Mitski was born in Japan to a Japanese mother and an American father, and from a very young age, her life was defined by movement. Because of her father’s job with the U.S. government, she relocated frequently; living in multiple countries across Asia, Europe, and North America before adulthood. This meant that instead of growing up rooted in one place, she experienced childhood as a series of temporary environments, each with different languages, social expectations, and cultural norms. In Japan, she was culturally familiar but not entirely positioned as fully “Japanese” due to her mixed background. In other countries, especially in Western contexts, she became visibly “other.” This early pattern, being simultaneously inside and outside of different cultural spaces, created a sense of observation rather than full participation, something that later becomes embedded in how she writes music, where she often takes on the role of someone watching, desiring, but not fully belonging.

During her teenage years, music became one of the few stable forms of expression in an otherwise unstable environment. Mitski has described how songwriting allowed her to process emotions that were difficult to articulate in everyday life, especially in contexts where she did not feel fully understood. Rather than performing identity outwardly, she began shaping it through sound, experimenting with tone, structure, and mood. Importantly, this period was not about immediate belonging within a musical community, but about using music privately to make sense of displacement and emotional complexity. This early relationship with music helps explain why her later work often feels contained and controlled; it comes from a place where expression was internal before it was public.

Mitski later attended the SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Music, where she studied composition. This period marks a shift from instinctive expression to intentional construction. She began creating full-length projects as part of her coursework, combining her emotional instincts with formal musical training. Here, she learned how to use structure, melody, harmony, repetition, not just to support lyrics, but to create meaning on their own. This is crucial for understanding songs like “Strawberry Blonde,” where the simplicity is not accidental. The repetitive melody, the limited vocal range, and the controlled delivery are all deliberate choices. Her education gave her the ability to translate complex emotional and social experiences into musical form without needing to explicitly state them.

After college, Mitski entered the indie music scene, releasing music that quickly gained attention for its emotional intensity and distinct voice. However, the indie and folk spaces she entered are historically shaped by white artists and audiences, with established expectations around authenticity and sound. Mitski’s presence within this space introduces a quiet tension, she adopts the sonic language of the genre, but her perspective does not fully align with its typical narratives. Instead of universalized love or nostalgia, her work often centers on discomfort, longing, and misalignment. In “Strawberry Blonde,” this becomes especially clear: the acoustic, folk-like sound feels familiar and accessible, but the perspective within it is not centered, it is positioned at the edge, looking inward.