Mitski’s most devastating lyrics, ranked

The poet laureate of the gifted child to depressed adult pipeline, Mitski returns today with her surprise seventh album, The Land Is Inhospitable And So Are We. Fans thought she might have retired around the time of Laurel Hell, which, with its complex conversation about Mitski’s hatred of her own notoriety, delivered some of her most devastating lyrics to date, but no! She’s back for more and bringing with her a fresh batch of absolute gut-wrenching, day-ruining, heart-aching lines.

Beloved for her visceral storytelling and ability to get right to the heart of tricky feelings, Mitski articulates sadness like no other. Previously tackling topics of loss, heartbreak and growing up on previous albums, the new record adds addiction, abuse and entrapment to that roster. So buckle in, here are her ten most devastating lyrics…

10. “I always knew the world moves on, I just didn’t know it would go without me” – ‘Working For The Knife’The first single opening up the Laurel Hell album era, ‘Working From The Knife’ is cutting from start to finish. A devastating take on Mitski’s relationship to her success, capitalism in general and the way it traps all of us, forcing us to ditch or be totally defined by our creative pursuits. Of the same ilk as Taylor Swift’s “This Is Me Trying” – this is a killer one for everyone who was ‘great for their age’ and now feels average.

9. “You’re a cage without me. / Your pain is eased but you’ll never be free.” – ‘The Deal’A track about being so sick of yourself you beg for your soul to be confiscated, “The Deal” sits like a bomb on the new album, ready to devastate when you hit that bridge. Truly Mitski’s magnum opus on the topic of feeling stuck and scared, English Literature girlies are going to have a deep, unhealthy attachment to this one with all its depressing metaphors.

8. “And when you go, take this heart / I’ll make no more use of it when there’s no more you” – ‘Happy’It’s so like Mitski to open an album with the most gut-wrenching track you’ve ever heard in your life and then call it… “Happy”. A song determined to kill anyone with an anxious attachment style, you can dance along to the sound of all the co-dependent lovers weeping in the corner.

7. “You’re my best friend / Now I’ve no one to tell / How I lost my best friend” – The FrostFor a feeling so universal and so all-consuming, heartbreak is hard to write about. But on new track “The Frost”, Mitski articulates it perfectly. So straightforward, it’s like she knows there’s no pain worse than losing your partner, so why even bother trying to spruce it up? Why dance around the point when she could simply stab us straight in the heart?

6.  “I cannot bear you a son / I have tried / But if I am not yours, what am I?” – ‘Wife’An underrated killer on her debut album, “Wife” feels like a hymn, but instead of worship, it’s made for torture. Pressing on the bruise of never being enough, of feeling like a failure in love and life, of letting someone down and being left behind; 2012 Mitski came for blood.

5. “Mom, am I still young? Can I dream for a few months more?” – ‘Class Of 2013’Best performed in her Tiny Desk, screaming the lyrics into her guitar; there is something so deeply evil in this song. Designed solely to make new graduates lose it, capturing that hellish feeling of being in your early 20s and feeling both ancient and like a baby – she had a guitar and a pen and she set out to kill.

4. “And I opened my arms wide to the dark / I said, “Take it all, whatever you want” / I didn’t know that I was young” – ‘Everyone’Positioned right after the danceable fun of “Stay Soft”, “Everyone” is a hidden killer on Laurel Hell. But under the relentless beat lies some of Mitski’s most devastating lines about self-destruction. A song about being painfully young and determined to blow your life up to feel something, “I didn’t know that I was young” feels like a Sylvia Plath line that would go crazy in the dark, terrifying depths of 2012 Tumblr. I’d reblog it through my tears.

3. “Just don’t leave me alone wondering where you are / I am stronger than you give me credit for” – ‘I Don’t Smoke’With lines as casually devastating as “so if you need to be mean, be mean to me…” “I Don’t Smoke” is maybe one of the most desperate songs ever put to record, perfectly capturing the feeling of being totally broken down, seeing Mitski offer herself up as a punching back as long as she isn’t left. Spotify should set up some kind of alert system to let you know when your friends are listening to this track so you can check on them.

2. “I always want you when I’m finally fine / How you’d be over me looking in my eyes when I come / Someone to watch me die” – ‘I Bet On Losing Dogs’Easily one of her most devastating tracks, Mitski articulates depression like no one else. From the opening “my baby, my baby”, you can feel your heart sink. She puts the feeling of being let down perfectly, like the musical equivalent of picking a scab or burning yourself and going back for more. But the song’s final chorus – with its last image of wanting your disappointing boyfriend to witness your sadness – is so devastating it’s almost cruel.

1. “I’m sorry I’m the one you love / no one will ever love me like you again / So when you leave me I should die / I deserve it, don’t I” – ‘I’m Your Man’It could only be “I’m Your Man”, a contender that contains some of her most gut-wrenching lyrics yet. Diving into the push and pull of having someone up on a pedestal and having your love held against you, Mitski is back again to perfectly capture utter desperation. Later singing “one day you’ll figure me out”, this one should’ve come with some kind of mental health warning. Mitski, you’re sadistic. I love you.