People think I was writing it for a group of people, when actually I was writing about one person. The truth was, I loved this person so much, and us… - Mitski

I felt it was shaving away my soul little by little…The music industry is this supersaturated version of consumerism. You are the product being consumed, bought, and sold. Even the people on your team who are your friends, the very foundation of your dynamic is that they get a percentage of your income. Every time I turned something down, it would mean that they would make less money.

…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.

In tenth grade—this says a lot about how developmentally delayed I was—I had in my mind that it was the proper thing for me to have a love interest. And you'd see in movies where two characters instantly see each other and are, like, I'm in love!, and then it just cuts to them on a date or interacting...A lot of my adolescence was like that. Me thinking I was doing the right thing by re-creating a movie scene that I'd seen but then realizing that's not how it happens in real life.