Songfacts®:

• When Mitski completed her Asia and Australia tour, it was right before the winter holidays, so rather than flying back on holiday prices to America, she decided it would be cheaper for her to stay on that side of the world. The singer decided to go to Malaysia, where she'd spent a lot of my childhood, but she came to regret her decision. This song finds Mitski singing about the alienation she felt there. She explained to Genius:
  
  "I thought it would be great, like finally get to decompress, except I didn't prepare for how fricking lonely it would be to just be all alone in a country where no one knows me, while everyone else I know is having holiday's with their family and friends. I was also really tired and just the idea of everybody I know being at a different time zone and having holiday's without me–it was just a combination of a lot of things. But yeah, I f---ing broke down."
• Mitski explained how she decided to use her bad experience for good, by penning a song about it. "I am too proud to be hysterical to other people but the chorus 'Nobody' was literally me in a semi-fugue state on my hands and knees on the floor just crying and just repeating the word, 'nobody,'" she said. "And then I don't know. I was like, 'Let me use this pain and exploit it for my money.'"
• The track was produced by frequent Mitski collaborator Patrick Hyland. He was also behind the boards for the Japanese-American singer-songwriter's Puberty 2 and Bury Me At Makeout Creek albums.
• "Nobody" was released on Be The Cowboy, the album that catapulted Mitski from obscure indie artist to very popular, very trendy indie artist and darling of the music press. The album landed on many "best-of" lists and broadened her fanbase considerably. It also put her in a pressure cooker, with more demands on her time and a lot more scrutiny. After her tour wrapped up in September 2019, she shut down for a while, returning in 2021 with "Working For The Knife," a song explains her struggles.
• The song trended on TikTok in 2021 as creators used it to soundtrack their videos about running away from something they don't want to deal with, using the "nobody, nobody, nobody" chorus.
  
  This was all rather strange for Mitski, who doesn't go on TikTok and stopped posting on social media in 2019 (her management took over her accounts).