Your Best American Girl by Japanese-American musician Mitski is, according to Pitchfork, one of the best songs of the last decade. An autobiographical, insightful look into self-acceptance and what it means to actually be American, the indie punk rock song stands out in her discography.
The first two verses grapple with the American ideal and Mitski’s willingness to conform to them for her “all-American boy”. She talks about her desire to submit to her partner and forsaking her identity to simply be his “little spoon”. Her lack of ‘Americanness’ leads her to feeling inferior to him; he is the sun and lives blissfully with the songs of the morning birds, she is ‘not even a star’ or the moon in the night she inhabits. The contrast of night and day highlights the cultural rift between her and her lover. The two are fundamentally different and physically cannot coexist together at the same time. The American ideal will always be impossible for Mitski to reach because a requirement is whiteness, and she is a woman of color. The pre-chorus builds on this incompatibility with her acceptance that she cannot love this person the way they want to be loved, and she explained in an interview “you aren’t what’s best for them, how hard you try.”
The chorus of the song brings about a glorious catharsis for Mitski, aided on by the explosion of music built on the tension in the verses and pre-chorus. In it, she lays bare the truth of the fact that she will never have the acceptance of her lover’s family that she so desperately longs for and even though it has caused her such pain, she is finally ready to accept herself. She can finally see the value of her upbringing, the good and the bad. In the use of the word “finally” when referring to acceptance of her upbringing, it is clear she has struggled with being different to everyone else and with the anxiety and embarrassment often experienced by the children of immigrants or different cultures. She has let go of the need for validation from this alien culture of the ‘all-American’, and found love for herself and her heritage.
