Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast

00:00:15 Speaker 1: Pushkin. Michelle's Honor is the lead singer and creative force behind the indie dream pop band Japanese Breakfast. This year, Zanna released a series of career defining projects that propelled her band to widespread critical acclaim. Earlier this year, Zanna released her New York Times bestselling memoir, The Wildly Popular Crying in h Mark. The book, which began as a New Yorker essay, has since been optioned by MGM O'Ryan for a film adaptation. The book details Honor's time caring for her cancer stricken mother in the period after her mom's death when Michelle recorded Japanese Breakfast sublime debut Psychopon. 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 and PR and Billboard. On today's episode, Broken Record producer Lea Rose talks to Michell's Honor about her triumphant year and exactly how big she wants her band to become. Zanner also talks about casting the soprano star Michael Imperioli 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 liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmondson. Here's Leah Rose with Michelle's honor. You've had a really big year this year. You released Crying in h Mark 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. Yeah. 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 like so relieved and happy with the response. It's just definitely above and beyond all expectation the best way. But for the last seven years, really had a couple projects in the works really grounding me. And I do have the screenplay for Crying in h Mark, but that kind of feels like I'm revisiting something that I've worked on before. So yeah, I don't know. I was just telling my husband, I feel just really lazy because like 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, and I have a little bit of guilt that I'm just like, I just like, don't I want to just eat at restaurants and like chill for a while. 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 was just like part of it was like, I'm twenty five and if it hasn't happened for me yet after almost ten 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 wore to nine to five job without something else on the backburner creatively, and trying to do that very quickly revealed that I just feel so completely unfulfilled by that lifestyle. You know. I would work from in New York, like a nine to five job really is like eight to seven, and I would eat my little sweet green at my computer like everyone else, and I would leave just feeling like I did nothing. I just felt so completely unfulfilled every day. And even still when I did that, I realized, like, Okay, I need some kind of project, and I would go to Crown Heights like after work at seven, drive in rush hour traffic mix with Ned Eisenberg from like eight to midnight, and then go to bed because I just felt like I couldn't I couldn't sleep without doing something that day. And then I just got very, very lucky and really won the lottery with that album. Can you talk a little bit about how you started to record Psychopomp and how you eventually were able to get that out in the world. So my mom passed away in October twenty fourteen, and then I would say probably in December of that year. I stayed behind in Eugene for another six months to kind of just make sure that my dad was okay mentally and help him sort of pack up this house that they lived in for you know, fifteen years. And you know, it's just a really dark period of my life where I was just stuck in this house and in the woods with my dad's like oh the furniture and the decorations, where my mom's had to fold her clothes and put them away and sell things. It was just a really horrible, darkest period of my life. And you know, I needed like a little project to just like figure out what was going on. And there was this little shed at the bottom of the property my parents had, like you know, three to five acres like in the forest. When I was done for the day, I would like go down there and like write some songs. My husband was living with us and he played bass on the album. And then my my first boyfriend and good friend, Nicolae Gamer, who I talked about in the book. He was living in Eugene and he came and played guitar and introduced me to this guy, Colin Redman, who played drums and had a little bedroom studio, and so that became a way for me to kind of just like let off some steam and you know, kind of like figure out the things that I was feeling after this whirlwind six months of living in Eugene taking care of my mom who had stage four cancer. And you know, so I wrote Psychopomp and those guys helped me arrange it and played the other instruments, and then my husband and I moved to New York, I think in May or June of twenty fifteen, and the album needed mixing, and I had this college friend, Dad Eisenberg, who I thought was a very talented mixing engineer, and we actually started opening up those songs while I was working that nine to five job in advertising. Yeah, what I thought was going to be mixing ended up being like adding a lot of SyncE and speeding up songs and adding samples, and Ned really kind of revitalized an album that was maybe a little bit more straightforward. Did you love it? Were you proud of it? Like? What was your thought about it as you were