Mitski and the Art of Repetition in “Be the Cowboy"
There's often a moment in Mitski’s songs where repetition goes beyond a tipping point. In her album Be the Cowboy, this lyrical repetition conveys the album's loneliness on its own, rather than overtly explaining it to the listener.
Written by Alan Jian
Repetition is a commonly used literary device in music due to its memorability and enhancement of rhythmic appeal. Singer-songwriter Mitski is no stranger to this pop convention, but she distinguishes herself through her use of it. Mitski’s repetition replicates psychological experiences to explore deep emotions. Nowhere is this clearer than in Be the Cowboy, the indie-rock album thematically centered on confinement, loneliness, and passion. Across 14 tracks, repetition captures obsessive rumination, amplifies emotional outbursts, and reshapes language into sound.
Starting off, Mitski uses repetition to convey rumination. In many instances, lyrics in the album explore the intensity of unresolved thoughts and questions, which leaves Mitski emotionally charged, unbounded by rationality, and vulnerable. The more intense the repetition, the more apparent it is that the subject of her desire is indifferent to her pleas. In “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?,” as Mitski searches for a physical photo of the ex-lover, she “Can’t seem to find one / Where you look how I remember / Look how I remember / Look how I remember.” As the line repeats, the instrumentals also build in tension. Even as Mitski realizes that the idealized image of her relationship is not grounded in reality, the repetition suggests that she still does not give up begging for this image to become what she remembers the love to be. In “Pink in the Night,” Mitski embodies infatuation, pleading for another kiss with “Can I try again, try again, try again / Try again, and again, and again / And again, and again, and again?” The music exclaims alongside her voice, as every “again” coincides with a sharp rimshot of the drum. Mitski confronts the person whom she’s “been blossoming alone over,” for whom her heart breaks, asking for another chance. Of course, that opportunity does not come — the last “again” is delivered in a sustained note, fading out, ending just before the last second of the track. Her infatuation remains one-sided. Mitski’s repetition captures the nature of desire: it persists despite every attempt to change what results in vain.
Repetition also amplifies emotions in Be the Cowboy. Unlike the previously explored lyrics, where Mitski pleads to subjects that provide no resolution, the repetition here reads more like internal dialogue. Mitski is expressing the gravity of her emotions, singing about longing and loneliness to herself. Lyrics are not chasing after an answer — they erupt because they are impossible to contain. The opening track, “Geyser,” begins with Mitski’s distorted vocals and minimal instrumentation. As the song progresses, the music swells with rising tension until everything swings into full force. The drum crashes in, the electric guitar surges, and Mitski belts “I'm a geyser, feel it bubbling from below / Hear it call, hear it call, hear it call to me.” Like a geyser, this calling is an overwhelming force, exploding with heightened emotional intensity. As her voice transitions from opaque to raw and unrestrained, Mitski becomes completely defenseless as she confronts the extreme feelings over and over. Beneath these repeated, powerful eruptions, she declares surrender. In this way, repetition becomes the very structure through which emotions accumulate and overpower.
In addition to expressing rumination and amplifying emotions, repetition in Be the Cowboy also contributes to the album’s soundscape. Specifically, Mitski often pushes repetition to the point where the literal meanings of the lyrics become secondary to their sonic qualities. Since the sounds of music communicate emotions vividly in ways beyond the ability of words and most other forms of art, this allows the album to develop its mood in an alternative way. The song “Blue Light” opens with heavy guitar and percussion that first begin withdrawing at the lyricless first chorus, which contains only vocalizations of soft, breathy “do-do-do.” By the second chorus, the instrumentation is stripped to only sustained instrumental tones as she parallels the vocalization with the repeated phrase, “Are you that blue light?” Her isolated, reverbed voice becomes the central instrument. A similar effect occurs in “Washing Machine Heart,” in which Mitski merges musical notes into her lyrics. The chorus begins with Mitski singing in solfège, “do mi ti,” followed by the question, “why not me?” These two three-syllable phrases parallel one another, especially because “ti” and “me” rhyme and are both sung in long, sustained notes. This mirroring reduces the emphasis on the denotation of Mitski’s questioning, focusing instead on connotation and sonic quality. As Mitski continuously repeats “do mi ti why not me?” along the equally circular synth beat, her voice comes from the heart, incoherent and almost animalistic, an expression that’s impossible to be contained by language.
The transformation between language and pure emotion is perhaps most apparent in the song “Nobody,” where the title was sung 38 times throughout the 3-minute and 13-second track. When Mitski repeats “nobody” in the first chorus, her tone is reminiscent of acceptance as her voice rests peacefully against the upbeat instrumentals. In the second chorus, the calmness cracks. The production is stripped back, and she delivers her words with an undertone of reserved pain. At the climax of the track, the bass guitar returns, and the quiet loneliness opens fully, Mitski’s voice loud, passionate, and urgent. With the simplicity in repeated lyricism, the word “nobody” forgoes its linguistic definition, instead allowing other qualities – tone, volume, and pitch – to carry the meaning. The sound itself becomes the vehicle for emotional amplification. By the end of the song, Mitski’s voice becomes layered and murky, stripped of much background instrumentation. Every syllable of “no-bo-dy” is spaced out and emphasized, and the word becomes deconstructed into a sequence of musical notes. Mirroring the persistence of unresolved loneliness, Mitski never finishes uttering the final word, the track cutting off mid-syllable with “no-”
Across Be the Cowboy, Mitski elevates repetition from a conventional pop cliché to a narrative device that mirrors cycles of obsession, intensifies emotional outbursts, and creates unique sonic patterns. At times, it traps listeners in inescapable loops of rumination; in other instances, moments of passion become so intense that they are indescribable through language. Mitski demonstrates that deep-cutting lines do not need to be complex — simple fragments, combined with purposeful instrumental composition and lyrical structure, can be just as powerful.