Welcome to Endless Scroll, the brainchild of Eli Enis (he/him), Eric Bennett (they/them), Michael Brooks (he/him) and Miranda Reinert (she/her). Since Feb. 2019, we’ve been a weekly podcast about music, the internet, and where those two things intersect. On Substack, we’re also a weekly roundup of songs. Our format is simple: each of our four hosts picks a song they love and writes about it. There will be one free post every week, and more at the end of every month for paid subscribers. For the sake of your wallet, don’t start a paid subscription on Substack. Instead, sign up at the 2$ tier or higher on Patreon and we will gift you a subscription.
Mitski - “Working for the Knife”
Eric Bennett:
"Never read the replies" has become my rule with anything Mitski related. Her moving, wise lyricism has inspired a massive wave of young people projecting way too much on her every word. That’s why today, after releasing her first single since going on a brief hiatus in the Fall of 2019, I reminded myself not to read the replies, not to see what the stans are saying. I caught a stray glance, though, and was perturbed. Mitski has stated that the song is about “being confronted with a world that doesn’t seem to recognize your humanity and seeing no way out of it.” I can’t help but see that as a reaction to the deeply dehumanizing way that her art has been absorbed by a subsect of the broader culture. I’m sure it’s fucking weird to be called “mom” by young fans, and I’m sure it’s fucking draining to have your work, that encompasses such a broad range of expression and emotions, be boiled down to “sad.” With that said, I still saw all of this today, despite Mitski delivering her clearest message yet that this pressure is damaging.
Maybe that’s why Mitski sounds so stoic on “Working for the Knife.” The track is stately and ominous, with metallic clangs of production enforcing the cold, industrial aesthetic captured in its video. That video, as I excitedly pointed out yesterday, was filmed at The Egg in Albany, NY — a bizarre structure and performance space within Empire State Plaza that stands as an example of the 1960s brutalism of the broader plaza. The song’s production is intense, but never overbearing, and serves as a nice foil to Mitski’s soft vocals. The track hasn’t grabbed me immediately but drawn me in slowly. This is not unlike how I felt about “Geyser,” which left me puzzled at first but grew to be a favorite. Wherever Mitski goes with her forthcoming next album, I’ll be champing at the bit to hear it.
Eli Enis:
I can’t pretend that a part of me wasn’t nervous for new Mitski. I was extremely relieved to see her take a decisive break from music, social media, etc. and actually stick to it, which gave me hope that whatever she put out next wouldn’t be marred by an exhaustive tour cycle and an even more exhausting day-to-day existence as an indie-rock celebrity. I was also worried that, like many great artists before her, she had reached her peak with 2018’s Be the Cowboy, and whatever came next would be underwhelming by comparison. Therefore, I’m thrilled at how brilliant “Working for the Knife” is. I think it’s fucking incredible.
I think one of the most enduring qualities of Mitski’s songwriting is that she never gives your ears a four-course meal. Songs like “A Loving Feeling” and “Washing Machine Heart” are pure power-pop gold, but she caps both of them without giving you that one final chorus or that epic bridge that you know she could write, and maybe even has written, but purposefully left out of the song because that’s how she keeps you coming back. “Working for the Knife” also employs those tricks to great effect. There’s no proper hook on here, but rather five separate verses that begin with some variation of “I always” or “I used to” and end with either “living,” “dying” or “working” for the knife.”
Lyrically, the song is transparently imbued with her own experiences as a misunderstood star. Throughout her career, she’s always been open about how her songs aren’t all autobiographical, in fact many of them are completely fictional tales that are only loosely based on real-life experiences. In this song, she confronts how onlookers — in my mind, the people online who use her music as a handbag to complete their outfit of depression memes and narcissistic flailings — have rejected the themes she’s most interested in writing about (shitty men and broken women) because they don’t fit neatly into bite-sized nuggets of self-loathing. “I used to think I would tell stories / But nobody cared for the stories I had about / No good guys.”
However, the real genius of the song is how its cyclical structure — its looping trip-hop thrust and its perpetual inching toward a resounding hook that never arrives — mirrors those sentiments of feeling creatively trapped and unsatisfied. “I always thought the choice was mine/And I was right but I just chose wrong.”
Michael Brooks:
I just want to start off by saying that I think it’s incredibly funny that we’re all writing about the new Mitski single for today’s edition of the newsletter. Maybe Eric and Eli, who anchored down Endless Scroll for years before I ever knew what it meant to be a co-host, have a longer and more sacred history with Mistki’s music than I do. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed Bury Me At Makeout Creek and Puberty 2, but I never quite understood all of the hype around Be the Cowboy when it dropped back in 2018.
It’s been over three years since that album dropped so as far as I’m concerned Mitski and I have wiped the slate clean and I went into “Working for the Knife” with as much optimism as I could possibly muster. It’s not a bad song by any means, it just doesn’t really do a whole lot for me. I think a song like “Working for the Knife” might function really well inside of an album, but as a standalone single I find it to be a little too anticlimactic for my tastes. But maybe that’s the point? There’s a lot of interesting things going on in this song so I’m not completely ruling out that one day I will be won over by it, but for now I feel completely indifferent towards its existence.
Miranda Reinert:
Sure is a Mitski song.