A funny thing happened after the pandemic hit. Artists started releasing music written before COVID-19 that seemed perfectly tailored for the new world. Themes of isolation and loneliness abounded, which meant one of two things. Either these musicians were clairvoyant, or they were picking up on universal themes that have been plaguing us since pre-plague times.
“Love Me More,” the latest from indie singer-songwriter Mitski, is a great example. Released yesterday as the fourth single from her forthcoming Laurel Hell album, “Love Me More” opens with a series of lines that read like a direct response to quarantine.
If I keep myself at home
I won’t make the same mistake
That I made for fifteen years
I could be a new girl
But as Mitski said in a statement, these lyrics date back to the Before Times. “As ‘Love Me More’ was written pre-pandemic, lyrics like ‘If I keep myself at home’ had different meanings than what they would now, but I kept them on the album because I found that some of the sentiments not only remained the same, but were accentuated by the lockdown,” she said.
Musically, “Love Me More” draws from an even earlier era: the ’80s. Mitski uses synth-pop as a vehicle for a song seemingly about the struggles of being an artist. Later in the first verse, she hints at the downside of having a compulsion to create.
I wish that this would go away
But when I’m done singing this song
I will have to find something else
To do to keep me here
In the chorus, it’s unclear whether Mitski is addressing her audience or a potential love interest, or both. The need to feel loved certainly isn’t specific to artists, but Mitski has been candid about her quest for approval. “I still have problems with my ego and have that thing where I need everyone to love me and need to be validated,” she told Under the Radar in 2019. “It’s very scary—the thought that that will affect and maybe taint my music.”
I need you to love me more
Love me more, love me more
Love enough to fill me up
Fill me up, fill me full up
The second verse shifts the focus to others. Mitski wonders how everyone else manages to fill their time and deal with the monotony of life.
How do other people live?
I wonder how they keep it up
When today is finally done
There’s another day to come
Produced by Patrick Hyland, who also helmed the three previous Laurel Hell singles, “Love Me More” wasn’t an easy song to finish. “‘Love Me More’ went through the most iterations out of all the songs on the album,” Mitski said in her statement. “It’s been too fast, too slow, and at some point, it was even an old style country song.”
Fortunately, Mitski had recently watched The Exorcist, and she got the idea of using an ostinato—a repeated musical phrase—like the one in Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells.” “As we steadily evolved the ostinato to fit over the chord progressions, we began to hear how the track was meant to sound,” Mitski said.
You can check out all the lyrics to “Love Me More” on Genius now.
so excited for this album oml