SONG REVIEW: "Working For The Knife" (2022) - Mitski 

Mitski’s song, “Working for the Knife”, cuts open the dread of a future with nothing but stairs to climb. This song makes it clear that the pursuit of fulfillment through ceaseless work will not give the promised rewards. It leaves the listener’s current misery newly meaningless, and points it to a new direction as an escape route.

“Working for the Knife” echoes a longing to labour out of love. Mitski captures, using the lyric “I wish I was making things too”, the envy one feels at art itself, its very existence being proof of someone having time to do something they love. The envy is coupled with resignation knowing that art that reveals grueling truths, the stories with “no good guys”, is unpopular because of its challenge to the people who control how art is rewarded and valued. The speaker of the song fears that any art they have a chance to make will be constrained beyond recognition, void of their real concerns about the world. ‘Working for the knife’ is what the speaker ends up doing—whittling away slowly at assigned tasks, while the work they truly value remains neglected.

Mitski indirectly calls listeners out for being delusional about the outcomes of their lives. When she sings “I always knew the world moves on / I just didn't know it would go without me”, she expresses that despite any hard work, failure will never be met with empathy, only burdened with more tasks on top of the hurting. Close to these lyrics is a melody that wails like a siren, languishing yet urgent. It expresses the hurt from these realisations. “Working for the knife” pries at denial with a crowbar made from its consequences, forcing open the doors to an escape that they would otherwise still ignore. 

Strangely, “Working for the Knife” is also hopeful. Though we are strangers to Mitski’s longing to change that she is “living for the knife” at twenty-nine, we can still confront the reality of ambition as an insatiable hunger, and the idea that life will be easier if one works hard in one’s youth as a lie. The song cautions that only if one reevaluates their goals can they be free from a vicious cycle of working for the knife.

Since her album “Laurel Hell”, which includes “Working For The Knife”, Mitski has written for, ironically, movie soundtracks and teased the upcoming album “The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We”. No matter how many new songs she releases and I consume, the one I will always return to again and again will be “Working For The Knife”.

After the music fades, I am left with uncomfortable questions. Can I escape the trappings of ambition through pursuing my creative desires? Will my ambition taint them too? In the cruellest of butterfly effects, does every stroke of my pen sharpen a knife through my back?