Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast opens up about her third album Jubilee, her memoir, and how she was ready to finally let joy in.
Michelle Zauner is celebrating. Her memoir, Crying In H Mart — the heart-wrenching account of her late mother’s battle with cancer and Zauner’s subsequent exploration into reconnecting with her Korean heritage through food — has just debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times Hardcover Nonfiction Bestsellers list. It warrants a party so, of course, the champagne is already out and part-ways through.
“[I’m] a little bit sleepy, to be honest,” she jokes. “I started drinking at, like, 5 PM.”
For the one-woman indie-rock act known as Japanese Breakfast, the jubilation is not just a nod to an achievement. At the time of this interview, there’s more than a month to go for her third studio album, Jubilee, which marks a metamorphosis for Zauner.
Before she was Japanese Breakfast, she was in Little Big League, a Philadelphia-based indie rock outfit where she eventually met her husband. Her plans were put on hold when Zauner learned that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and moved back home to Oregon to care for her. When her mother passed away shortly after, Zauner, then 25, now had to commit to “normal adulthood,” as she writes in her memoir.
“I’d essentially spent the last year as an unpaid nurse and cleaner and the five years before that failing to make it as a musician. I needed to commit myself to some kind of career as soon as possible.” she writes.
She moved to Brooklyn, ready to settle into a marketing assistant job to become a proper adult. In the background, slowly catching fire, was Psychopomp, her debut album recorded shortly after her mother’s death. Soon, Psychopomp wrecked through human consciousness as a visceral thesis on grief and loss, on which she describes home as the “rope that’s wrapped around your neck.” Clearly, being a marketing assistant would have to wait. After releasing another album on grief, Soft Sounds From Another Planet (2017), and a book, however, Zauner realized that it was time to close out the unofficial trilogy.
“I feel like after writing two records largely about grief and the trauma of caretaking, and then a book about it, my narrative has very much been that of the ‘grief girl’,” she says. “I felt like the most unexpected, sort of opposite turn would be to write an album about joy. And I felt like finally able to take something like that on and explore this new, unexpected topic after writing this book.”
On Jubilee, she cracks open the dolorous shell of bereavement and bursts forth, seeped in a renewed appreciation for life and joy. Michelle Zauner is ready to be reborn, and it’s certainly cause for celebration.
“Joy is a very precious commodity. It’s something that we’re always trying to carve out in the day-to-day. That was something that I learned coping with my mother’s illness and the aftermath and the grief, and moving forward from that,” she says. “With this new type of grief during the pandemic, I have also realized that joy is something that we’re all fighting for all the time, and part of what makes it so special is that it is rare.”
Jubilee begins as one awakens from a long slumber of nothingness: slowly, then all at once as the light floods in and consciousness stands upright. On the first few lines of the opening track ‘Paprika’, Zauner breathes a sigh of freedom and relief, as if having untied ‘a great knot’. Then, as the vast expanse of possibility stretches out, she sings: ‘How’s it feel to be at the center of magic, to linger in tones and words… How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers, to captivate every heart?… Oh, it’s a rush.”
This isn’t the Disney-and-they-lived-happily-ever-after version, however. On Jubilee, joy is a multi-dimensional feeling that comes with terms and conditions, featuring microcosms of layers that leave a bittersweet taste in your mouth.
On the synth-seeped, retro-inspired ‘Be Sweet’, she sings about second chances, saying ‘Recognize your mistakes and I’ll let you back in, Realize not too late, love you always.’ On the other hand, the modern day-Interview With The Vampire extravaganza, ‘Posing in Bondage’, takes baby-steps towards realizing one’s worth and what they deserve, clearing the path for future learnings. Joy is a prism on Jubilee; Zauner, the white light that makes us the rainbow-hues of a seemingly one-dimensional emotion.
Ahead of the release of her album Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner spoke to Tone Deaf about her music, her love for sci-fi and Interview With The Vampire, and moving on from grief.
Tone Deaf: So, talk to me about the album, about Jubilee. What is it about?
Michelle Zauner: The theme of the record is joy. I feel like after writing two records largely about grief and the trauma of caretaking, and then a book about it, my narrative has very much been that of ‘grief girl’. I felt like the most unexpected, total opposite turn would be to write an album about joy. And I felt finally able to take something like that on and explore this new, unexpected topic after writing this book.
TD: Since you already had in mind that this album was going to be about joy, did you ever find that it boxed you in? Were you ever like: “No, I can’t put certain things on this album because I need to make it about joy?”
Zauner: Yeah, it was definitely a concern. It’s a pretty broad topic; not all of the songs [on the album] are extremely happy, but I think that in some way or another, they are all interacting with this idea of joy. I think that’s very much a part of the human condition in general: we’re all struggling to experience joy or trying to carve out joy, or trying to preserve joy or reveling in joy.
I think all of the songs on the record in some way or another have to do with joy in this way. If not fully feeling joy, then it’s about trying to experience it or struggling to experience it or negotiating things that are in the way of joy in some way.
TD: There are also elements of “campy” horror in the album. For example, in ‘Posing In Bondage’, you play a vampire. It has a very What We Do In The Shadows kind of vibe. ‘Be Sweet’ is something out of The X-Files. You can correct me if I’m wrong, but it’s almost as if there is a very conscious effort to sort of appear happy in certain places.
Zauner: I think that’s an excellent reading. Even two of the track titles have the word ‘posing’ in them. And I think that speaks to [keeping up appearances]. There is also this running theme of monogamy and posing through monogamy in this way. It’s hard for me to explain this but embracing monogamy is this recognition that there are going to be times that you’re not fully possessed by desire that you are when you’re first involved in a relationship.
