A Deep Dive into Mitski’s “The Frost”
Title image credit: Mitski’s The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We
In Mitski’s newly released album, some songs quickly gained more popularity than others. However, this doesn’t mean Mitski’s lyricism isn’t just as strong in the lesser acknowledged ones.
By: Joy Ye
American singer and songwriter, Mitski, is well known for her lyricism that captures emotions that are typically hard to speak of. On September 15th, 2023, she released her long-awaited album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We. This is the second album since her return from hiatus and focuses on the theme of love. It quickly gained popularity after release due to her growing success in preceding years. The Land was praised for the rawness of her lyrics along with the stripped-down music that created a sense of warmth for the listeners.
The most popular song of the album, “My Love Mine All Mine,” displays the way this album has touched the hearts of many, the song being her first to break into the Billboard Hot 100. Due to this one hit song, the rest of her album can be easily overlooked. The other tracks only have a small fraction of streams in comparison. Her songwriting in them is still just as genius despite the large gap in popularity
One of these lesser-known songs is “The Frost” the 8th track on the album, which explores the feeling of loneliness after losing a close friend. Throughout the song, frost is meant to represent the friendship that the speaker is talking about. Frost is something that forms overnight, but melts away with the morning. It passes just as quickly as it came. The friendship only lasted a short time in her life.
The song opens with the speaker describing a world covered in frost after a post-apocalyptic scenario. The very first lyrics of the song are “The frost, it looks / Like dust settled on the world.” Here, the frost, or friendship, is compared to dust, which takes time to collect, typically in an untouched area. The friend has probably been gone for a long time, letting “dust” collect onto the memories of this lost friendship.
In the chorus of the song, the speaker goes on to say that there’s “no one, no one / To share the memory of frost,” with her. Frost is also cold, another characteristic that can be passed onto the lost relationship. There’s a certain “chill” that comes with the loneliness following the loss of someone close, a feeling that can only be amplified since she has no one else to talk to. This is further spurred on by the start of the second verse, “You’re my best friend / Now I’ve no one to tell / How I lost my best friend.”
Later on in the verse, the speaker says “The frost, it looks / Like we’ve been left in the attic.” This lyric not only mirrors the first one in structure but also in topic. Things that are left in attics are typically unwanted, forgotten, or both and are left to collect “dust” all by themselves. It’s another symbol of the bygone friendship that has been put on the backburner and is not something that is revisited frequently.
The very last lyric acts like a conclusion to the song, tying up the loose ends and bringing up one last meaning of the frost. When the frost melts away, it leaves no lasting impact on the world, becoming nothing more than a memory to those who saw it. When the speaker says “It’s just witness-less me,” it returns to the frost being a symbol of friendship. There was no one else in the friendship that she had, and since there were no witnesses, it left no lasting impact, just like frost.
Despite being a short song, standing at 2 minutes and 48 seconds, no second is wasted. From the warm instrumentals to the chilling lyrics, “The Frost” can’t help but reach into someone’s heart, bringing comfort to those who relate. It is just one of many in Mitski’s discography, but carries a unique meaning, just like the rest.