Earlier this year, Michelle Zauner had come off the exhausting 2021 whirlwind of promoting her indie-pop band Japanese Breakfast’s Grammy-nominated breakthrough album Jubilee and her acclaimed memoir Crying in H Mart, then a much-needed year-long sabbatical in Korea, and the recording of Jubilee’s much darker follow-up, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), when she received a phone call from director-screenwriter Celine Song. The filmmaker wanted Zauner to compose the end-credits theme for Song’s second film, Materialists, “My Baby (Got Nothing at All),” and the call could not have come at a better, more “serendipitous” time.
“I think I was really ready. I took a year off of writing music, and so it was really fun to have that kind of assignment,” Zauner tells Gold Derby. “It was fun to kind of return to something that was a little bit more just feelgood, like classic pop structure, just a fun, good old love song. So, it came really quickly, which was lucky — if it didn’t, it would’ve been a hard one to force, I think.”
In many ways, working with the Past Lives filmmaker felt like a past-life experience for Zauner. “It felt like [Song and I] knew each other somehow, even though we’d never met. We’re around the same age, we would later discover that both of us got married pretty early on in our lives, and we’re both Korean,” she says. But there was more to it than that.
Song’s romantic dramedy — about a thirtysomething New York matchmaker named Lucy (played by Dakota Johnson) who is torn between Harry, a wealthy “unicorn” of an eligible bachelor who meets all her perfect-partner criteria (Pedro Pascal), and her ex-boyfriend John, a perpetually poor actor who’s actually the love of her life (Chris Evans) — not only reminded Zauner of her early broke years with her husband/bandmate Peter Bradley, whom she married in 2014, but of her parents’ own against-all-odds courtship as well.
While living in Korea, Zauner had discovered the decades-old diary of her mother, Chongmi, whose death from cancer and Zauner’s grief were the focus of Crying in H Mart. Those journal entries often obsessively focused on the young, boy-crazy Chongmi’s love life, and detailed many of the same class struggles faced by modern-day singles like Lucy, Harry, and John in Materialists.
“I can see there’s a lot of grappling with that in her diary. I remember my mom telling me stories about someone that she was seeing that came from a wealthier family and he wouldn’t introduce her to his family, and never wanting to swallow her pride or feel less-than because she came from a family with less money. Some things never change,” says Zauner. “There’s an entry [in the diary] about someone who comes from the ‘right’ type of background, but she just doesn’t have that connection with him.”
And now, Zauner’s mother’s diary has partially inspired Zauner’s upcoming second book. “It’s funny to have that new relationship with my mom as this person that I never got to know, and almost be like her elder or have this different type of relationship. It’s been really fun,” she muses.
Below, Zauner opens up about the artistic process behind “My Baby (Got Nothing at All)”; why she retreated from the spotlight after Jubilee; the current status of the Crying in H Mart film adaptation; what she learned during her year in Korea; what she learned about love from watching Materialists and from reading her mother’s diary; and why sometimes true love can involve making a “bad financial decision.”
Gold Derby: I know you have written soundtracks for video games, but “My Baby (Got Nothing at All),” your Oscar-qualifying song from Materialists, is your first foray into writing music for films, right?
Michelle Zauner: That’s correct. I feel really lucky, in that it was sort of the perfect introduction to this world. I mean, what better opportunity than to get to work with Celine Song and to get to compose an original song for a movie that I think is so special — and also to have it be in the end credits, to really get to sum up the general feeling of this really beautiful, romantic movie.
I understand Celine Song reached out to you. I assume she is a Japanese Breakfast fan?
Yeah, she reached out in February [2025], and I was immediately really excited about it. It felt like we knew each other somehow, even though we’d never met. We’re around the same age, and would later discover that both of us got married pretty early on in our lives, and we’re both Korean. And so, I obviously knew of her work and was such a big fan of Past Lives, which was a film that I don’t think I got the first time around, and after living in Korea last year, rewatching it impacted me in such a profound way. I think Materialists too was sort of like that, where the first time I watched it, it made a mark on me, but the second time I watched it, that was how I came to really appreciate her work as a director and just how detailed she is and so intentional in everything that she does. So, it happened to be right before I started touring for my latest record. It was a very, very convenient, sort of serendipitous time for me. I wrote the song very quickly and went into Electric Lady to record it, and I was just kind of awaiting her notes. And when she heard the song, there weren’t any! She loved it! So, it was a really charmed experience for me.
So, she was literally like, “No notes”?
Yeah, I think she is a real music fan and it plays a strong part in her writing, so I think she was just really positive about it. She gave me a funny spectrum to really play with: It was between John Prine’s “In Spite of Ourselves” and Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten.” That was the romantic range she had me working in! And so, I had a lot of freedom to write this love song.
Those are very specific references! Do you know why those were her prompts for you?
