“A Rollercoaster of the 21st Century Experience” - Mitski’s “Nothing’s About to Happen to Me”
Album Review ★ Elsa Commander ★ @elsa.com.photos★ 2 Minutes
Mitski returns with her fourth album, ‘Nothing’s About To Happen To Me’, a slightly different style again from her earlier albums, heavy and chaotic in some places, heartfelt and folk-like in others. Complete with gentle guitars and strings, her typical conversational lyrics come forward with a twist of rich honesty in this 11 track orchestral masterpiece.
Mitski 2026 via Lexie Alley (left) Nothing’s About to Happen to Me cover art (right) artists unknownShe takes on a narrative style in her lyricism in many of these songs, taking her blunt, truthful writing style to a new level. Mitski’s profound lyrics are impactful from the very first track, ‘In A Lake’, where she laments among violins and soft layers of guitar: ‘When they think you’re bad, people act worse.’
In the second track, ‘Where’s My Phone?’ the panicked and unrelenting steadiness of the driven guitar mimics the shaky addiction to small dopamine hits that many of us know well. The track builds with buzzing intensity towards the end, distorted vocalisation becoming lost within the cacophony of driven guitars and strings.
In ‘Cats’, the album takes a turn yet again, becoming a heartfelt, slow, break-up story. Borderline psychedelic whirs then burst in from the guitars in ‘If I Leave’, placed heavily in the centre of Mitski’s train-of-thought style revelations.
‘Dead Women’ stands as the only track on the album marked as ‘explicit’, driving a feminist anthem with the final punch of the lyric ‘She gave her life / so we could f**k her as we please.’ The violence and destructive storytelling is captured well by Mitski’s nearly monotonous, droning melody, laid among simple, haunting strings. The album then is turned on its head once more, a repetitive, calming drum beat in ‘Instead of Here’, follows on into the self-repressive ‘I’ll Change for You’.
The eighth song, ‘Rules’, maybe takes the place as the most experimental track of the album, with the majority of the lyrics as numbers climbing and repeating throughout the song, encasing Mitski’s powerful vocals and a melodic brass section in a claustrophobic structure of ‘rules’. The next feline-related track, aligning with the album’s cover artwork, is ‘That White Cat’; which tells a story of animalistic ownership and the circular rhythm of nature through life. The drums drive this song, beating war-like under chanting and desperation from Mitski’s vocal chorus.
Mitski 2026 via Lexie Alley‘Charon’s Obol’ rests carefully at the penultimate stage of the album, followed by the album’s final farewell: ‘Lightning’. This last track is whole and strong, deep with Mitski’s iconic guitar builds and open lyrics: ‘I can hear the song of my death / singing for the lightning to come, calling to the thunder’. A solitary guitar riff runs between each verse, bringing together each sound of the final track of the album towards the loudness of its peak.
Stating harsh facts as poetry is a skill the singer/songwriter has honed across her journey, and this album shows that clearly in a unique, outlandish way. Mitski’s new album is really a rollercoaster of 21st century experience, harsh and satirical where appropriate, and yet still remarkably reflective and solemn throughout.
