Dressed in a prim, billowing white dress, Mitski holds her microphone high over her head, bringing it down very deliberately towards her. The song she sings is called Working for the Knife, from her recent sixth album, Laurel Hell – her most commercial outing yet, full of lush 80s productions and electronic drama. And the mic is a dagger aimed at Mitski’s soft parts.
Working for the Knife can be read as a generalised cry of defeat in the face of dehumanising work. More specifically, it relays Mitski’s own internal struggles as an artist. In 2019, the US singer-songwriter decided to quit music after one final concert, exhausted to the point of dissociating from gruelling tours and the expectation that, as a confessional female singer, nothing in her life was off limits.
