Soundtrack For Your Existential Crisis: Mitski and Noname

We all fall down the existential hole at one point or another, and our favorite artists do, too. On “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” and “Don’t Forget About Me,” Mitski and Noname respectively dive into their personal grapples with life, death, and the meaning of it all.

Written by Laiken Neumann
Illustrated by Mark Yoder

With the end of the semester in sight but still buried in a heap of assignments, our minds tend to become preoccupied with questions about our greater purpose on this relatively tiny wet rock. Why exactly are you studying for your government exam tomorrow when the impending reality of death and its imminence sit upon your shoulders?

When we ask ourselves these absolutely huge questions at exactly the wrong times, one of the best solutions to getting closure is turning to music that juggles with those same issues. There are a multitude of songs that race through this pessimistic cycle. There’s the satirical “Bored in the USA” by the melancholic man himself, Father John Misty, or Modest Mouse’s “World At Large,” which is almost guaranteed to make you sob.

However, two songs, Mitski’s “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” and Noname’s “Don’t Forget About Me,” lyrically and musically forge new ways of looking at existential dread. Their confessions are raw and handle these huge questions in a focused and unpretentious manner.

Both of these songs contrast each other in sound and content, yet they both effectively communicate the artists’ opinions about their own limited existence, giving more depth to the broad questions we have about the universe. They also make you feel a little less lonely as you lay in a pile of these earth-shattering feelings.

Mitski released “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” on her 2016 album Puberty 2. Musically, “Crushed Little Stars” does not waste its time. The desperation in its thrashing guitar and Mitski’s vocals immediately demand your attention. The song makes its case in a runtime of just under two minutes. Its quick pace, simplicity, and overall distress might just be representative of what Mitski is addressing: life itself.

Photo courtesy of Bao Ngo

“Don’t Forget About Me,” a song released just last year on Noname’s Room 25, is audibly a complete juxtaposition to “Crushed Little Stars.” It is significantly softer, with her trademark hushed rapping at the forefront. The song also has a whimsically-composed backbone of a driving bass line and unexpected, yet sensational strings in the background. The lyrical density and the orchestral accompaniment create a sound that is just as layered as Noname’s subject matter. With a sound as heavenly as clouds, you nearly forget about the weight of what she is dealing with: death.

An immediately recognizable similarity between the songs, aside from relative subject matter, is their descriptions of our physical forms. “My Body’s Made of Crushed Little Stars” says it all in the title. Mitski drags our minds back to the beginning of the universe, serving as a blatant reminder of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things. Comparatively, Noname warbles in the chorus of “Don’t Forget About Me”: “I know my body’s fragile, know it’s made from clay.” She recognizes the delicacy of our bodies, as we all essentially end up as decaying matter.

It’s these lyrics that emphasize the songs’ focus on how fleeting our moments are. Our end is inevitable just as our beginning is. Mitski and Noname recognize that, but they don’t let this idea consume them (or their songs) entirely.

The songs beautifully overlap the weight of existential dread with the contradicting issues they face in their everyday lives. In the grand scheme of things, they seem smaller and less important, but the very fact that they are singing about them makes the point that these problems can still be valid despite the fact that, yes, we all die in the end.

Mitski lays this out very clearly simply in the structure of her lyrics. She opens the song by reiterating “I’m not doing anything” and interjecting with “my body’s made of crushed little stars, and I’m not doing anything.” Repeating an AABA phrasing, to put it in more analytical terms, highlights the contradictions that continue throughout the song:

“I work better under a deadline  

I pick an age when I’m gonna disappear  

Until then I can try again.”

Assuming that her “deadline” is death itself, Mitski refers to the cycle she will continue until she “disappears.” While this reminder might just induce another panic, it also has a strange twinge of hope. Rather than framing each day as a painful experience to live over and over again, she views it as another chance to “try again.” In all its erratic glory, the song takes the frightening prospect of the end and eats it whole. Mitski breaks it down into digestible fragments, not necessarily making the thought less scary, but rather a little more comfortable.

Photo courtesy of The FADER

Similarly, Noname interlaces her fears of being forgotten with the changes she’s been through recently. Since the release of her first mixtape, Telefone, her life has changed drastically: the Chicago native moved to L.A. and witnessed its effects on her. Despite the praise Telefone received, it hasn’t made her feel more secure about her reality. The first verse reveals the pressure she feels as a result of her success, but what keeps her going is the hope that her music makes some sort of impact on the world.

“I'm the prayer, the hope, bank account wishin' bone for my loved ones

Tell ‘em Noname still don’t got no money

Tell 'em Noname almost passed out drinking

Secret is, she really think it saves lives.”

Noname’s verses tie her current state into the greater existential worries that she reveals in the chorus. The immense pressure of being the “wishin’ bone for [her] loved ones” is crushing her. She contextualizes her worries by incorporating the prospect that her music might actually “save lives.” Noname doesn’t want the things that seem so meaningful in life to be forgotten afterwards. She prevents getting carried away in her existential fears by grounding herself with the loving weight of her relationships and her music. The angelic tune whisks you away and settles you into her mindset: one of worry, but also one of hope.

Instead of furthering the existential dread its listeners may be relishing in, “Crushed Little Stars” and “Don’t Forget” structure their songs with a glimpse of positivity behind the questions they ask. This is perhaps the greatest accomplishment of these two songs.

These songs piece together the confusing and frustrating puzzle of thoughts that anyone is bound to experience when thinking about their life on a large scale. Despite their highly contrasting sounds and varying expressions, they each make statements that grapple with the limited human existence without reaching a highly specific conclusion, largely because no true conclusion can be made on the matter.

Instead, Mitski and Noname discuss what they do know, using their own lenses to both contextualize and digest the overwhelming thoughts of insignificance in the larger universe.