I think she just felt like this is a movie about love, so it needed to be a very romantic love song. It’s also a very intelligent romantic movie, so I really wanted to meet her there in this song as well.
So, on that wide spectrum, with John Prine on one side and Natasha Bedingfield on the other end, where would you say “My Baby” lies?
I think it’s pretty in the middle! I really wanted it to feel upbeat and uplifting and romantic and fun, and it follows a very, very classic pop structure of just verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/chorus. It was fun to have a song with real classic repeating sections, because my new record really strayed away from that — to make something that felt really classic and really timeless, but also was kind of clever in the kind of turns of phrases that John Prine uses in that song. And there’s kind of a sensual nature. It’s a little tongue-in-cheek. So yeah, I think I really borrowed from both of those poles.
Materialists impacted me too, and I don’t mean this in a negative way, but it’s not really the “rom-com” it’s been marketed as. There’s humor, of course, but some of it is quite dark, as it explores the struggles of being a jaded person of a certain age dating in a major city. I’d love to know how you tried to capture the bittersweetness, or just bitterness, that comes with the modern pursuit of love.
I think a lot of great romantic literature and film is also incorporating some political commentary, and to me it feels very timely. In this time and from the beginning of time, class has played a major role in who is available to you to consider as a romantic partner and what your future looks like. And I think despite the strides that we’ve made, I think that there’s still a lot of limitations that we’re grappling with, or there’s a lot of things that we have to consider when looking for a romantic partner. And so, when I watched this movie, I was thinking a lot of my girlfriends in their 30s who are in this difficult spot, where they’re having to become more rigid and they’re considering things about a romantic partner that maybe you wouldn’t when you were younger.
I got married very early on; I met my husband when I was 23 years old. And so, I wasn’t thinking like, “Oh no, he’s working at a Mexican fusion restaurant, he lives with six roommates, he doesn’t have a bedframe.” I was just like, “I love this person.” And as a result, we were really able to grow up together, and the things that might’ve been red flags or dealbreakers for me now were things that we learned together. And so, when I see a lot of my friends in their thirties still looking for their partner and having this sort of checklist of things that are really important to them, be it their height or their salary or their job, I feel for them, because I think that those are things that sort of become clearer to you as you get older. [Materialists] felt like such a great commentary on that sort of situation.
I was thinking a lot about this song in preparation for this, and even the [chorus] of the song is, “My baby don’t got nothing at all,” and that phrase … it’s a double-negative on the surface, it’s someone who doesn’t have anything to offer you, but actually there is something that John has to offer Lucy in this song, even though there’s nothing sort of on paper to give. When Lucy’s in trouble, the first person she calls is still John. And that is a really priceless feeling that can’t be created by any sort of material standing or wealth. So yeah, I think that’s what I really wanted to focus on in the composition and bring out in the themes of the movie: that even if it feels like someone doesn’t have something to offer on paper, there is a lot there. And actually, those are the most important things.
I think that people have an idea of what they want and those things can all be there. But the reality of the feeling not being there, even though everything is right … to me, that’s the real perspective of the film. You have this man who has everything to offer, but the feeling is not there. And ultimately, even though everything that can be right and what you’re looking for, if that feeling’s not there, this sort of undefinable connection, then it’s still not going to work out. Even though all of these people are looking for love and have all of these dealbreakers, if that connection isn’t there, it’s not going to happen. I think the film did a really great job of capturing that.
Your music is usually so personal, as opposed to writing inspired by fictional characters. Did any of your own romantic experiences before or after marriage, or any of your preconceptions or concepts about love, come into play when you wrote this song?
Well, I was thinking a lot about a girlfriend of mine who’s looking for love in a very similar way. And in that process, I realized I’ve never had a relationship or loved someone that came from money or had any money at all! So, I felt like I could relate to it so deeply. I mean, the scenes when John is in the apartment and he steps on [his roommate’s discarded] condom and the roommate’s taking his charger and the medicine cabinet won’t close, that was very much my husband and my youth — just being struggling artists, trying to make do. I thought a lot about our years working at restaurants while we were pursuing music, and I felt like I could relate to it really deeply.
I think one really special thing about writing for someone else’s project is when I work on my own music, it comes from a really personal place and a very personal detail that I kind of expand and hope that a broader audience can relate to. … I tried to think a lot of what makes a really great love song, and I was thinking a lot about Motown songs. I grew up listening to Motown, and those are some of my favorite love songs of all time. I was thinking of these really simple sentiments that still are so feel so profound, and yet they’re so broad. “God only knows where I’d be without you,” or “I can’t help falling in love with you.” Or I was just thinking about this today, how one of my favorite love songs of all time is the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Maps”: “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you.” There’s nothing specific about those sentences, but everyone can find their way into that feeling. They are very, very simple, broad statements, and yet they feel very specific; if you’ve ever been in love, you know what that feeling is like. So, I really wanted to try to find that. I think with “my baby don’t have nothing, but he gives it to me,” I liked that it was a sort of double-negative, and has kind of layered meaning, There’s a carnal quality to: “Well, what does he have to give you?” That was what I was going for.
