A Transgender Analysis of "Abbey" by Mitski

  My analysis of “Abbey” from the album Lush by the singer-songwriter Mitski only works through the lens of my personal experience as a transgender person. I do not mean to say that it is the only way or the correct way to interpret this song, just how I interpret it. For convenience sake, I have put the lyrics to “Abbey” below my analysis, but I claim no ownership to them, only the writing in the essay and this preface is mine.

  For me, “Abbey” has always been about being transgender. About knowing that you aren’t quite right in your skin, but not being sure of what you are, and the struggle once you do know. 

This is present in the first verse, one about being hungry–a soul deep, mental, emotional hunger–but not knowing what you need to satiate that hunger. That verse makes me think of the days before I really knew what it meant to be anything but cisgender, before I knew there were any other options, even. Hungry and wanting for something, anything, to fill that ache. An ache too biting to be an old friend, but there since birth, since childhood, since I was old enough to point to it and know it made me different–made me something different. 

  The second verse, then, is about the desperate fight once you understand the “something” you are to make it to eighteen. To move out of your parents house, to change your name, to hide away from a home marred by years of yearning of resentment, to hide away from yourself. You have been waiting for years and you will have to wait for years more. The time before the waiting was the time of hunger and doubt. 

  The only time besides those two is found in the chorus: a time of dreaming. The dream referenced in the chorus is transition. Only found when you are sleeping because it is not real, not yet. It is what you dream of, the person you know is trapped in you, begging to be set free. To be seen and known and accepted by the world.

  “Abbey” is about pre-transition and the dream of your body matching your identity. It is one of the best descriptions of the trans experience I’ve ever heard.

[VERSE 1]

I am hungry

I have been hungry

I was born hungry

What do I need?

I am something

I have been something

I was born something

What could I be?

[CHORUS]

There is a light that I can see

But only, it seems, when there's darkness in me

There is a dream that I sometimes see

That only appears in the dark of sleep

[VERSE 2]

I am waiting

I have been waiting

I was born waiting

I was born waiting for that something

Just one something

I was born something

I was born

[CHORUS]

There is a light, I feel it in me

But only, it seems, when the dark surrounds me

There is a dream and it sleeps in me

Keeps me awake in the night

Crying, "Set me free"

And I wake every night

Crying, "Set me free"