By Liam Jean Pierre
Mitski’s Nothing’s About to Happen to Me yet again delivers that eerie, intimate, and gut-wrenching experience she has come to be known for. It is a visceral eighth album that cuts not with serrated teeth but rather a finer edge. Nothing’s About to Happen to Me serves as a public invitation to the viewing of her emotional dissection. Mitski’s power over romantic delusions in her lyrics accompanied by the album’s eerie feeling production sets a bar for all 11 tracks. With each musical incision she reveals the painfully relatable nature of the human condition.
“Where is My Phone” serves as the album’s lead single. The song begs to be clear of mind from every overwhelming distraction. Some people in the 21st century sit with their phones as pacifiers to soothe and placate their overstimulation. We have put our whole lives into our phones and yet it is ironic how easily we still lose them. This strong leading second track peels back the opening epidermis of her album.
However, “That White Cat” serves as the album’s nucleus. It sings the realisation of the place a person holds in the social ecosystem. It is the idea that a person has in some way an ownership over you, especially when you give yourself to them in the form of a relationship. Some things you give willingly and others you don’t, but it’s a reality of any relationship. We live, work, and exist for others in the eyes of the white cat.
The tracks that cut with the most familiarity and will wrench your gut: “If I Leave”, “Dead Women”, and “I’ll Change for You”.
“If I Leave”, describes the singer being forced to let go of the person who she knows has always been closest to her. The painful realisation that they could easily love another while you won’t be forgiven, seen, or loved quite like they did for you. It is Mitski’s most on-brand song, a delusion and codependence only found on the precipice of a failing relationship. It represents a cliff many have stood at now made to feel less isolating and more sympathetic.
“Dead Women”, on a surface level, focuses on the lack of control she has over the narrative of the end of her relationship. She muses on how it would be better if she died, entirely so that whoever was left could tell her story. This exemplifies how we can lose the ability to defend our story and choices. Cutting under the muscles of the song, we see how the track also serves as wider commentary on how women may become objectified even further after death. Instead of a person, they become a story to tell, twist, and rifle through for personal gain.
“I’ll Change for You” is a song, Mitski herself describes, “about being pathetic”, but it is in that “patheticness” we find the futility of wanting your partner to stay when they clearly left long ago. Mitski, throughout her whole body of work, has given a voice to many people struggling with loneliness, repression, and the desire for intimacy – things each individual may experience, like in the small towns she describes in “In The Lake”, but are judged for. She expresses in her songs moments you never realise are shared experiences, but when you do, you feel significantly worse and infinitely more understood. It sheds light on moments of weakness rather than casting it out in shame.
Nothing’s About to Happen to Me does exactly what it set out to do. It is a dissection of Mitski’s emotional body that acts on each emotion with sympathy rather than judgement. These are songs that are intentionally meant to feel sobering and pathetic, not because those are negative feelings, but because they are feelings that are shared amongst all listeners. A three-year wait for an album that we never expected, but gratefully accepted. Mitski, with this album, may not have reached new heights, but has strengthened her foundation. Let us hope her next project is as dangerous as this was candid.
