Michelle Zauner is getting used to the congratulations by now. She’s got a New York Times bestselling memoir, Crying in H Mart, and her band Japanese Breakfast just dropped Jubilee, a record that practically radiates joy. But she’ll still act surprised when you mention it. “It’s the first thing that’s like attached to my name forever,” she says about the bestseller status. “That feels really good.”
You could say she’s earned it. Zauner’s career has been synonymous with grief since her breakthrough album Psychopomp dropped in 2016. Her mother had just died, and she channeled that raw pain into every note. That wasn’t supposed to be her permanent brand, but the music press loves an easy story. So, while her memoir delves into that loss with gut-wrenching honesty, Jubilee practically bursts at the seams with life and color.
“I think I needed to write the book and get it all out,” Zauner says, half-smiling. “It was almost like an exorcism. After that, I didn’t want to live in that world anymore.” It’s not that she’s abandoning the sadness. It’s that grief isn’t the whole story. “I wanted to show that I was so much more than that. I could write about something joyful and exuberant.”
Apparently, writing about joy is some kind of revolutionary act when you’ve built a career around sadness. “There’s this sad-girl indie stereotype I wanted to fuck with,” she says. Mission accomplished. The album’s lead single, “Be Sweet,” is a gleeful dance track with an unapologetically catchy chorus. “I want to believe in something,” she sings, which Zauner insists is both a personal plea and a public service announcement. “It’s that moment when you’re just trying to convince yourself things are going to get better,” she says. “After the past few years, I think we all need that.”
Then there’s “Paprika,” a song so triumphant it practically marches into the room and demands confetti. She says it’s one of those tracks that started with an idea about spectacle and ended up being something altogether unexpected. It’s easy to get lost in the layers of instrumentation—everything from violins to saxophones to the occasional ethereal synth. The sound is ambitious as hell, and she knows it. “I wanted to make something that felt big,” she says. “Why not go all in?”
It helps that she’s started taking guitar lessons for the first time. The album’s guitar work has a touch of 50s flair at times—think Buddy Holly on antidepressants. “My guitar teacher kept making me learn Beatles songs,” Zauner laughs. “Those chords just kind of started showing up in my own stuff. You can only play so much ‘Norwegian Wood’ before it seeps into your brain.”
She talks about how the new songs aren’t just a reaction to the old ones, but a deliberate pivot. Jubilee is rebellion against being boxed in. Zauner’s narrative has been “grief girl” for too long, and she’s sick of it. So, she turns to collaboration, leaning on saxophonist Adam Schatz and a string ensemble, just because she can. “I just wanted to expand my palette,” she says. “If I hear it in my head, why not just go for it?”
But even with a record this upbeat, she can’t help but revisit the loneliness that’s always been part of her story. On “Posing in Bondage,” she sings, “Nothing’s lonelier than 1 a.m. in a grocery store.” It’s the kind of line that’ll haunt you if you’ve ever found yourself under fluorescent lights at a gas station at two in the morning, wondering how your life got there. The video, appropriately enough, takes place in a grocery store where Zauner wanders the aisles like some kind of melancholy ghost. “It’s that feeling of being trapped and yearning at the same time,” she says. “You’re in this banal place, but it feels epic somehow.”
She’s good at making the mundane feel larger than life. It’s probably why Crying in H Mart hit so hard. Whether she’s describing the simple act of cooking Korean food or processing her mother’s death, Zauner has a way of putting you right there with her. She’s got that talent in music, too—crafting scenes so vivid you can practically see the rain coming down on them.
She hasn’t completely moved on from grief, of course. You can hear it lurking on tracks like “Tactics” and “In Hell,” where she can’t quite shake the ache that’s been with her since 2014. But now there’s something else too—a sense of permission to feel good. Jubilee sounds like that permission slip. “Writing an album about joy is just not something that’s super expected or in line with my narrative,” she admits. “But why the hell not?”
She’s still adjusting to being a New York Times bestselling author, by the way. She’s got some imposter syndrome going on. “My aunt and grandfather were voice actors,” she says. “I was terrified to do the audiobook because I knew they’d be judging me from beyond the grave. But it was weirdly therapeutic. It made me fall back in love with the story.”
Zauner knows she’s playing with perception, but that’s part of the fun. Jubilee is a record about demanding joy, and it’s also a bit of a middle finger to anyone who thought they had her figured out. “If people just want me to be sad girl forever, I’m not playing that game,” she says. “I needed to prove I could do something else.”
With Jubilee out and Crying in H Mart sitting pretty on bestseller lists, Michelle Zauner isn’t about to let herself get pinned down. She’s got way too much left to say, and she’s not interested in repeating herself. Call her whatever you want, just don’t call her predictable.
Watch the interview above and then check out the videos below.
