“The Only Heartbreaker” by Mitski

"The Only Heartbreaker" was the second single from Laurel Hell, Mitski's sixth album, arriving in November 2021, and it broke a rule she'd kept her whole career: it's the first song she ever wrote with somebody else. She had been wrestling with it through draft after draft until a single day of sessions with Dan Wilson in Los Angeles finally cracked the puzzle. Patrick Hyland produced it for Dead Oceans, and it wears a bright synth-pop sheen.

Under the gloss sits something heavier: a song about being the one who always gets it wrong in a relationship, the designated villain, with a sadder thought lurking beneath, that the mistakes might pile up only because she's the one still making an effort. It became her first single to hit number one on any chart, topping the US AAA list.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.