Learning to Love in Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine”

Mitsuki Laycock, known professionally as Mitski, has been writing heart wrenching music for over a decade, but had never found as much commercial success as she has with “My Love Mine All Mine”. The song debuted at No. 76 and peaked at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100; it’s her first release to ever hit this chart. She also dominated the TikTok Billboard Top 50, Billboard’s newest chart that tracks the most used songs on the social media app. “My Love Mine All Mine” is a single off of her newest album, The Land is Inhospitable and So Are We. This is Mitski’s seventh studio album in eleven years.  

The song is gentle, simple, and evocative about what it means to not have anything, really. The hypnotic track features only two verses and two choruses, something particularly rare in pop music that makes it to the Top 40. Mitski’s sensitive and soft vocals combined with achingly poetic lyrics create a sensitivity in the listener, like she’s singing straight to you. The song also takes an interesting production twist by using slide guitar and other timbres characteristic of country western music. 

Much of the song’s explosive success can be attributed to it taking off on TikTok. Two months after the song’s release, it had already amassed 300,000 uses. This number took off exponentially, exposing new audiences to Mitski’s one of a kind style and sound. There’s irony in TikTok being her avenue to more commercial success as she’s completely disengaged from all social media, having deleted all of her accounts in 2019. 

“As long as I hold onto my love, no one can take it from me…It’s just this unlimited resource,” the singer said in her Genius interview discussing the breakout song. “There’s a cost to everything except for love.”