Michelle Zauner had an amazing 2021 and she’s keeping that going here in 2022. We’re not even through January yet and she’s already been on national TV twice: Japanese Breakfast performed on The Late Late Show last week, then she popped up on Ellen today. She delivered a rendition of Jubilee highlight “Be Sweet” on the show, joined by a band and flooded in blue and purple stage lighting for the upbeat tune.
Zauner previously told Apple Music of “Be Sweet,” “Back in 2018, I decided to try out writing sessions for the first time, and I was having a tough go of it. My publisher had set me up with Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing. What happens is they lie to you and say, ‘Jack loves your music and wants you to help him write his new record!’ And to him they’d say, ‘Michelle loves Wild Nothing, she wants to write together!’ Once we got together, we were like, ‘I don’t need help. I’m not writing a record.’ So we decided we’d just write a pop song to sell and make some money. We didn’t have anyone specific in mind, we just knew it wasn’t going to be for either of us. Of course, once we started putting it together, I realized I really loved it. I think the distance of writing it for ‘someone else’ allowed me to take on this sassy ’80s women-of-the-night persona. To me, it almost feels like a Madonna, Whitney Houston, or Janet Jackson song.”
Watch Japanese Breakfast perform “Be Sweet” on Ellen above and revisit our recent interview with Zauner here.