Mitski’s new album “Be the Cowboy” was inspired by several movies including The Piano Teacher and Gone Girl. Check out these seven movies we thought of while listening to the new album.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Mitski talked about several of her influences for her new album, “Be the Cowboy.” Among the things she listed, Mitski named several movies including The Piano Teacher, Gone Girl, Psycho, and the soundtrack from David Lynch’s Dune.

This is a fascinating group of movies that I only discovered after I had already started a small list of movies I thought of while listening to the album. During my first few listens, I was struck by the strong imagery that each song evoked in my mind. The more I listened, the more frequently I was connecting certain lyrics to my favorite movies.

After learning about the influence of film on the album, I was tempted to do a deep dive on them. I ultimately decided against that as it seemed unfair and not worth the risk of misinterpreting Mitski’s own relationship with those influences.

Instead, I thought it best to share a list of movies that “Be the Cowboy” inspired me to think about as a sort of exercise in how art operates as a renewable resource, constantly inspiring, influencing, and reminding us of other works. Check out my list below!

‘Blue Valentine’ (2010)

There’s a moment in the final minutes of Blue Valentine, Derek Cianfrance’s 2010 film that follows the beginning and end of one couple’s relationship, where Dean (Ryan Gosling) pleads with his wife Cindy (Michelle Williams) not to leave him. With tears in his eyes, he says: “Tell me what to do. Tell me how I should be. Just tell me, I’ll do it.”

It’s a heartbreaking moment that conveys the desperation and fear Dean has of losing Cindy and the extent to which he is willing to go to keep her. This moment struck me as a parallel to “Geyser,” the lead track on Mitski’s new album. The lyrics in her song bleed with the same kind of profound yearning on display in Blue Valentine: “But I will be the one you need / The way I can’t be without you / I will be the one you need / I just can’t be without you.”

This idea of needing someone, needing someone so badly that you cannot be without them is…overwhelming; that feeling is key to “Geyser” — a song that is the musical equivalent of an explosion of energy, meant to match the emotional ferocity contained within the singer’s voice. It seems fitting that Blue Valentine ends, only minutes after Dean’s pleading, with fireworks.

‘My Best Friend’s Wedding’ (1997)

I’ll start by issuing a spoiler alert for those who have yet to give themselves the gift of watching My Best Friend’s Wedding — the 1997 rom com about a woman who tries to break up her best friend’s wedding after she realizes she’s in love with him.

In the final act of the movie, Julianne (played by Julia Roberts) hijacks a delivery truck to chase after her best friend, Michael, who is busy chasing after his fiancée, Kimmy, who believes Michael doesn’t love her anymore. The shot of Julia Roberts furiously driving a delivery truck through the city of Philadelphia while on the phone with her gay best friend George is one of the defining moments of the movie; it encapsulates, with notable melodrama and hysteria, the feeling of chasing after someone that doesn’t love you. Exasperated, George says to Julianne, “Michael’s chasing Kimmy. You’re chasing Michael. Who’s chasing you? Nobody. There’s your answer. You’re not the one.”

This particular situation, with someone chasing after their best friend even though their best friend loves someone else, reminds me so much of Mitski’s “Why Didn’t You Stop Me?” In the opening verse, she sings, “Why won’t you chase after me? / You know me better than I do / So why didn’t you stop me?” It’s almost as if this song could be the one Julianne sings in the car chasing Michael; he knows her so well and yet he won’t chase after her. He knows her so well, so why didn’t he stop her from chasing him? What makes My Best Friend’s Wedding so good is that it doesn’t shy away from a sad ending — here, the girl does not get the boy she loves and that feeling of longing, of wanting to be chased, hangs over her even as the film fades to black.

‘Moonlight’ (2016)

I know for a fact that I’m not crazy when it comes to this connection because my friend thought the same thing. When I first heard Mitski’s “Old Friend,” I immediately thought that it could have been written specifically for Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight. The song matches, almost beat for beat, the third act of the best picture winner.

Moonlight follows Chiron, a young black kid living in Miami, struggling with his volatile mother, his path in the world, and his own identity – including his sexuality. The film is split into three parts, allowing us to follow Chiron from childhood to adulthood. In the final act of the film, Chiron is an adult and we see him drive to visit an old friend named Kevin, the boy Chiron had a sexually intimate experience with as a teen — an experience he has never spoken about with anyone.

In “Old Friend,” the second verse speaks to Chiron’s experience with uncanny precision: “I haven’t told anyone / Just like we promised / Have you?” The next two lines speak to Chiron’s feelings as he drive’s through Kevin’s hometown on his way to see him: “Every time I drive through the city where you’re from / I squeeze a little.”

And then the final chorus:

If you’ve seen Moonlight, you don’t need me to spell it out for you, but this chorus is like listening to an echo of the film. Chiron visits Kevin at the diner where he works, Kevin cooks him a special plate, and they talk about nothing. For a few minutes, they’re just old friends Both the song and the film are sublime portraits of that complicated feeling of loss, nostalgia, and comfort.

