…this song is quite autobiographical because I didn't grow up in the U.S. I am half Japanese, and it came from wanting to just fit into this very Ame… - Mitski

…it was actually about when you have some kind of toxic relationship to yourself, or to another person, for so long that it becomes your identity. Even when you don't need it anymore and you've stepped away from it, you still hold on to it because it's scary to let it go — because if you actually let it go, it feels like erasing yourself. That song is about likening that sort of toxicity to a pearl.

The phrase 'Be the cowboy you want to see in the world' has been an inside joke between me and myself…I would always kind of say it to myself in situations where I feel like I'm sort of trapped in my own mind. Like, 'Oh, what would a swaggering, western movie cowboy do in this situation?'

By the time it was done my heart was pounding like I just saw the rest of my life. I was fucking doomed.