i don't like mirrors

The spare, slow, wordless indie tunes of i don't like mirrors are steeped in melancholy and dejection. Most often consisting of minimal guitar, bass, and drums, their tracks sometimes add ghostly keyboards or muffled, (most often) indecipherable vocals to the mix. Emerging online in 2023, they gained popularity to the tune of millions of streams with tracks from their first album, Not How It's Supposed to be. The anonymous project hit the Billboard TikTok Top 50 in 2024 with "you got me worse," from their sophomore album miserable false ideas.

Using blurred photos and silhouette-based artwork with scrawled text, i don't like mirrors' circular music was embraced by TikTok users before they uploaded full recordings, beginning with mid-2023's "memory" to select streaming platforms. With no tracks crossing the three-minute mark, the full-length Not How It's Supposed to be appeared in October 2023. It included "I miss your warm hands," a typically sullen entry that garnered over ten million streams by the following year. EPs including the keyboard-based this was everything for me and the instrument-alternating Lórien followed before the end of the year.

The project's second album, miserable false ideas, arrived soon after in March 2024. It featured "you got me worse," a track that reached number 23 on Billboard's TikTok Top 50.