Singer-songwriter Mitski‘s career is a testament to the fact that being true to oneself is the most effective way to create art. She began her solo career in 2012 with “Lush,” a self-released album focused on piano and voice. She steadily grew her audience, but it wasn’t until her seventh solo effort, “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We,” a decade later, that she cracked the Billboard Hot 100 with the infectious, ethereal hit “My Love Mine All Mine.”
“This is the first record where I absolutely stopped caring what people think,” she told Genius in 2023. “Ironically, maybe that’s what people are most attracted to.”
“My Love Mine All Mine” found success on TikTok and Spotify, where it was streamed four million times per day at one point. The song resonates with listeners for its dreamlike soundscape and melancholy. Many connect the lyrics to be about a relationship, but in fact, the track is Mitski’s ode to impermanence.
The idea occurred to her while she was walking home with a heavy load of groceries. “I tend to make up songs in my head when I want to dissociate from the moment,” she explained. The first verse sets up the existential premise as she imagines the night sky to be a circus tent and the moon to be a hole letting light through. It made her think about how the moon will be around much longer than she will.
“I couldn’t wrap my mind around the fact that the moon was there before I ever existed,” she explained to Genius. “It’s gonna keep being there long after I die. In moon years, I’m a speck of dust, floating for a few seconds, completely insignificant, and then I disappear. I was thinking about how sad it was – not that I had to die, but that I had to stop living. Because I love living life. I love people, I love the world. I was thinking, ‘I wish this love in me that is temporary could go up to the eternal moon and keep shining down with it.”
The chorus reflects that, even if we don’t have anything forever, we have our own love to give.
The deep meaning of the lyrics to “My Love Mine All Mine” is matched with a warm, introspective soundscape. Its slow tempo gives time to reflect and get into your feelings, while its sparse instrumentation gives sonic room to breathe. The drums gently maintain the beat, while the piano does most of the harmonic work.
The song has a four-chord cycle, but it’s not quite the standard pop approach you may expect. Written in the key of A, it begins on an A chord and moves to a C#7 – a dominant III chord. This provides a certain tension without being too dissonant. It then resolves to D (the IV chord), which then becomes D minor. If this seems familiar, the same progression is featured prominently in a similarly deep song: Radiohead‘s “Creep.”
Follow along with the sheet music for “My Love Mine All Mine”:
