When someone can absolutely hold your attention without necessarily doing much of anything, that person is a star. It's the difference between an actor and a movie star, two overlapping but distinct skill-sets, and it also applies to music. By that measure, Mitski is a total star. Her stage performances are often elaborate and fascinatingly designed, but she doesn't need to do all that. She can stand stock-still while singing and still command a room. Last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, she proved it once again.
Mitski released her excellent album Nothing’s About To Happen To Me earlier this year, and she's already been on Colbert to perform "I'll Change For You." (In recent months, the landscape for live music on late-night TV has been utterly decimated, but Mitski is in the rare tier where she can still hit multiple late-night shows in the same album cycle.) On last night's Kimmel, Mitski performed "If I Leave," an album track about knowing that you're the half of a relationship that would immediately cease to be functional if the relationship were to end. She made a meal out of that song.
In her performance, Mitski wore a giant leopard-print coat and what looked like 15 pounds of costume jewelry. She stood motionless while singing this big, dramatic song, and she sold it with nothing but her voice and her facial expressions. Once it got loud, the show added some scratchy-lens effects, but it really didn't need to do that. This is something to see. Watch it below.
Nothing's About To Happen To Me is out now on Dead Oceans.
