By Michelle Hyun Kim, a Third Bridge Creative contributor

After years of building a cult following for her orchestral and punkish anthems of scalding emotion, Mitski found her mainstream breakthrough this October with the unlikely hit “My Love Mine All Mine,” her first song to enter the Billboard Hot 100. The track’s ascent was fueled by its popularity on TikTok, where the singer-songwriter had seen an influx of new fans after her songs “Nobody” and “Strawberry Blond” went viral during the pandemic. 

While those earlier songs captured feelings of alienation and longing that seemed to tap into a manic, chronically online pathos, “My Love Mine All Mine” is different. Fitting into the gothic Americana stylings of Mitski’s seventh studio album, The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We, the sparse ballad features pedal-steel guitar and gentle piano while Mitski hauntingly sings of love’s cosmic, eternal nature. It was straightforward enough to invite covers from musicians across generations and instruments, yet romantic enough to soundtrack users’ layman love stories. Following its September 15 release, the song was used in over 300k TikToks and 13k Instagram Reels by early October.

The short-form popularity of “My Love Mine All Mine” translated to 6.5 million total official U.S. streams, resulting in its entry at No. 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 by October, where it later peaked at No. 49. Months later, the hype has not died down. Now, “My Love Mine All Mine” boasts 2.1 million TikTok posts and 560 million Spotify streams, making it Mitski’s second-most streamed track on the platform. The song has also maintained a spot on Spotify’s Global Top 50 chart since October 1, and has rarely dropped out of the top 10 since November. It’s brought fans to engage with her entire catalog, too: she's gained 27.3 million new Spotify monthly listeners (bringing her to 38.7 million) from all over the world, with the bulk of them hailing from the United States and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia), followed in number by Poland, the U.K., Australia, and Brazil. She’s currently on a sold-out tour of seated theaters that will traverse North America, the UK, and Europe through September. 

This career breakthrough arrives at a time when Mitski, who has long written and talked about the difficulties of constantly being in the public eye, is barely promoting herself — leading to even more popularity. “Every day, all the time, is exploitation,” she said of working in the music industry in a 2022 Vulture profile. “You can’t be a human being. You have to be a product that’s being bought and sold and consumed, and you have to perceive yourself that way in order to function.” After she quit social media in 2019 and stopped doing as many interviews, her lack of an online presence only emboldened fans to engage with her music to a more ferocious degree. Fans on TikTok began calling her “mother mitski,” obsessively discussing old interview clips and tweets that had since been deleted. She asked fans not to record as much at shows, which caused some online ire, yet she continued to sell out dates behind her 2022 urgent synth-pop album Laurel Hell. With the project, she reached a career peak of No. 5 on the Billboard 200, her Spotify monthly listenership then hovering around the 10 million mark. 

With its simple lyrics that express a sense of ease and standard pop song structure, “My Love Mine All Mine” emerged as an outlier on The Land is Inhospitable, whose other songs are more winding and complex. It also serves as a turning point in Mitski’s typically thorny discography. She emerged as a force in experimental orchestral pop in the early 2010s with her first two albums, which were both made as student projects at SUNY Purchase. Her 2014 album Bury Me at Makeout Creek signaled a turn to a more punkish indie rock sound, leading to her signing to Dead Oceans for the critically acclaimed 2016 record Puberty 2. She expanded into pop for 2018’s Be the Cowboy and Laurel Hell, leading to the fan devotion she commands today.

Mitski’s music has long carried an introspective anguish that listeners love, as she meditates on feelings of alienation and rootlessness after a childhood of constantly moving around. “My Love Mine All Mine” seems to signal an emotional shift in the artist, who had finally discovered an anchor within herself.  “Everything was temporary, and nothing felt like it was mine,” Mitski said of writing the song to Genius. “And then I realized, ‘Oh I have this thing in me that is actually fully mine,’ and there’s something so wonderful and gleeful about that realization [..] As long as I hold onto my love, no one can take it from me.”

The languid folk and country production of The Land Is Inhospitable also comes across more grounded and self-trusting than Mitski's past albums. Perhaps it came from the fact she’s settled down in Nashville now, or that she’s forged a more healthy relationship with her art and the creative process. “This is the first record where I absolutely stopped caring what people think,” she told Genius. “Ironically, maybe that’s what people are the most attracted to.” While the track’s popularity could be explained by its incorporation of Americana and country sounds, which had a streaming boom in the U.S. in 2013, its universal sentiment is likely why it connected with so many global fans. 

The song was immediately noticed by a younger generation of singer-songwriters, who tapped into their online audiences, who also like Mitski. The day after The Land Is Inhospitable’s release, rising jazz star Laufey posted a TikTok that now has 4.4 million views of her listening to “My Love Mine All Mine” with the caption, “nobody talk to me mother mitski just dropped and its perfect.” The same day, Clairo posted an Instagram cover of the song on guitar, writing, “attempting to learn one of the most beautiful songs i’ve heard in a while.” It’s a testament to Mitski’s influence across today’s music landscape, heard in the likes of Olivia Rodrigo, Phoebe Bridgers, and Japanese Breakfast, since fans of those younger artists are more likely to connect with her. 

While these clips weren’t necessarily a singular catalyst for the song’s widespread popularity, their early recognition eventually led to a trend of covering it on TikTok and YouTube. Gen Z musicians like Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams, Lyn Lapid, and Alfie Jukes joined in. The song’s long instrumental section has welcomed covers played on Carnatic violin, saxophone, and folk string quartets. It’s been translated by users into Spanish, and a viral version interpreted through sign language with 22 million views inspired others to make their own. Covers by elders have also seen lots of engagement, with Algie Powers’ version eliciting 8.9 million views. There were, indeed, many other TikTokers posting anniversary and date clips with their romantic partners that helped the song make the rounds. But in a shortform landscape where songs trend because of a lifestyle or aesthetic it represents, Mitski’s moment reveals that she has truly engaged fans who love her music based on the merits of its songwriting—perhaps explaining why it sparked interest in her entire discography.

The TikTok fervor around “My Love Mine All Mine” was also bolstered by discussions of its lyrics, which have always been a driving force in Mitski’s fandom. It also helps that she’s really smart when talking about her own writing. Her explanation of the song’s lyrics on TikTok has racked up 4.1 million views, and her Genius interview breaking the track down has also been reposted in short-form clips, driving back engagement to the original YouTube video with 1.3 million views. Critics had misinterpreted Mitski songs to be about romance or the “indie rock world” in the past, but the stakes for “correctly” understanding “My Love Mine All Mine” seem lower. The fact that the song could either be interpreted as a straight “love song” or a more metaphysical reflection on love itself cast a wide appeal among passionate and casual listeners. Others thought it sounded like a “lullaby,” which likely fed their parasocial associations of Mitski as “mother.” 

To easily categorize her for the internet age, fans have previously referred to Mitski’s work as “cottagecore,” “feral,” and the oft-touted label of “sad girl music.” But “My Love Mine All Mine” shatters all those previous expectations of the musician. “It’s a shame that mitski is reduced to being ‘sad girl music’ when her art is the embodiment of loving the world simply to love,” one fan wrote in the comments of the Genius video. “Can't blame people for recognising this song only as sadness,” another one wrote. “It'd take a sensitive soul to differentiate the delicacy between deep loving with sadness.” Mitski lands somewhere between melancholy and devotion, capturing both the human experience and the perils of online existence, and transcends it. 

Graphics by Nicki Camberg and cover image by Crasianne Tirado; data as of Feb. 1, 2024.