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"Be Sweet" by Japanese Breakfast Review


For Amanda Petrusich’s class “Pop Culture Criticism” - March 5, 2021

Dressed in a pompous wig and suit and swinging a flashlight between her legs, Michelle Zauner channels her inner Fox Mulder from the X-Files and exclaims “Be sweet to me, baby!” in the music video for her latest single “Be Sweet.” Zauner, who has been performing under the moniker Japanese Breakfast, exalts in a new delightful direction—with a new book Crying in H Mart coming out in April and the release of her new album Jubilee slated to come out June 4. 

“Be Sweet” swings up from the songs featured on her last two albums Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet where Zauner dealt with the grief of losing her mother to cancer. She decided to switch gears into what would be an off-shoot of her new album’s name in finding joy and jubilance in life. “I feel very ready to embrace feeling,” she declared in a recent Pitchfork profile. The debut single is punched with feeling from the get-go; the trance-like bass (provided by co-writer Jack Tatum of Wild Nothing) and wavy shoegaze synths captivate within the intro of the song. When Zauner’s vocals enter, she presents a smooth outline of coolness: “Tell the men I'm coming / Tell them count the days.” She places confidence into the rolling words of the song—she’s taking no victims in regards to her happiness as she’s asking for one thing only. Once the chorus hits, it’s like the satisfying bite into a juicy fruit, a burst of bliss—the right kind of sweetness! 

Though the album moves into the lighter subjects that Zauner seeks, she does not stray away from her signature sounds and inspirations. “Everybody Wants to Love You” from her debut album delivers a similar funky feeling of pining, longing, and asking to get what you want from an elusive love interest. As a fan and purveyor of sci-fi culture, Soft Sounds from Another Planet was created as a “sci-fi concept album” with an example of Zauner professing her love to a fictional robot in the song “Machinist.” The chorus of “Be Sweet” obviously takes inspiration from the X-Files, a parallelism between her and Mulder wanting to believe in something beyond themselves. She once again as she soars singing an interpolation of the famous motto from the show: “I wanna believe in you / I wanna believe in something.” Zauner blends these interests so seamlessly into a sparkling and effervescent pop song that still wants to hold onto both fandom and the person she’s seeking. She strives to get whatever she wants, and in a sense, we can all believe in her.

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