing machine heart?
Baby, bang it up inside
She carries the image further with a heart used to cleanse a rotten relationship. Intimate relationships are inherently messy, like a child ripping plants from the soil or partners hurting one another even when they don’t mean to.
The sound of shoes in a washing machine is a warning that maybe it’s not a good idea. It’s the sound of the machine rejecting the heavy apparel. It’s like the car’s ignored light alerting a driver that something’s gone wrong. Mitski fires off a warning flare when she sings, I know who you pretend I am.
Accidentally Famous
“Washing Machine Heart” went viral on TikTok, with video clips used for expressing anxiety. It helped launch Mitski reluctantly into the spotlight.
Her fifth album, Be the Cowboy (2018), was critically acclaimed, bringing close attention to an uncomfortable artist. Following a show in Central Park in 2019, Mitski announced it would be her final performance. She contemplated quitting music and pursuing another life. The unexpected commercial success of Be the Cowboy brought a level of public scrutiny on her, causing mental and physical distress.
Her fans didn’t receive the news well and, in turn, voiced their distress at the thought of Mitski quitting music forever.
Feed The Beast
Mitski revealed to Vulture she regretted using her real name as an artist, feeling like it no longer belonged to her. She had become a product and no longer felt like a person, and she feared reaching a place where she would create music she didn’t care about to feed the consumerism of the music industry.
The Wall Street Journal has described her fans as very “online,” and though not as large as Swifties, their intensity resembles a cult. Mitski has described her fanbase’s hero worship as damaging how she sees herself. She returns to the commodification of art and how she became another product to devour.
Put Down The Phone
“Washing Machine Heart” is about cleansing personal relationships, but it’s easy to expand the metaphor into her relationship with stardom. The irony of massive popularity is how intimately it affects the artist. Privacy is becoming a thing of the past in the digital age, and for someone with fame, the speed of privacy’s evaporation can be dizzying.
The diminishing communal experiences of a concert reveal the effects of detachment. Mitski asks her fans to put down the phone during her concerts. People are afraid to miss a moment, so they hold up their phones to document they were there. By obsessing over documenting the experience, they miss out entirely. It splinters the relationship between the audience and her band, and the distraction is another stain a washing machine can’t get rid of.
Looking past the present to record for the future is the sound of irony bouncing around a black hole like the shoes in Mitski’s washing machine. But black holes are pure gravity and, therefore, silent. Because you’ve missed the experience—distracted at the moment—what you’ve documented is absolutely nothing.
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Photo by Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Panorama
