stars, moon and mitski ✨

those three things take up my mind literally 80% of the time

I’m going to be analysing a selection of Mitski lyrics/songs about the moon and stars and exploring what they mean to me. Enjoy!

Here’s my other Mitski analysis post if you’d like to read it! ⬇️

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Last Words of a Shooting Star is an absolutely heartbreaking song based on a real experience Mitski had: she was on a plane which was experiencing turbulence and might have crashed. The song uses a metaphor of a shooting star to represent both a plane falling from the air and the speaker¹ themself hurtling towards death. Although the lyrics don’t actually use the metaphor of the star in the title, I think that the title speaks for itself. It could be referring to the fact that humans are made of stardust, which is why the speaker compares themself to a star, as if dying means going back to the stars which they came from. The symbol of the shooting star also represents hope and wishes, a juxtaposition to the hopeless nature of the speaker’s position in a crashing plane whispering their last words. The shooting star is both hope and death, and there is something tragically poetic about that.

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My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars is almost entirely oppositional to Last Words of a Shooting Star in tone. While the first song I discussed is quiet and soft, this song is aggressive and desperately angry. It directly addresses the common idea of humans coming from stardust, but it is painted in a much more pessimistic light than this concept typically is.

The lines “My body’s made of crushed little stars/ And I’m not doing anything,” seem fairly simple but are absolutely soul-crushing when you think about them. Instead of being reassured by the fact that they are as special as a star, the speaker feels overwhelmed and angry at themself for “not doing anything.” Because they are made of stardust the speaker feels as if they have to be excellent, and is filled with self loathing and rage when they are unable to motivate themself to fill this potential. It creates a feeling of existential dread. What’s the point of living if even when you’re made of stardust you can’t achieve greatness? The song adds to this anguish by using the phrase “crushed little stars,” rather than the typically used “stardust.” The word “crushed” is violent and oppressive, making it seem like stars have been harmed just to make you, adding guilt to this pile of miserable emotions. In this song, the crushed little stars subvert the generally encouraging idea that humans are made of stardust, instead representing raw hopelessness and desperation.

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Star is an aptly-titled song comparing a relationship that has ended to a star, still visible in the night sky long after it has died.

By comparing their love to a star, the speaker implies that that even though their feelings may have died, they can still look back on this relationship and find beauty. At first, the speaker uses the verb “shining” to describe the star, creating a picturesque image of their pst love but later they use “burning,” which still relates to the overall theme but very subtly reminds you that stars can also be harmful, implying that even though this love was passionate enough to still be seen and admired long after it died, it died for a reason. Attempting to go back to this relationship would harm them, just like how you would burn if you touched a star. Also, after a star is “gone” it can’t be brought back, even if we can still see it. This suggests that that the love can’t ever come back but is still “worth holding on.” The speaker can still admire their love that has long passed, just as we can look up at stars that have long been dead.

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Carry Me Out is not exactly a song about stars. In fact, I don’t really know what this song is about. It doesn’t tell an easily coherent story like some of her songs do, but to me it seems to be about yearning.² I’m not sure what this yearning could be for, but there’s one line of the song that depicts a very raw picture of yearning and desire using imagery of stars.

This line is really beautiful to me. We don’t know who the speaker is addressing. Maybe it’s someone who has died and who they believe to be in heaven, watching over them from the stars. Maybe it’s someone they love but can’t reach right now and they hope that the stars might carry their screams. Maybe it’s someone they’re no longer in contact with. No matter how you might interpret it, it creates an image of such intense yearning that the speaker has to speak to the stars instead of this person they want to reach so badly but can’t.

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Remember My Name is, again, not a song explicitly about stars. It’s a song about need to be remembered and validated, even immortal, but there is a line about stars that’s repeated throughout the song in the chorus.

The “stars” could be seen as the speaker’s achievements, proof of their greatness. But also, the image of the having to “hang” the stars up around themself makes it seem like what they’re doing is all an act, as if the “stars” are simply part of a set. The speaker knows that what they’re doing isn’t real.³ The stars in this song represent the unattainable as the speaker tries desperately to achieve their goals of validation success, reaching for something that’s as distant and unknowable as the stars.

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Your Best American Girl is, as Mitski herself stated, about “wanting so badly to fit into this very American person’s life, and simply not being able to, just fundamentally being from a different place.” It has this one well-known and really beautiful metaphor that uses imagery of stars and the moon to reflect this meaning.