Did you write this song before, during, or after the making of For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)?
It was well after. I finished recording [that album] in December 2023, and then I took all of 2024 off while I was living in Korea, working on my second book. When I came back in February 2025, Celine reached out about us writing an original song for the movie, and it needed to be turned out really quickly, within two weeks. So, I watched the screener, loved the movie, and I wrote the song in two or three days. I was finishing up lyrics, did all the arrangement probably in about a week, sent it off, and I think in 24 hours we were good to go and mixing it.
Is that unusual for you? Do you usually work that quickly?
If I’m lucky, it happens that way. I think I was really ready. I took a year off of writing music, and so it was really fun to have that kind of assignment. And I think this record that came out this year was a very cerebral, very delicate album, and a very melancholic album, so it was fun to kind of return to something that was a little bit more just feelgood, like classic pop structure, just a fun, good old love song. So, it came really quickly, which was lucky — if it didn’t, it would’ve been a hard one to force, I think.
Is this how your creative flow usually works? The first two Japanese Breakfast albums were largely influenced by grief and loss, and then Jubilee was a much happier and more lighthearted record. And then on For Melancholy Brunettes, you got dark again. Now you’ve released a happy song. Do you normally go from one extreme to another like that?
I think it’s sort of like if you spend a week going out to parties, the next week, you really don’t want to see anybody. It feels like now, especially when I make something, you have to live with it. You have to promote it, you have to tour it for so long, that it really exhausts that side of yourself. And really, I find myself really wanting to express a different part of my personality after that. It feels very much like my records are kind of in conversation with one another. My work is in conversation with itself, because yeah, every time I lean in one direction, then I find myself immediately wanting to do something different.
Jubilee was a massive breakthrough, earning two Grammy nominations, but then you took a year off. I’ve read that such sudden success took a toll on you, mentally. Can you tell me about that period in your life that proceeded making this song?
The Jubilee album cycle was just such a whirlwind. We really kind of arrived at a new sort of level that I really wasn’t anticipating. We were doing late-night [talk shows], all of a sudden we were doing SNL, we were at the Grammys. The whole time I was just like, “Is it all downhill from here?” And it was funny to be promoting this album about joy and then finding myself so wracked by nerves. Like, it’s hard to just perform an album about joy for three years, when sometimes you just don’t feel very happy! And so ironically, now that I’m touring this album about melancholy, I feel much happier. I think that I really realized that [Jubilee’s success] was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and I needed to run as fast as I could to keep up with the moment, but after touring so intensely for three years, I was just desperate to kind of hide away and be an artist that wasn’t seen for a year.
So, I moved to Korea, and I wanted to write a book about studying the language. I loved just being able to be in my thirties and being able to be a student again. I was going to language courses with a bunch of 18-year-olds. And also, in the process of preparing for my visa, I found a journal that my mother had kept from when she was 20 years old, written in Korean. And so, it became my goal to become fluent enough or proficient enough in Korean that I could be able to translate that diary directly myself. That was what I spent the year doing, living a very quiet life. And then I think I was able to come back to music with such a renewed appreciation of what I do. Sometimes you really just need to step away to really remind yourself what you love about all of this, and it was a real gift to be able to get to do that last year.
Did you not speak or read any Korean at all before, or did know the basics but weren’t super-fluent?
I thought that I was more proficient in Korean than I was. When I went over there, I realized I could read and write, and my accent is pretty good, but I don’t know what I’m saying. So, I’m really limited by my vocabulary, by my grammar. I would say that improved tremendously. I thought I might get so bored after living such an intense life in the public eye and playing shows to thousands of people and going to these really glamorous [events], but I loved studying and just being a nerd. I could just study for eight hours a day and I felt so fulfilled. It was so nice to just do one thing and watch your brain wrap itself around it for a year and improve in something like that. I had the time of my life.
Would you ever consider making a Korean-language album?
There was an indie band called Silica Gel that is very popular in Korea, and they reached out to me about collaborating on a song. That was the first time that I wrote very, very simply in Korean, and it was very nerve-wracking. I sang very briefly in Korean on that track. And then I’ve covered some Korean artists. What’s really interesting is I’ve never sang with vibrato in my life, and suddenly in that language, it very naturally came out of me. So, I’ve really enjoyed learning songs in Korean. I’m not sure if I’ll write that many lyrics in that language, just because it feels very nerve-wracking to not have your full sensibility in a language. It’s always kind of weird. … But never say never.
What’s the plan for this book? A title, release date?
