it's not about the phone (i'm very excited for mitski's new album)
I'm listening to "Where's My Phone" on repeat right now. Wow, what a song!
I'm more excited for "Nothing's Going to Happen to Me" than "Laurel Hell". I missed the explosive bass and keening guitars of Puberty 2 and Bury Me At Makeout Creek, and it seems like Mitski may be taking some past inspiration from those albums, and that may be deliberate.
Aging - and the fear of it - is very prominent in the "Where's My Phone" music video. Mitski lives in a 3-generation house with her younger sister and elderly 'aunty'. She's constantly trying to keep her younger sister (implied to virginal 1) from curious men and prolonging her aunty from leaving the house (dying). All while trying to find her phone.
The phone itself is a tool for escapism and a symbol of the absurdity of being alive. Mitski wonders "where'd I go" immediately after asking "where's my phone?". In the next verse, she wishes her mind could be a "clear glass" so she can be free from all her thoughts.
Is she so desperate to find the phone because it obliterates whatever thoughts she has - including anxious thoughts about her past and future?
Invasion is constant throughout the music video. A milkman, elderly ladies, her sister's sweetheart and a small choir all succeed in entering the house. What do they want? The sister.
The milkman drops bottles of milk when she answers the door, thinking it's her lover. She slices her finger and Mitski sucks away the blood - in her mind, protecting her sister, her younger self, from being spoiled by an implied sexual encounter.
Despite Mitski's attempts to get all these people out of the house (i.e., beating up her sister's sweetheart), her efforts are in vain: The sister is carried away and implied to be thrown down a well.
Why worry about your phone when the world is going to chew you up and digest you?
Shots of her are spliced with shots of the Virgin Mary statues.↩