Mitski Brought Out an Army of Gen Z Fans to Her Artsy Dallas Show

So many things about Mitski (born Mitski Miyawak) seem at odds with each other, but somehow she makes them all work.

Three hours before her Friday night show at The Factory in Deep Ellum, a line of fans stretched out over two blocks down Canton Street all the way to Malcolm X. Then, it turned the corner down another block to the alley, and then turned the corner again and reached almost all the way back to The Factory.

Although Mitski isn’t really active on social media, the tag #Mitski has been used billions of times on TikTok. That’s right, billions with a “B." The median age of her demographic seemed to heavily represent the TikTok generation as well. Like most venues, The Factory gives wrist bands to those of drinking age and marks a black "X" on the wrists of minors. On this night, it really did seem that all the "X"s lived in Texas. But we’re not here to talk about George Straight, and as far as we know it’s not why Mitski now hangs her hat in Tennessee. Maybe the Japanese-born Mitski, who has lived all over the world, chose Nashville because of its reputation for nurturing singer-songwriters, a label she has picked up over the years. She certainly hasn’t undergone a boots and cowboy hat conversion, although her latest album’s title, Laurel Hell, is an Appalachian reference. And while its sound is certainly American, it’s a modern American, a spent-a-lot-of-time-overseas kind of American. When Mitski started with the single "The Only Heartbreaker," the crowd reacted with instant recognition. It has only been out a month, but the singalong made you think that all these teenagers had gathered for a choir rehearsal. At first glance, the inclusion of Japanese girl band Chai as opener seemed like an additional incongruity. On the surface, they appear to be little more than one of those exhaustively choreographed and packaged puberty bands: polite to a fault, and endlessly cheerful.  A deeper dive shows their history as a band to be much more self-started and organic, and the lyrics make you wonder if they are imitating the genre, mocking it or just have a really weird relationship to it.
Both bands were highly conscious of choreography. Mitski’s stage design reflected her interest in film and theater. A single door was placed at center stage, with the band arranged in a semi-circle behind it, and as Mitski stood theatrically alone in the middle of her stage, the door became blatantly symbolic. Symbolic of what, however, is still unclear. Maybe she spent the pandemic listening to St. Vincent’s "Birth in Reverse."
But we will probably find the answer to the mystery of the door posted on TikTok with the #Mitski tag.