It’s funny, because I just went to the National Book Awards and I saw my editor, and that’s the one thing — I knew the title for Crying in H Mart so early. For this one, I really still have no idea. We’ll see. A book takes a long time. I’m hoping it can come out next year, maybe late next year, but no promises.
On the subject of Crying in H Mart and also related to movie news, you had a film deal for Crying in H Mart, but now it seems to be on hold or not happening. I’d love an update on what’s going on with that.
I still am really hopeful that it will happen someday. I wrote the screenplay and I learned so much about screenwriting, and my producer Stacy Scher introduced me to so many incredible directors and screenwriters. … She is just such a gift in my life. I mean, she’s produced some of my favorite films of all time, in particular the two seminal coming-of-age movies, Reality Bites and Garden State, which were huge influences on me. Because for me, Crying in H Mart is such a coming-of-age story. It’s a story about grief, it’s a story about mothers and daughters, and it’s a story about Korean food, but I think also at its heart, it’s really a coming-of-age story. And I learned so much from [Scher]. But then we got caught up in the writers’ strike and it was on pause, and then our director [Will Sharpe] left and it sort of got put on hold. But I do still believe that someday it’s going to be made. It’s a story that just needs a lot of great care, and I have confidence that it will happen someday.
So, you already have a finished screenplay for it? Did you write it with someone, or did you write it alone? And how did that open up your creative world?
I wrote it on my own. I mean, at first I really was like, “Just take the rights! I don’t think I want to be involved in it at all!” And my agents and my publisher were very encouraging about it, I kind of just kept getting roped into it and then I really loved it. I got to read so many screenplays and really, it’s such a different type of language and a very different craft. Working within a new structure like that, I found it to be really enjoyable. It has to move so quickly and the writing has to be so precise. You really have to convey a lot in a very, very small space. I had so much fun writing it and I just really enjoyed it. Getting to read tons and tons of screenplays and finding my voice in that medium was such a pleasure, because also, I have to embody people I love very much and sort of speak in their voice. At times when I was writing all these conversations I had with my mother, it was almost like I was talking to her again — getting to write her dialogue and things we would’ve said to one another, and trying to think of the way that she would’ve phrased things and where her sort of point of view would be. It was really quite intimate, in a different way from how writing Crying in H Mart was.
Wow. You mentioned that you have her diary from when she was 20. Will that factor into your next book, excerpts from it or anything like that?
I think so, yeah. I mean, it’s very interesting to get to read a diary from a version of my mother that I’ve never met, that’s actually younger than me now. To read my mother’s voice at 20 years old and to be in my mid-thirties, I’m like, “Get it together!” [laughs] A lot of it is her being really boy-crazy and just really depressed that this guy is not calling her. It’s funny to have that new relationship with my mom as this person that I never got to know, and almost be like her elder or have this different type of relationship. It’s been really fun. So, I think it will definitely make its way in there, for sure.
I guess some things never change. Waiting by the phone for a man to call, wondering if a man is a good catch — to come full-circle, those are all plot points in Materalists.
Yeah! I remember my mom telling me stories about this, because I think especially in Korea, even in the ‘70s and ‘80s, how much wealth your family had still played a huge role in who was allowed to date whoever. And so, I can see there’s a lot of grappling with that in her diary. I remember my mom telling me stories about someone that she was seeing that came from a wealthier family and he wouldn’t introduce her to his family, and never wanting to swallow her pride or feel less-than because she came from a family with less money. Some things never change. There’s an entry [in the diary] about someone who comes from the “right” type of background, but she just doesn’t have that connection with him.
Were any of those passages echoing through the back of your mind as you were watching Materialists?
Yeah, I think a lot of my mom’s experiences were passed down to me, in the sort of advice that she gave me. She was a very proud woman, so I thought a lot of her about her and her advice, thinking to myself, “Oh, I’ve never fallen in love with someone with money!” … I think it’s never been interesting to me because that was just sort of the way that I was raised, that I was always going to be able to provide for myself. That was not something that I was looking for, or that type of security, I guess, was not a priority for me.
That’s very cool. I’d maybe assume that a woman from your mother’s background and generation might have advised you to marry a well-off doctor or lawyer.
Well, she ended up marrying someone with no money! And they ended up turning out well together and they really made it on their own terms. And so, I think even though in some ways everyone is given that advice — obviously, it would be more convenient for everyone to have that kind of security available to them — in the end, she ended up with a really broke guy and then they turned out OK. I remember my mom telling me that my grandmother actually kind of pushed her towards my father, because he didn’t have anything financially to offer, but he seemed like he would work hard and he had some kind of promise. And so, I think that I was raised that that can happen too: that as long as there’s some kind of promise there, and a person is a good person, it can still end up being OK.
This Q&A has been edited for brevity and clarity: Watch Michelle Zauner’s full interview below:
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