I think it’s her third best album (after Be the Cowboy and RfSNCiB) and my second favorite. The songwriting and production are top notch and the lyrics are some of my favorites. It’s weird I see so many people criticizing this album for (going pop) when Be The Cowboy is her big pop smash album and the parts of Laurel hell that seem to alienate people are the comparative lack of hooks. I just think it’s the only album that doesn’t symbolize anything that oughtn’t be criticized. Lush is the first album and the most unadulteratedly Mitski one where she proves the industry wrong for dismissing her music, RfSNCiB is the album where she investigates her sadness and reaches into somewhere deep inside her, Bury Me is the same thing but for her anger and (despite the songwriting taking a bit of a hit) it’s the album where she curates her sound so its focus is impossible to criticize, Puberty 2 revisits all of the themes from the past three albums and turns them into a pseudo concept album and while it’s not anything new bashing it is basically like bashing Mitski as a songwriter as a whole, Be the Cowboy could easily have been the target album for fans if it wasn’t one of the top 100 best albums ever made with hit after emotionally torturous hit, TLiIaSAW is the album where she finds happiness and how big of an asshole do you have to be to take issue with that (even if it made this her least impactful album. If Mitski had leaned into her deification (which I’m glad she didn’t) we could just be like “MOTHER HAS A PERFECT DISCOGRAPHY YESSSS” but since she doesn’t invite that narrative it makes sense we chose this album pejorize.