The gift of that kind of relationship and that kind of loyalty and posing through the less exciting moments is what gets you the really fulfilling gift of a committed relationship. I don’t know if that sounds very romantic, but the way I see it, that’s a really important thing that I’ve learned at this point in my life and has a lot to do with my personal history. So yeah, I think that sort of horror motif has something to do with this type of posturing that feeds into the song.
TD: I agree with you on that. It’s not always about that passion and eventually you do settle into a kind of comfort and that’s the beauty of relationships but then I think: “Should we really be comparing that to horror?”
Zauner: I guess I see them as related in the sense that they’re very fraught. You know, there’s a lot of tension in both those things and [a] build up and navigating those types of feelings. I guess they’re kind of similar that way. I mean, the honest answer is that I love those types of visual motifs and I think that they represent those kinds of feelings in a really, really broad way.
TD: Speaking of visual motifs, you direct your music videos as well. You’ve been involved in every part of your albums. I also read in a previous interview that whenever you go to your team, you have a mood board and a concept. When does that visual thinking kick in when you’re working on your music. At what stage of working on your songs do [visual] concepts pop up in your head?
Zauner: It usually happens well after the song is done. I usually don’t even conceptualize music videos until months after an album is completed, and we have to start thinking about the press cycle and what to do. I come to the songs when they’re fully formed and try to envision them in this way.
TD: What was it like working on the music videos for ‘Be Sweet’ and ‘Posing in Bondage’? I also remember you saying that the latter is actually an epilogue to something that you’re planning? (Note: that song is ‘Savage Good Boy’, starring The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli.)
Zauner: I feel like I have a tendency to over-plan things. My cinematographer Adam Kolodny and I were talking about ‘Everybody Wants To Love You’ and how unplanned and successful that video was. We wanted to do something that was a little bit more fun and loose. We were watching these Spike Jonze music videos and we watched the video for Beastie Boys’ ‘Sabotage’, and we’re like, ‘Man, this is so low-fi but just so fun. We would love to do something like this, but we don’t want to be cops.’
We were like: ‘I want to kick open a door! I want to roll over on the ground! We could be special X-Files agents!’ I started watching a lot of X-Files episodes and thinking about the structure of how those episodes work and what that would look like as a music video. It was like X-Files fan fiction, putting [the music video for ‘Be Sweet’] together.
For ‘Posing in Bondage’, it was such a different vibe. It’s a longer, slower song. It’s very fraught. I had this DVD of Chris Cunningham music videos, and we were watching ‘All Is Full Of Love’, the music video for björk. It’s one of my favorite music videos of all time. I feel like they were similar songs in a way. They had this slow chugging, industrial feel. So I just imagined this very cold, lonely space, and a late night abandoned grocery store and two people having this intense encounter that sort of grows into this really fun experience together later on.
TD: Between Soft Sounds From Another Planet, which was a couple years ago, and Jubilee, how did your mindset change? Was there something you did on the former that you said you would not do on the latter, or something that you left off that Jubilee has?
Zauner: I was really terrified of the sophomore album. I remember having intense pressure for the second album that I was going to really fuck up everything that I had built. When [Soft Sounds From Another Planet] did well for us and my career didn’t disappear, I was able to go into Jubilee with so much more confidence.
I felt like: ‘You know what? You’ve made two albums and you’ve done well for yourself. It’s time to lean into your skill set.’Soft Sounds From Another Planet was a really insular process because I was so worried about it. It was just me and Craig [Hendrix] largely in a room together for a month. I knew with this new record I wanted to broaden by inviting new collaborators in and making the arrangements bigger, trying to write string and brass arrangements for the first time. A lot of that came with touring a lot more for the past three years and getting to meet incredible musicians who play violin and saxophone, that was a big part of it.
TD: I want to also talk about Crying In H Mart. I know we don’t plan for these things, but the book came out at a very important time in modern history because we’re having so many conversations about rising hate against Asian diasporas across America. Do you feel like the book inadvertently went beyond just your personal experiences and became something that people could relate to?
Zauner: I think I just went in trying to write the most honest story that I could that encapsulated both my mother and I in multidimensional ways. We just both happened to be Asian or Asian-American. I understand that it feeds into this time where multidimensional characters are needed in the face of this hate, but I feel conflicted. When the mass shooting happened in Atlanta, it was such a whiplash moment for America, because Minari had just been nominated for a number of Academy Awards, and then literally within days you saw violent hatred towards the same group of people.
I had this real struggle. I’ve always been such a purist about art my whole life. It has always felt like something that is of the utmost importance. This is so essential, and for the first time this year, I really questioned that. We have all these really exciting new stories about Asian-American identity. Yet, this type of hatred is more rampant than ever.
And at this moment [I think] ‘Art can’t save families. Art can’t provide a medicinal cure to diseases, you know?’ So I feel very conflicted about all of that. I feel very shy about proclaiming that my work holds any real importance during this time, truly. It’s weighing very heavily on my mind, and I don’t want to take advantage of that.
I do think that having more stories about Asian people and our multidimensionality and the fact that we’re just human beings would lead people to understand that and not attack the sort of grandma that could be my grandma, that these people don’t even think of as human beings. But I do think that there’s this whole other type of human being that I have no control over at all. And I don’t know what my work really does for those types of people.
You can read more about this topic over at the Indie Observer.