If we take this verse on it’s own and remove it from the context of the song, it basically seems to be about the speaker thinking that somebody they admire is so special and bright (“the sun”) and that this person has never been exposed to the darker realities that the speaker has to face (“the night”). The speaker doesn’t view themself as having a reflection of this person’s brightness (“the moon”) or even as something smaller but similarly light and inspiring (“the stars”). The speaker can only confide in others (“the birds”) and their “sun” hears echoes of their suffering (the “song”) from these “birds”, while not truly understanding the speaker’s pain. This is already a devastatingly beautiful metaphor but it becomes so much more meaningful when it’s applied to the context of someone trying to change to be more “American” in order to feel closer to their partner, despite knowing that their cultures are too fundamentally different. The contrast between the partner’s — “the sun’s” —blissful ignorance and the speakers dark world (“the night”) reflects the difference between their cultures and experiences. The juxtaposition of night and day emphasises how the speaker and their partner simply have lives and backgrounds that diverge far too much for them to coexist, no matter how much the speaker tries to bridge this gap with the help of the “birds.” The moon and stars are only reflections and smaller versions of the sun’s light but the speaker feels they cannot even be that because of how intrinsically different they are from “the sun.”

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I Don’t Smoke is a song which compares a toxic or abusive relationship to a harmful addiction.⁴ The song itself doesn’t really have anything to do with the moon but the moon is mentioned in one line.⁵

This line seems like the speaker expressing that they feel they aren’t significant or complete unless they’re with their partner who they have a toxic codependent relationship with, and that they are only even partially themself when reflecting on romantic memories of their partner. This image of “swimming under the moon” is oddly specific, but perhaps this is one of the only times they have felt truly loved and complete. “The moon” in this line seems to represent the fact that even though the speaker and their partner were alone, the night sky looked over them. “The moon” is a watchful eye that the speakers feels they need to include in order to justify that this moment of happiness actually happened. Perhaps to others this relationship was purely abusive, but the speakers tries to rationalise the situation by implying that the moon was there to see this one moment of romance and bliss, so it must have been real.

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Crack Baby is somewhat similar to I Don’t Smoke in the sense that it compares desire to addiction. However, in this song, the speaker focuses on the desire for happiness. Once again, the moon is very briefly mentioned (kind of)⁶.

The songs opens with these lines referring to the high you can get from sniffing glue. The mention of the “moonflower” is seemingly random but it links to the song thematically. Moonflowers are types of flowers which only bloom at night, which implies that the speaker and the person they got high with engaged in this activity at night, perhaps to hide their destructive attempts at filling the void. The presence of the moonflower emphasises the secretiveness of their actions. The moonflower could also be representative of the speaker themself getting high, because the plant blooms at night only to die again in the daylight, reflecting the fact that the happiness the speaker gains from sniffing glue is short-lived and won’t be able to keep them feeling positive. The moonflower’s blossom can only live on during the night, and so can the speaker’s happiness if they rely on drugs to fuel it.

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That’s Our Lamp is about someone remembering a time where their loved one truly loved them back. They compare their love to both a lamp and a moon to demonstrate this.

In the context of this song, the “lamp” seems to me like a symbol of the love that their speaker and their partner once shared or a memory that reminds them of it. The idea of it being a lamp rather than natural light suggests this love could’ve been superficial. The phrase “shines like a big moon,” compares their past love to a great source of natural light, but one that can only be seen in the darkness. This idea of darkness is continued in the next line, implying that their love persisted through dark times and managed to be this beautiful light in the darkness, but in the end it still wasn’t enough. The moon’s light is, after all, a reflection and so their lamp could never shine as bright as the sun.

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Happy is a song about the experience of fleeting ecstasy and depression washing over someone unhealthily, as they desperately seek real happiness. This is really cleverly explored through personifying this emotion as a man who the speaker refers to as “Happy.” This song also very briefly mentions the moon, in an additional line to the final chorus.

The first chorus of the song explores the speaker wanting to hear Happy as he leaves just to spend a little bit more time with him, and them truly feeling that their heart is worthless without him. This line about the moon is added to the chorus at the end of the song, further emphasising this idea that the speaker needs Happy to stay with them, just through a new metaphor. The phrase “take the moon” could be suggesting that the speaker feels that Happy literally has the power to take a celestial body for himself, putting him on a completely unrealistic pedestal which reflects the speaker’s high expectations of the feeling of happiness. When the speaker says “maybe I will see you; in the night, I’ll see you,” they reinforce their yearning to hold on to Happy for just a little bit longer. In a sense, the moon and the night symbolise a sort of hope for the speaker — hope of holding on to their happiness even if it’s only present in the dark and in the distance, in something they can see but not come close to.

