The turning point in Japanese Breakfast's discography

Japanese Breakfast - Michelle Zauner

(Credits: Far Out / Press)

Sat 12 April 2025 4:00, UK

Japanese Breakfast‘s Michelle Zauner came up in Philadelphia’s DIY scene, complete with the venue coat check she once worked at, which was named in her honour. Her punk band, Little Big League, spent their days playing basements and bars throughout the city, eventually landing themselves on a tour with fellow punk bands The Hotelier and Foxing.

In a recent interview with Stereogum, Zauner revealed that Foxing frontman Conor Murphy was the one who inspired her to hone in on Japanese Breakfast back in 2013. She says, “Conor was always like—kind of maybe the reason why I started Japanese Breakfast in a way, ’cause he was always a really big fan of what I was doing on the side as a solo artist. And he wanted to put that on a split that they had. I don’t know when I made ‘[The] Woman That Loves You’, but he asked to put that out on a split, and I think is like semi-responsible for me going in the direction of making more solo material.”

Japanese Breakfast’s debut record Psychopomp (which includes ‘The Woman That Loves You’) is the sonic midpoint between Zauner’s work in Little Big League and Japanese Breakfast as we know it today. It’s rugged around the edges but integrates a lot of the dream pop elements that would become trademarks of her albums to come (the title track sounds almost exactly like the instrumental of ‘Posing in Bondage’ from Jubilee).

The song that really put Japanese Breakfast on the map, though, is her sophomore record, Soft Sounds From Another Planet‘s second single, ‘Boyish’—a reimagining of a track from Little Big League’s second and final record, Tropical Jinx. Once a driving, angry punk track, it was now a quintessential Japanese Breakfast ballad. Zauner’s lyricism shines on Soft Sounds, and that’s displayed in spades on ‘Boyish’, which cleans up and tightens the writing from the original version.

Tackling a failing relationship with a man who’s grown a wandering eye, Zauner aptly communicates her frustration and disappointment: “Lack of inhibition works wonders in revealing every demon / And all this confrontation, this suffering / What do you want from me? / If you don’t like how I look, then leave”, she cries out in the second verse. The final line ushers in the lush instrumental that remains through the end of the track, with layered backing vocals from Zauner and a sweeping chamber orchestra. She ends the song with a final plea, “Love me, love me”.

Zauner explained in a Song Exploder episode that the new arrangement for the track was inspired by 1960s pop ballads like ‘Be My Baby’ by The Ronettes. She and her producer, Craig Hendrix, wanted the song to sound as dreamy and wide as possible, adding orchestral percussion and a bit of harpsichord during the verses.

‘Boyish’ went on to become one of Japanese Breakfast’s most popular and acclaimed songs, trailing only the Jubilee standout, ‘Be Sweet’. The orchestral soundscape of the track found its way onto much of Zauner’s future work, up to her newest album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women). The chamber strings find their way back on the heartbreakingly gorgeous ‘Kokomo, IN’ from Jubilee (which she got to play with Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy at the Pitchfork Festival in 2022) and Melancholy Brunettes’ lead single ‘Orlando in Love’. The Japanese Breakfast sound we know today would perhaps not exist without Zauner’s will and inspiration to reimagine ‘Boyish’.