Mitski must feel a bit like Alice in Wonderland over the course of her new music video for “Nobody,” the second single off her forthcoming album Be The Cowboy. As she sings into her hairbrush, walks among human cardboard cut-outs with their faces scratched off, tracks down an artist for answers, she’s fallen down a rabbit hole, and no matter what she tries, she can’t get back out of it. It’s both a surrealist whirlwind and a meditation on what it feels like to go through a bad slump. “My god, I’m so lonely,” Mitski sings in the first line, “So I open a window/ To hear sounds of people/ To hear sounds of people.” Opening the window should help when the house represents your own depression—but “Nobody” asks the question, “What if it doesn’t?”
Mitski wakes up one day and her house is alive. First, her bed splits in two and half zips away from her, sheets and all. Then, the wall grows a petulant arm, one that only calms down when she walks up to it and decides to hold its hand. A package arrives and turns out to be a portrait of her, just missing the face, and after Mitski hangs it, two arms grow out of the wall begin to tear it apart. Is this a dream? Does the house have a mind of its own? Or is it her own impending sense of doom, reflected back at her?
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