Carry Me Out

"Carry Me Out" operates in the space between surrender and dissolution, Mitski allowing the self to become permeable in ways that feel both terrifying and relieving. The production is atmospheric and spare—her voice the primary instrument, accompanied by a musical backdrop that feels like dusk rather than evening, transitional and uncertain. Her vocal delivery here is intimate almost to the point of private, breathing audible, the performance suggesting something half-dreamed. The song from "Be the Cowboy" is about the particular exhaustion that makes you want to be held without having to ask—the wish to be cared for so completely that you're lifted out of the weight of your own consciousness. There's ambiguity in the desire being described: it reads as both romantic longing and something more fundamental, a wish to return to the helplessness of infancy where someone else was responsible for your survival. Mitski's genius is in making this wish feel neither weak nor shameful—she locates it as simply human, universal beneath the surface embarrassment. The song lives in the late hours of illness or heartbreak, when you're too tired to maintain the performance of self-sufficiency.