From the album Nothing's About to Happen to Me
This song is about how death makes women consumable in ways their living selves never agreed to. Mitski lays out the brutal fact that artists, especially women, only get control of their narrative when they are gone. Alive, she is inconvenient. Dead, she becomes property.
Would you have liked me better if I'd died / So you could tell my story the way it ought to be?
The question is not rhetorical. Mitski knows the answer is yes. Dead artists do not talk back, do not contradict the myths built around them.
If I'd sewn rocks in a dress, gone with grace into a lake / But since I'm alive, you'll have to break in as I sleep
She names the fantasy of the beautiful tragic suicide, then shows what happens when you refuse to perform it. If she will not die willingly, the violation comes anyway, just messier.
When you find my love beside me, choke him dead for having me
The violence spreads. Anyone who had access to her living self becomes a target because they got what the audience never could. Intimacy is seen as theft.
Then embalm me up, 'cause you're hosting the viewing / Saying she gave her life so we could have her in our dreams
The audience rewrites her death as a gift, as if she consented to being preserved and displayed. The viewing is not for her. It never was.
She gave her life / So we could fuck her as we please
The metaphor drops. This is not about art appreciation. This is about possession, consumption, the way dead women get used without consequence.
This song does not leave room for comfort. Mitski names exactly what happens when art becomes more valuable than the person who made it. The last line does not soften. It stays ugly because the truth is.