The Majestic, Magical, Magnificent Mitski Kicks Off Tour at the Fillmore Miami Beach

Last night at the Fillmore Miami Beach, Mitski delivered one of the most incredible live performances I've ever seen.

The alternative-pop musician has already staked a claim as a great American songwriter with her latest and best album, the Nashville-influenced The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. But her January 26 sold-out tour opener in Miami Beach did not simply manifest the expansive, symphonic country pop record as a spectacular live experience — it solidified her as an iconic onstage presence of generational significance, a star coming into its own, expanding outward, exploding into a long-lasting supernova.

Much of the show's magnificence came down to its stage design, which worked hand in hand with Mitski's own magnetic, larger-than-life stage presence. Minimal, yet with an Old Hollywood sense of glamour that recalled classic studio musicals and midcentury décor, the setup consisted of little more than a single, circular platform in the dead center of the stage, around which the eight-piece backing band would play, along with various ever-changing lighting schemes. Her entrance established the theatricality she would deploy for the rest of the show: From behind a circular curtain hanging above the platform, she wiggled along with the opening tune, "Everyone," making hand motions like a Balinese shadow puppet. The shadow then began to expand, like an Oscar trophy silhouette growing bigger and bigger, looming over the crowd until the curtain finally dropped from the rafters and revealed her. Not even Norma Desmond could dream of such a dramatic entrance.

For the rest of the show, the singer, clad in a simple white button-down and black pants, would remain the center of attention, with choreographed, pantomimelike dances and movements tying in thematically with each song. "I Bet On Losing Dogs," an ironic assessment of hard luck, saw her crawling around on all fours, eventually curling up and playing dead. A medley of "Thursday Girl" and "Geyser," both of which revolve around the gnawing need for validation and satisfaction, ended with her repeatedly slamming against an invisible door, fed up with the search. A stabbing motion toward the crotch in "Working for the Knife" offered an angle of the song as a loose metaphor for patriarchal exploitation. Props and lighting cues were also utilized, including spotlights that became a night sky for the searching, climactic "Star."
It can feel a bit silly at times, verging on overearnest, theater kid goofiness on songs like "Happy." But the songwriting, full of meditations on loneliness, romantic desperation, and the particular emptiness that subsumes American life, helps to sell it. Combined with the sparse yet warm stage design and the excellent musicianship of the backing band, which applied the high-gloss country-pop sound of The Land to newer arrangements of older tracks such as "Fireworks," it all added up to an extraordinary, totalizing show whose closest analog is — and I do not make this comparison lightly — Talking Heads' legendary Stop Making Sense, as well as frontman David Byrne's recent theatrical shows (perhaps his influence rubbed off on her after their work on Everything Everywhere All at Once).

One showstopping moment rose above all the others, and of course it came during the gorgeous slide-guitar "My Love Mine All Mine." The song became Mitski's first Billboard chart hit last year, and she gives it all the pomp and circumstance worthy of the swooning track. As the music played, a mobile of bronze metal shards lowered from a circular lighting rig above the stage, shimmering in a cone-shaped light cast from above like a massive Christmas tree. It was breathtaking, and the crowd, which had been at a fever pitch all night, reacting to every song with screams of delight, positively erupted as the display climaxed. Only "Nobody," another hit from Be the Cowboy, and a bit of stage banter conducted in Spanish rivaled it in crowd reaction.
And now, of course, we must talk about the crowd, which was, for the most part, children. TikTok teens, obsessive in their devotion, have overwhelmed Mitski's core fandom and brought her to a new level of fame: "My Love" charted on Billboard's TikTok chart long before crossing over to the Hot 100. It can be a little jarring for longtime fans to see such a great artist with a career going back ten years relegated to the status of, in the oblivious words of one commenter, "the singer behind a lot of TikTok audios (but very talented)." The show was filled with constant high-pitched screams of recognition for every favorite song (even the Puberty 2 deep cuts, impressively), repetitive calls of "I love you!" during every between-songs lull, and a general lack of etiquette from audience members — many of whom were, in fairness, likely attending their first show ever. I also got the sense that the opening act was chosen with them in mind: Tamino, a singer-songwriter and skilled guitarist with model good looks and a voice like Thom Yorke, mostly fell flat for me.

For older fans, the "Mitskimania" crowd experience can get annoying very quickly. And yet, such wild, joyfully hysterical reactions also prove what a star Mitski is about to become. To paraphrase "Nobody," I've seen her play venues big and small and big and small again, and now, everybody wants her. Every one of those kids who sold out the Fillmore saw themselves reflected in Mitski's music and its bittersweet melancholy and melodrama. Those younger fans all came away from the experience as changed and deep in rapture as I was — possibly even more so.

Setlist
- "Everyone"
- "Buffalo Replaced"
- "Working for the Knife"
- "The Frost"
- "The Deal"
- "Valentine, TX"
- "I Bet On Losing Dogs"
- "Thursday Girl"
- "Geyser"
- "I Love Me After You"
- "First Love / Late Spring"
- "Star"
- "Heaven"
- "I Don't Like My Mind"
- "Happy"
- "My Love Mine All Mine"
- "Last Words of a Shooting Star"
- "Pink in the Night"
- "I'm Your Man"
- "I Don't Smoke"
- "Bug Like an Angel"
- "Love Me More"
- "Fireworks"
- "Nobody"
- "Washing Machine Heart"