‘Nothing’s About to Happen to Me’ is Mitski’s Most Ambitious Album Yet
After an unexpected break into the mainstream, Mitski returns with her strangest record thus far. Her 2023 hit “My Love Mine All Mine” has amassed almost two billion streams on Spotify alone, and in turn, Mitski has leaned into the theatrical, responding with some of her strongest creative direction. She’s released three music videos for the record – two for the album’s singles and one for its fourth track, “If I Leave” – all visually stunning, disconcerting and absurd. In Nothing’s About to Happen to Me, Mitski has masterfully created a haunting world: the Tansy House is a mausoleum, isolated and gothic even in its kitschy maximalism.
Nothing’s About to Happen to Me is a beautiful expansion of the themes and sounds of Bury Me At Makeout Creek and The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. Fuzzy, distorted guitar colors the record; memory and possession are two concepts intricately weaved into each track; and yet, it feels new – Mitski’s eighth album is an echo of her past art, but not an imitation.
“In a Lake” is quintessentially Mitski with its arresting analogy. Its speaker gut-wrenchingly compares never getting over a first love to living in a small town that only sells one brand of soap – anywhere you go, something will remind you of them; everywhere feels like a museum of your lost love. “In a Lake” features traces of country and folk, with banjos that are gorgeously reflective of the song’s small-town subject matter.
“If I Leave” is the standout of the record, and is sure to be a fan favorite with its similarities to Bury Me at Makeout Creek. Track four is Mitski at her most pathetic – with the obvious exception of “I’ll Change for You” – its simple lyrics exuding desperation in waves. With “If I leave, somebody else will find you / But nobody else could see me / Quite as clearly as you,” Mitski evokes the same poignancy as “Francis Forever” (“I don’t think I could stand to be / Where you don’t see me”), cutthroat in her frankness.
“I’ll Change for You” epitomizes the idea that Nothing’s About to Happen to Me is an evolution – this isn’t new ideological ground for Mitski, but crystalline flutes and dreamlike strings make it unlike any other song in her discography. The speaker feels reverent, even in the destruction of her own identity and self-esteem, desperate to fall on her sword for the person she loves simply because she can’t afford to lose them; it’s agonizingly universal.
Privacy and losing control of your own narrative are themes also featured prominently on the album. The weight of social stigmas and judgment weigh heavily on the speaker in “In a Lake” as she warns listeners of the dangers of a small town: “I’ve made too many mistakes / For where you gotta write your book early / Or it gets written up in your place”; in “That White Cat,” the speaker’s house is taken over by a street cat, and she relents with little fight: “It's supposed to be my house But I guess, according to cats, now it's his house.”
Track five, “Dead Women,” follows a similar line of thought, discussing the lack of agency women have over their own stories and the code of conduct they’re expected to adhere to without complaint: “Ransack the house for what you'll auction, what you'll keep / Then embalm me up 'cause you're hosting the viewing / Saying, "She gave her life so we could have her in our dreams" / "She gave her life so we could fuck her as we please."” Women, Mitski so eloquently articulates, are valued not for who they are but what they can represent – women are regarded as ideas instead of people, and expected to mindlessly comply with this character assassination.
Though a disturbingly universal sentiment, one can’t help but think of “Dead Women” in the context of the “sad girl” label that has been forced upon Mitski by the general public. In an interview with Crack Magazine ahead of the release of her previous album, Mitski pushed back against the title, calling out its reductive nature. The label of “sad girl music,” stripping her art of any nuance and oversimplifying its meaning, embodies the same sentiments expressed in “Dead Women” – but because Mitski refuses to lie down and accept this reduction, it becomes a violent struggle for autonomy: “But since I'm alive, you'll have to break in as I sleep / When you find my love beside me / Choke him dead for havin' me.”
This image of breaking into the speaker’s house shows up, too, in “Where’s My Phone?” The single’s music video is arguably one of her most interesting, with milkmen, gothic choirs, and nosy neighbors breaking into the Tansy House to try and abduct the house’s newest tenant. Mitski frantically tries to protect the younger girl from these intruders– she sucks the blood from the girl’s finger after she’s poisoned by the milkman, mercilessly assaults the invaders, and crawls on her hands and knees to save her from being carried away by the choir; all the while, an older woman watches, passive. In the end, she’s unsuccessful.
One interpretation is that Mitski is trying to shield her younger self from trauma, while an older self has already accepted that, although painful, their suffering is unalterable – in the larger context of the album, though, Mitski and the older woman seem to be past tenants of the Tansy House trying to protect the girl from their own fates. The older and younger women are listed in the cast as “sister” and “aunty,” suggesting that they are not versions of Mitski but other tenants she feels a deep kinship with.
The penultimate track, “Charon’s Obol,” provides further context for this story, with the newest tenant of the Tansy House befriending the past tenants’ dogs. The speaker, unlike the young girl in “Where’s My Phone?,” has ended the curse of death placed on the women of the Tansy House. By befriending and feeding the dogs, this new tenant acts as Charon’s Obol for the women, a token to pay for their spirits to pass on in peace; in healing with the hounds, she honors their memory and changes the narrative of taking up the mantle of the Tansy House. With bluesy guitar and a backing choir reminiscent of barking dogs, Mitski crafts a beautiful ending to the Tansy House saga.
She fittingly concludes Nothing’s About to Happen to Me with a rebirth after escaping the pattern. “Lightning” is cathartic, sitting in a hopeful yet resigned expectation of death. The album ends with an ironic reflection of its title: Mitski sits in anticipation, believing she’s on the cusp of something – something is about to happen to her.
