Pushkin

Michelle Zonner is the lead singer and creative force behind the indie Dreampop band Japanese Breakfast.

This year Zonner released a series of career-defining projects that propelled her band to widespread critical acclaim.

Earlier this year, Zonner released Her New York Times best-selling memoir The Wildly Popular Crying in H. Mar.

The book which began as a New Yorker essay has since been optioned by MGM O'Rhyne for a film adaptation.

The book details Zonner's time caring for her cancer-stricken mother in the period after her mom's death when Michelle recorded Japanese breakfast sublime debut, Psycho Pond.

Shortly after Michelle's book came out, Japanese breakfast released their third and most ambitious album, Jubilee.

It has been named one of the best albums of the year by the Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Billboard.

On today's episode, Broken Record producer Leo Rose talks to Michelle Zonner about her triumphant year, and exactly how big she wants her band to become.

Zonner also talks about casting the soprano star Michael Imperiali in her video for Savage Good Boy, and why she ended up going a little too far in the video's neck-biting scene.

This is Broken Record, line of notes for the digital age. I'm Justin Richmond.

Here's Leo Rose with Michelle Zonner.

You've had a really big year this year. You released Crying in H. Mar in April. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list for several weeks, and then your third album, Jubilee in June.

And the album's doing really well. Are you thinking about your next writing project, or is it more of a next album?

Yeah, I feel pretty fried, to be honest. It was a really overwhelming year, and I'm so relieved and happy with the response.

It's just definitely above and beyond all expectation in the best way.

For the last seven years, I had a couple projects in the works, really grounding me. I do have the screenplay for Crying in H. Mar, but that feels like I'm revisiting something that I've worked on before.

Yeah, I don't know. I was just telling my husband I feel just really lazy. For the first time, I'm just like, I don't have this drive to Juggle Three projects the way that I did for the past few years. I have a little bit of guilt that I'm just like, I just don't want to eat at restaurants. I'm like, Jill Burl-Oil.

Yeah, I heard you say that you're in a stage right now where you're just sort of an empty vessel, and you're just looking around and you're thinking. So when you first started out, and you were in some of your early bands, and you would play music for your mom, or you would talk to your mom about it.

It seemed like she hoped it was just a passing phase, and you would kind of come to your senses and get a nice stable job. That did happen for a period of time after your mom passed away.

You know, once things started to pick up with PsychoPomp, did you ever consider just giving it all up for that reason? Yeah, I think that was part of what moving to New York and getting a job was. Part of it was like, I'm 25, and if it hasn't happened for me, after almost 10 years of doing the grind, that's probably not going to happen.

You know, and it's time to give it up. I'd never actually like worked at 9 to 5 job without something else on the backburn or creatively, and trying to do that very quickly revealed that I just feel so completely unfilled by that lifestyle.

...