Mitski – Your Best American Girl
2016 · Directed by Zia Anger
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Best comments
1.“I wanna be Mitski's left hand.”
More comments
- 2.“Day 236 without sex: hand started looking just fine.”
- 3.“'I wasn't trying to send a message. I was in love. I loved somebody so much, but I also realized I could never be what would fit into their life.' – Mitski, on this song”
The story
Mitski spots a guy across the room. The credits list him simply as Bro. They wave, they smile, it's going great. Then a woman walks in (credited as Babe), and Bro forgets Mitski exists and starts kissing the new arrival like his lease depends on it. Mitski, left on her own, makes out with her own hand. Then she turns to the guitar and moves on, better off.
Director Zia Anger and cinematographer Ashley Connor built it as a nod to PJ Harvey's videos: one woman, one guitar, an otherwise empty white space. Mitski said it played on her own experience as a Japanese woman never quite fitting in a genre crowded with white American men. Connor remembered that at the end of one take the whole crew stopped and applauded.
The song was the lead single from Puberty 2, and critics lost their minds. NPR and Paste both ranked it the second-best song of 2016, and Pitchfork later put it at number seven on its 200 best songs of the 2010s. Not bad for a song about losing the guy to Babe.
