Mia June - Don't Forget Your Bags

“Like many writers, I am mostly inspired by love–the formation and deterioration of it, and the process of discovering who I am through relationships, romantic or otherwise,” says Mia June, the 19-year-old singer/songwriter behind 2023’s Don’t Forget Your Bags. Her songs reach into the unconscious with this recurring theme: how the people we love come with us across the bridge between adolescence and adulthood–that precarious, tender, easy-to-bruise time of launch or perceived failure, when we are judged so often and harshly–shaping us by showing us who we are and who we are not. Don’t Forget Your Bags is a symbol or a pun; the “bags” of the title are, of course, June’s baggage–the experiences that have created her. “Don’t forget your bags” is a thing one might say to oneself or one’s allies, in the vein of “Don’t forget who you are.” June’s baggage, scars, dreams, and memories are precious treasure; losing them would be like losing a map to one’s heart. These bags–and, by extension, J