‘Doctor Zhivago’ (1965)

OK so, you probably don’t share my enthusiasm for David Lean’s 1965 epic Doctor Zhivago which I’ll forgive you for, but only if you promise to give it a shot. Adapted from Russian novelist Boris Pasternak’s book of the same name (bear with me here), Doctor Zhivago is an epic drama and romance that crosses decades full of socio-political upheaval and cultural revolutions. At the center of it all is the romance between Yuri and Lara.

What’s makes Doctor Zhivago such an incredible story is the way it intertwines Yuri and Lara’s romance with the socio-political changes in their country – it’s poetic, almost like a song. May I suggest Mitski’s “A Pearl”? This is a song with the power to surprise you. It is perhaps one of the best examples of Mitski’s unique talent for crafting songs that capture so well both feeling and lived experience. The chorus goes like this:

The concept of love and war being interwoven or conflated as one is such an integral thematic component of Doctor Zhivago. To take it one step further, the idea of war leaving something behind in us — like a pearl — that alters our perceptions and experiences is no different than what we see happen to Lara and Yuri. Mitski may not have intended to write a song for a fictional Russian romance, but she absolutely did.

‘Inside Llewyn Davis’ (2013)

In the very first verse of Mitski’s “Remember My Name,” she sings, “I gave too much of my heart tonight / Can you come to where I’m staying and make some extra love? / That I can save till tomorrow’s show.” It’s a performer singing about giving too much of herself away in her performances and needing a certain someone to help her get it back.

This is reminiscent of Inside Llewyn Davis, in which a struggling performer pours himself into his art despite his increasingly dire circumstances. After the death of his singing partner, Llewyn Davis struggles to even put a roof over his head in spite of his talent. The idea of losing oneself in the music runs through both Inside Llewyn Davis and Mitski’s “Remember My Name.”

Moreover, the final chorus articulates the need for something bigger, something more which is the same itch that Llewyn Davis tries so desperately to scratch throughout the movie:

‘Call Me by Your Name’ (2017)

I should start by admitting that I’ve not stopped thinking about Call Me by Your Name since I saw it last year, but Mitski’s song Pink in the Night works as a sublime ode to Elio’s emotional journey in that movie. On his summer vacation, Elio (Timothee Chalamet) falls in love with an American student studying under Elio’s father. The film is a beautifully composed study in desire and love that aligns perfectly with Mitski’s “Pink in the Night.”

The lyrics, “I glow pink in the night in my room / I’ve been blossoming alone over you / And I hear my heart breaking tonight” sound like they were written by Elio himself, who is shown sitting up late into the night several times as he waits impatiently for Oliver to come home.

Then, the next lines: “It’s like a summer shower / With every drop of rain singing / ‘I love you, I love you, I love you.'” These two lines describe the setting of Call Me by Your Name with accuracy; capturing the sun and rain soaked Italian countryside that is, itself, drenched with passion and desire.

In the final verse, lines like “I could stare at your back all day” and “I know I’ve kissed you before, but / I didn’t do it right,” feel as if they’ve been sung in response to watching specific scenes in Call Me by Your Name. Whatever the narrative connections may be, there’s no use denying the sheer magic and depth of feeling that are shared between Mitski’s “Pink in the Night” and the love story in Call Me by Your Name.

‘Before Midnight’ (2014)

The last track on “Be the Cowboy” is a somber slow dance, played on a piano that just bleeds with melancholy. It’s the song of two lovers who have been together for a long time (“It’s funny how you always remember / And we’ve both done it all a hundred times before”).

The title of the song is mentioned in the chorus when she sings, “We’re just two slow dancers / last ones out.” evoking an image of two people, holding one another, swaying back and forth on an empty dance floor. This image brought two movies to mind. The first one is more obvious: Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years, a movie that literally ends on a shot of a married couple in the middle of a dance floor. Despite how well it fits, it didn’t feel right; there’s such a warmth and longing in Mitski’s song that doesn’t necessary come through in Haigh’s film.

Then I thought of Richard Linklater’s movie Before Midnight. Before Midnight, the capstone of Linklater’s “Before Trilogy” starring Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy that follows lovers romance across nearly 20 years. In Before Midnight, decade old frustrations, unspoken feelings, and nostalgia and regrets surface over the course of one day. It’s the first time the audience have seen star-crossed lovers Jesse and Celine falling out of love instead of into it.

If life is a dance floor, then Jesse and Celine are beautifully choreographed partners that are struggling against the forces of time and change. The final verse of Mitski’s song speaks to this feeling: :And the ground has been slowly pulling us back down / You see it on both our skin / We get a few years and then it wants us back.”

The first two installments in the Before Trilogy — Before Sunrise and Before Sunset – are filled with a youthful optimism, a reckless abandon, and a disregard for what may come. Before Midnight is diametrically opposed to those ideas; it’s a film about what comes after, about all the things that add up over time.

At 27, Mitski captured that very essence in a simple, perfect four minute song.