Be the Cowboy is made up of fourteen short songs, most of them under three minutes, in which Mitski speaks through characters rather than singing directly about herself. She picked up the piano again, with synthesizers, horns, and guitar around it, working once more with producer Patrick Hyland. The fifth studio album originally appeared in August 2018 on Dead Oceans. 'Nobody' became its best known song, a disco beat under a lyric about loneliness. Vulture placed the album at number 1 in its 2018 year-end list.

This edition is an LP.