Like many artists, Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner) made a quarantine album, doing so as part of her quarantine band Bumper. Now, though, she’s returning with a proper new Japanese Breakfast album: Jubilee comes out on June 4. Ahead of then, she dropped a silly and fun video for “Be Sweet,” an upbeat and optimistic new tune she wrote with Jack Tatum of Wild Nothings.
Zauner says of the song and album, “After spending the last five years writing about grief, I wanted our follow up to be about joy. For me, a third record should feel bombastic and so I wanted to pull out all the stops for this one. I wrote ‘Be Sweet’ with Jack Tatum from Wild Nothing a few years ago. I’ve been holding onto it for so long and am so excited to finally put it out there.”
Press materials describe the album as being “about processing life and love in the quest for happiness, and how that process sometimes requires us to step outside of ourselves.” Zauner also noted that she took lessons on music theory and studied piano during the lead-up to this album, saying, “I’ve never wanted to rest on any laurels. I wanted to push it as far as it could go, inviting more people in and pushing myself as a composer, a producer, an arranger.”
Watch the “Be Sweet” video above and check out the Jubilee art and tracklist below.
1. “Paprika”
2. “Be Sweet”
3. “Kokomo, IN”
4. “Slide Tackle”
5. “Posing In Bondage”
6. “Sit”
7. “Savage Good Boy”
8. “In Hell”
9. “Tactics”
10. “Posing For Cars”
Jubilee is out 6/4 via Dead Oceans. Pre-order it here.