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My Love Mine All Mine is, really, fundamentally about the moon.⁷ It’s an absolutely beautiful song which uses the image of the moon throughout to explore ideas of love and longing.

The first 2 lines of this song immediately draw attention to the moon first, illustrating a scene of the speaker looking up at it in wonder through a hole in their tent. The line “here before and after me” is subtly incredibly meaningful, reflecting on the fact that the moon is eternal. It’s been here since long before anyone was around and it will continue to live on after we die. We all look up at the same moon in awe, but as Mitski herself said “in Moon years, I’m like a speck of dust floating, maybe, for a few seconds, completely insignificant and then I disappear.”⁸ This idea of the moon being so distant and huge in comparison to us is then contrasted by the speaker directly asking the moon a question: “Moon, tell me if I could / Send up my heart to you?” This question is so intimate, presenting the moon as a tender caregiver that they look up to, yet also almost as a figure of worship, a god that the speaker is praying to. The line “So when I die which I must do,” has an oddly comforting finality to it, contrasting our fragile mortality with the moon’s greatness in a way that is equally calming and existentially terrifying. The speaker then asks another question, using “you” to refer to the moon again in such a personal way: “Could it shine down here with you?” The speaker is asking the moon if their heart can continue to “shine down” on the earth, a permanent remnant of their love so that it can live on after they die. The moon is intrinsically tied to love because the moon’s light is it’s way of showing it’s love to the world.

The speaker continues to use the pronoun “you,” implying they are still talking to the moon, even if the moon is no longer explicitly mentioned, creating a sense of casual familiarity with it. The speaker begins the verse with “My baby here on earth” rather than “Moon” like before, perhaps emphasising the speaker’s love for this person. The term “baby” could be describing a romantic partner, an actual child, or just somebody the speaker cares for deeply. Whoever it is, the speaker values them more than anyone else. The last 3 lines of the second verse mirror the last 3 lines of the first. “Send up my heart to you” becomes “Showed me what my heart was worth;” both lines mention the “heart” but though in the first verse the speaker was willing to simply give away their heart, in the second verse their “baby” convinces them of their true value. However, this motivates them in a different way to send their heart up to the moon. “So when I die, which I must do” becomes “So when it comes to be my turn;” these lines allude to death but while the first one is more blunt and has a sense of brutal finality to it, the second one seems far more tender, as if death is something we are all waiting for that will bring us peace. “Could it shine down here with you?” becomes “Could you shine it down here with her?” This is almost the same line, but instead of the speaker begging the moon to take their love and shine it down on the world, they ask specifically for their heart to shine down on “her,” their baby. In both verses, the speaker longs to give their heart up to the moon, but the second verse has more of a sense of purpose to it: the speaker doesn’t want to send their heart away just for the sake of it, but now they want to be able to love someone specific after they have died by shining down their heart through the moon. This song is fundamentally about the moon but it is also fundamentally about love — the two can’t be separated because the moon itself is an expression of love.

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If you read all the way to the end of this post, I fucking love you. Even if you skipped some bits, I love you. Please let me know about your interpretations of these songs or any other Mitski lyrics about the moon and stars that I might have missed, keep calm and listen to Mitski, and don’t sniff glue.

<3

1. Like the last Mitski post, I’m just going to say the speaker since this is mostly my interpretation and I don’t know exactly what Mitski meant when writing these songs or if she was even referring to herself.

2. I would LOVE to do a full analysis of this song but I actually don’t know what’s going on it. Still a banger though.

3. Literally just copied and pasted half of these lines from my other Mitski post WHICH YOU SHOULD READ (shameless plug)

4. This is so niche but would anyone care if I made a post about how I associate I Don’t Smoke by Mitski with Rin and Altan from The Poppy War series because the song is literally them and it makes me crazy.

5. Grasping at the tiniest threads here to justify writing about this song in the post

6. Grasping at even tinier threads! Does “moonflower” count as a mention of the moon? I, personally, do not give a fuck because I wanted to write about this song

7. You’ve probably heard this song. You probably know about “moon, tell me if I could send up my heart to you.” But you don’t understand it like I do.

8.