After the success of her second studio album Soft Sounds From Another Planet, Japanese Breakfast, the solo musical project of Korean-American artist, Michelle Zauner, has recently the announced the release of her third and by far, most ambitious album to date, Jubilee.
According to Zauner, the third album represents a lot of things, both as an artist and as a person.
‘I thought a lot about the third record and what a third album means in the discography of an artist,” she said. “I think for a lot of artists, for the second record you make there’s a lot of pressure. The first record, I thought was maybe successful as an accident, so I had so much pressure preparing the second album. I was really, really stressed out, and after it did quite well I felt so much relief. And for this third album I felt like I had this new confidence like; ‘okay, you know what you’re doing, it wasn’t an accident, now you can just be really ambitious and put your best foot forward.’”
Compared to the first two albums, Jubilee’s theme of joy and hope is both unexpected yet a “natural progression” from the gloomy atmosphere of the prior albums.
“I wanted to write an album about joy because my first two records Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet were largely about the death of my mother and about grief and trauma, a lot of really dark heavy material. Even the colors of the albums were this kind of melancholic blue, red and dark black. In my head, I just saw like a yellow image and a lot of warm tones for the next record,” she added.
Additionally, Zauner stated that she took theory lessons and studied piano in earnest for the first time during quarantine, which she felt helped make her songwriting more “mature” and ambitious in nature.
“For the first time, I felt really confident to try to do string and brass arrangements, so we have like a string quartet, we also have saxophone and trumpets and trombones. There’s a lot more instrumentation and I think the sound is much bigger,” she shared.
Other than being a light at the end of some extremely bleak chapters in Zauner’s life, the album also allowed Zauner to explore her “sassy 80’s diva” side with the album’s lead single, “Be Sweet.” Another natural jumping off point from Soft Sounds’ synthesizer instrumentals, the single allowed Zauner to experiment with blending city pop and classic 80’s musicalities. This led “Be Sweet” to becoming an elegant, smooth and sassy girl power song that fits Zauner’s vocals so well, it’s hard to believe that Zauner almost didn’t sing it.
“I originally thought we were going write it to maybe sell to some pop artist,” she recalled. “So the style of the writing is more pop oriented, kinda like a sassy 80’s diva like Janet Jackson or Madonna. We just wanted to write something fun but I ended up really falling in love with it so I decided to keep it.”
Japanese Breakfast’s Jubilee is scheduled for release this June, 2021. Her latest singles, “Be Sweet” and “Posing for Bondage” are now available in major streaming platforms.