mixing it and adding more to it? Yeah? I mean I think that Ned is a brilliant producer, and the stuff that we were doing there and even you know, when I was recording in the gene. I thought it was great. But I thought everything that I did was great, you know what I mean, Like my old band, I thought all of our albums were great and no one else really cared about them. So yeah, I thought that we made a great thing. When we were done, I like sent it out to all these tiny labels and no one wanted it. Everyone you know, passed on it. And then eventually I found this small label called Yellow K Records, and you know, they were interested in putting it out, and in my mind, I was like, Okay, we'll press five hundred copies and over the next ten years will like slowly sell that. And I told him straight up, like I'm not going to tour. I have this job, i've health insurance. I like I've done that. It's not it doesn't work. Like I'm over that lifestyle. I have to like focus on this. And he's like, okay, that's fine, and he was still willing to put it out and they got a PR person, Aloy, who's still my PR person. And you know, when he told me he was hiring a publicist, I was like, why, you know what a waste of money, Like, it's not going to do anything, and the record got great press, and I got offered the Mitzky tour. I had labels that were interested, and around that time, I had like a year end assessment of my progress at my job and I thought I was getting a raise, and they actually told me. I was like not doing what And so like the owner, I think he's kind of like a punk guy actually, and like I think he thought I was like funny, and I think he felt bad for me that I was so blindsided by this, you know, this end of the year progress part that he misspoke, I think. And he offered me a two month severance, which was crazy because I'd only been there for nine months, and like he was letting you go. Yeah, he was like if you're not happy, like if you're so surprised by this, like maybe it's not you know, you shouldn't you should go do something else or whatever. And so I took my paid Christmas vacation and around that time I had been offered all these cells by showcases. I thought about it. I came back and I was like, I'll take that two months everance. And in my mind I was like, Okay, well you have two months of pay to like see if this is going to turn into something and reassess, and then it ended up doing really well. We went to south By, we got signed, I got a booking agent, I got this you know, North American tour, and I never worked another job since then. So what do you think it was about the album that stuck this time? I don't know, you know, I think it's a There was a number of things. I think when you know, maybe I had just finally paid enough of my dues, Like maybe my name had kind of been like bubbling up, and there was a kind of clarity and focus that my other band before it didn't have, because I could kind of like be this directorial force that I had kind of you know, the band before it was kind of more of a democracy. It was like four people like you know, and I was kind of like writing music. Then that was a little bit harder. It was a little harder than what I wanted to make me or that what I or more naturally like comes out of me. I guess like I was in a band with three kind of dudes that came up in punk and hardcore, and I think that Japanese Breakfast I was able to kind of lean into like more pop sensibility, more indies, So it was just more listenable, more palatable. And yeah, I think also a narrative like came out, like when when we wrote a press release, like I didn't say anything about my mom passing away, but you know, as you can probably tell, like I'm a pretty open book, easy person to interview, and like I think that, you know, when people ask like what is the song about, I told them, you know, honestly, And that narrative kind of came out on its own, and I think that it resonated with people and that was part of it. And I just got lucky the right place right. Who knows why, but that's my theory. It's also very good. Yeah, I wouldn't chuck it all up to luck. The cover image is so arresting. It's just it sort of stays with you. It's a little bit mysterious, like what's going on here? How did you pick that image? And where did you find? I know it's your mom's in the picture, but how did you come across the image? I mean, first of all, I you know, was packing up the house and threw so much stuff away except for all the family photos. So I was like going through all these family photos all the time, and so they were certainly like top of mind, and it was also free, so I didn't have to hire anyone. It was just like the image. I like this image, you know. I think my mom looks so beautiful there, and like she's with her friend and she's around my age, you know when I lost her, and it really just looks like she is like in the sky, Like it looks like they're on a cloud and she's reaching for me. Yeah. Well, I mean I've done so many interviews that I haven't really talked about this, but like when I think about that album cover, like it does look kind of like it's a woman reaching down below from like a cloud or something, but it also looks like it's a woman like letting go of someone beneath, you know, And that's like just so much what that album