A Bored Singer Thought of Karen Carpenter and Wrote a Song From 25 Titles
Miist says her songs come from downtime. Missing a singer she never met led to one song with 25 of that singer's song titles in it.
Make Me Smile with Miist · Ep. 46: Let's Get BoredMiist was bored. The singer-songwriter was alone with her feelings a few weeks ago, and her mind drifted to Karen Carpenter, the singer who died in 1983. She loves Carpenter's music, and listening to it makes her miss a woman she never saw or heard in person.
She sat with that missing feeling until it turned into notes and a melody. The result was a song called "Missing You Is All I Can Do."
That is how she says all her songs arrive. If she is too busy, Miist says, "my mind is not relaxed enough to hear the music that I know is in there." Consuming a meal, a show, or a fashion trend is fun but temporary, she argues, while creating something of her own is hers forever, and she points to studies linking boredom to enhanced creativity.
In this case, the creation became a kind of puzzle. She wove old Carpenter titles directly into her new lyrics. "Close to you, every song that you sing was a story," she sings, then threads through "Yesterday Once More," "Superstar," "Top of the World," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "Solitaire," and more.
As she sings it, she invites the listener to count the borrowed phrases. Then she gives the answer: 25. Miist says, "If I was never bored, I would never write songs. And writing songs is what I love most."
Miist likes a saying she could not trace: boredom isn't empty, it's space. She wants to fill that space "with creativity, fantasy, and especially music."
Questions people ask
Who was Karen Carpenter?
Karen Carpenter was half of the Carpenters, the American pop duo she formed with her brother Richard in the late 1960s. Known for her warm contralto voice and drumming, she sang hits like "Close to You," "Top of the World," and "Rainy Days and Mondays" before her death in 1983 at age 32.
Does boredom really make people more creative?
Several psychology experiments suggest that a boring task can precede more creative idea generation, possibly because mind wandering allows broader associations. The effect is modest and depends on the study design, so researchers describe boredom as a prompt to seek novelty rather than a guaranteed creativity switch.
Where can I hear the song?
Miist performs as Miist with two i's and releases original music on streaming platforms and YouTube. "Missing You Is All I Can Do" was written as a tribute built around Carpenter titles, and she presents it as an example of what can emerge from sitting with an emotion instead of scrolling past it.