Be the Cowboy
Mitski
2018
“Death of the Author” is a real easy excuse for when the message you receive from art and what the artist intended originally don’t necessarily square. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with discounting what the author has to say about it; once the author releases the art into the world, then it is up to the audience to decide what it is about, to pick it apart and to take from it what they wish.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve never really been able to connect with Be the Cowboy, and Mitski has certainly said a lot about the album and about each individual song, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to let the author live, so to speak, and to look to the artist for guidance on what exactly I’m missing. What is Be the Cowboy about?
According to Mitski, there was an image that she tried to portray in each of the album’s fourteen songs: “someone alone on stage, singing solo with a single spotlight trained on them in an otherwise dark room.” As far as the purpose behind writing the songs, Mitski said that it was her “not having any feelings, being completely spent, but then trying to rally myself and wake up and get back to Mitski.”
So I listened to the album yet again, but this time while keeping these two thoughts in mind. It wasn’t a test or anything like that—if I didn’t exactly see the spotlight in a dark room, or get a sense that feelings were being explored, then it’s not like Mitski has “failed” or whatever. The failure would still be on me. I’m just using her words—words that should have weight to them, “death of the author” be damned—to try to understand the album more than I have in the past.
What I found was that the album was actually about loneliness. Mitski didn’t mislead in her original statements, but rather pointed in that general direction and allowed it to be unsaid and ripe for discovery. Loneliness—it’s what the artist in the dark room with the spotlight trained on her is feeling at this very moment. Loneliness—it’s the feeling that masqueraded as the numbness that Mitski thought she met, and the feeling that revealed itself after some self-reflection. Loneliness—Be the Cowboy, in fourteen short scenes.
The “reconnecting with my feelings” thing interested me more, I think, because the ways in which Mitski is clearly trying to uncover those feelings take on many different shapes and colors throughout these songs. She draws on personal memories; a self-imposed holiday exile to Southeast Asia turns into a disco-infused reflection of loneliness in crowds (“Nobody”), and feeling small in the face of the grand universe turns into a big stomping plea to the heavens (“Remember My Name”). Even something as simple as the hurt one can feel when you realize that someone didn’t care as much about you as much as you thought can be a big guitar and horn-filled ripper if Mitski wants it to be (“Why Didn’t You Stop Me?”).
Some of the songs here are fictional writing exercises—the suburban housewife in “Me and My Husband,” the cheating husband in “Old Friend,” the wary steed in “A Horse Named Cold Air,” for some examples. Mitski has never been married, and does not have a documented history of cuckolding, and, um, has never been a horse, but she uses these stories to connect to feelings that may have stayed mysterious to her without this reflection. (This kind of reminded me of something Sunny said in his Oldboy interview, how he enjoys examining human behavior in movies that he would have no understanding of otherwise.)
It can probably go without saying that loneliness is a universal feeling, and so if you are one of the 99.99999% of humans who have felt lonely in their lives, then you will probably find something to grab onto here on Be the Cowboy. Quirky and on the shorter side, all fourteen songs are bursts of interesting ideas and melodies—yeah, that’s on me for not getting that. But I’m thankful that I could use Mitski as a guide through her own work. Don’t kill the author.
If this sounds interesting, try this song: “A Pearl”
Stray Observations
- If you didn’t pick this up, then I’ll spell it out: it really bothers me when critically acclaimed albums don’t seem to connect with me as much as they clearly did with other critics. So count me as grateful for this column, and this opportunity to finally “get it.” I get it.
- To give you a sense of how well-received Be the Cowboy was in 2018, the website Album of the Year aggregates all the Best Of lists for each year, and ranks them on a point system. Be the Cowboy was #2 in 2018, beat by Dirty Computer by a measly few points. Also, it was featured on the most lists as #1 (nine, versus Dirty Computer’s eight). So, yeah, critics fucking loved this album.
- Okay, so then if it took me till now to truly “get” this album, then why did it even stay on my iPod in the first place? I.e. how could I have been sure that it was an “album that mattered”? Good question. Call it a hunch that the problem was me, not Mitski. But this worries me a little bit about being too quick to judge my music listening recently, worried that I’m dismissing albums just because they don’t instantly connect with me. I straight up did NOT get Norman Fucking Rockwell! last year, for instance, and yet on Album of the Year it was by far the consensus aggregate pick for album of the year. Could such a deep dive cause me to reconsider? I don’t know. All I know is that I’m making a decision these days. I can try to love everything, or I can just follow my fucking bliss. I’m deciding the latter, and so far, I’m happy with that, missed opportunities be damned.
- ALBUM COVER: This website gives a lot of the details, including that the photography is by Bao Ngo. The description goes, "I designed the album art," but does not specific who the "I" is, so I'm going to assume that's Ngo speaking. It is a portrait photo of Mitski, getting her eyelashes done, staring directly at the camera. The makeup says that Mitski is trying to mask her loneliness; the staring into the camera is a challenge for you to stare back and try to see exactly what she is feeling. Also, not sure if this can go without saying or not, but Mitski is very attractive.
- Her attractiveness may lead to a temptation to question, ya know, why all the loneliness, why the seemingly desperate attempts to get somebody to kiss her, etc. But nah, good looking people have as much of a right to feel like shit as us plebeians do.
- ALBUM TITLE: In a literal sense, Mitski says that she knew someone in college who also performed music, and did so with what she called “cowboy swagger,” so this is her trying to perform with that same swagger. She is trying to “be the cowboy,” so to speak. In a figurative sense, there is a lot of “trying on other clothes” throughout these songs, people being someone who they are not, etc. Mitski is trying to “be the cowboy,” even if there are many, many times when she does not feel like a cowboy at all.
- Speaking of the title, how about the preposterously dumb indie-rock-world-only drama that sprung up when Mac DeMarco named his 2019 album Here Comes the Cowboy? Some Mitski fans were upset because they felt that DeMarco lifted the title from Mitski? This was a fans-being-overprotective thing, I guess? I’m not even sure I understand it, still. Mitski had no beef with it, and Mac claims he had never even heard of Be the Cowboy before he named his album. I don’t even know why I’m still typing about this.
- CHARTS AND AWARDS: The album topped out at #52 on the Billboard 200, while Ariana Grande’s Sweetener sat at #1. There were no charting singles. The only Grammy that Be the Cowboy was nominated for was Best Recording Package (insane), but it lost to St. Vincent's Masseduction (another album I should’ve loved but didn’t, and maybe I’ll finally “get” when The Albums That Matter dives deep for it in like 2028).
- And “Me and My Husband” got an honorable mention in PoYB's 2018 Best Songs. It’s possible that that was a dartboard pick, but it’s also possible that “Me and My Husband” is the album’s best song. I’m still undecided.
- "Lonesome Love" is apparently a play on words, referencing the 1985 novel Lonesome Dove. I'm certainly not doing a deep dive in this bullet point on a goddamn western book from the ‘80s, but from the intro paragraph on Wikipedia, it seems like the two share a theme of unrequited love, as well as general western-cowboy-type tones.
- Mentioned briefly in the main article is how "Me and My Husband" is the fictional account of a suburban housewife who states that she seems to have everything and is still unhappy, and she doesn’t know why (this is Mitski explaining the song again). Of course, this is a theme that I love critically thinking about, as we saw last month with Pete Campbell and the best TV episode of the 2010s.
- I wonder if this will be a skeleton key for me regarding Mitski's other albums. I could probably do with a deep dive for Puberty 2 as well.
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