Welcome to The New York Times Podcast, your retired from business, new career

in sad of music news and criticism. I am your host, John Caramonica.

Well, I waited through my list of friends I found. I had no one to tell.

Of this overwhelming clear feeling.

You're listening to Mitzky. Mitzky's peppy song should have been me. It's from the new

album called Laurel Hell. Somehow we've never done a Mitzky podcast. We've never done a

Mitzky episode. It's weird. We're fixing that today. We're going to talk about Laurel Hell.

We're going to talk about the cult of Mitzky, the memes of Mitzky. We're going to talk about

Mitzky's overall uncertainty and reluctance about engaging with all of those things. Kat

Zhang from Pitchfork is going to check in with us, Kat reviewed Laurel Hell and then Alex

Zhang from New York Magazine and Vulture, who interviewed Mitzky in November. He's going

to call in to talk about that experience. But really, we're just going to take a big picture

look at the arc of all that Mitzky has done dating back to the mid 2010s, to the

Make Out Creek era and the Puberty II era. We're going to try to understand this very signature

unusual star who has a very unconventional relationship with Stardom. Let's start off

joining us now. It's Kat Zhang from Pitchfork. Kat, welcome. Hi, thanks for having me.

Kat is Assistant Editor Pitchfork also on the TikTok beat, which we may get to, but obviously

we're here to talk about Laurel Hell. Kat reviewed Laurel Hell, not a best new music. Just

pointing that out, throwing that out there. Kat, talk to me a little bit about Laurel Hell

kind of in the context of Mitzky's disappearance, quote, unquote, and the last album to be the

cowboy, like how, like how to disstrike you, the pivots that are happening here.

Where to start? In 2019, Mitzky does a show in New York at the summer stage in which she

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