is about. You know. I was like having all these dreams about my mom and it felt like it was her way of like reaching towards me or something. But it was also like, you know, about becoming an adult after like you like lose your parents maybe a little bit sooner than you're ready to, and yeah, like having to to Forgohn after that and being let go of So yeah, it felt like so fitting for that time and the themes on that record. She just paces Dais sniffs That's in Heaven from Japanese Breakfast debut album, Psycho Pomp. We'll be right back with more from Michelle's Honor after the break We're back with Lea Rose and Michelle's Honor of Japanese Breakfast for the second album, did you have kind of a creative frame for it? Did you have an idea of where you wanted to go? So we played south By must have been twenty sixteen, and everything exploded for me as an artist there. And I had this song Machinist. That was that song about it falling in love with the robot and in my mind, you know, after like doing all this press around Psychopomp, I was like, I don't want to talk about this ever again. I want to I don't want to write an album about grief. I need to like write an album about like a sci fi concept album that has nothing to do with my personal life and everything to do with like fiction. And I had kind of promised Dead Oceans, like I told them, you know, They're like, oh, you must have another album ready to go or something, and I had kind of lied and been like, oh yeah, like it's ready to go, sign me, you know. But it was kind of a good way to go about it because I, you know, I had all of the pressure of like a successful kind of debut that I was like, okay, like I need to avoid the sophomore slump. Maybe the best way to do that is just do it fast, like just right, you know what feels good to you immediately. But then when I started trying to go in on this like very heavy handed sci fi concept record, I was like, you know, your mom still just died, like that was like two years ago, and you're still going through a lot of these feelings. And I think I ended up being an album much more about this different type of grief. I was like kind of dissociating a lot. I felt very out of touch from reality and you know, kind of spacey. I guess. So I think that it's kind of like a very loose concept record about grief and mourning and kind of like removing yourself from feeling in this way. And I had kind of like a bad falling out with Ned Eisenberg, the producer who worked on Psychopomp, and I reached out to my friend Craig Hendricks, who ended up joining the live band, and he recorded my old band, Little Big League's first album, and the two of us like forged a really wonderful collaborative relationship from starting with that record. It was really a very insular process. It was very concentrated one month of like largely just writing, arranging recording in his little warehouse studio, like just me and him playing all the instruments and putting it together. And I felt like that's what I needed to kind of avoid the kind of pressures of the sophomore slump taking its toll on me. Yeah, I feel like your fashion really exploded between album two and three. And is that just because of like now you have access to more resources? Is it knowing more designers? How did that happen? And it's been so incredible to see, thank you? Yeah. I mean it started with just like needing something to wear. And a big change was I'm I started hanging out with cclu was my stylist, and she's you know, become a really good friend of mine, and the two of us like went from you know, begging small designers to loan to us, buying and returning a lot of stuff like and she just you know, I think she really introduced me to fashion in general as an art form. And I started actually really enjoying it and feeling really good wearing different things and it becoming a part of the show and having different themes for different eras. And you know, when I think about musicians like be York or David Bowie or you know, John or whatever, like it's nice for me that you can think of their album cycles, like what sort of era they're in, you know, getting to be a bigger artist, you just start to tear apart all of the details of like what can you add to make it better? You know, all these little things. It's not just like adding more musicians. It's not just like adding more instruments and like more like detailed analogue sound. It's also like what does the backdrop look like, what does the production look like, what does the lighting look like? What well people are looking at what we're wearing, what does that look like? Or like the drumhead or you know, the microphone decoration, whatever, like any detail like it just as this level of this heightened level of thoughtfulness, I like the idea of like integrating that and every single thing that we do, and so the wardrobe started to kind of take on that sort of meaning for me too. And the more that I learned about different designers and the more that Ceci kind of integrated me into that world, the more exciting and fun it was to kind of come up with more ideas and make that a part of the show. Yeah, it's so cool. Oh, thank you. So I just wanted to ask you specifically about a couple of the songs on Jubilee. Oh great, okay, So Tactics. Yeah, yeah, this seems to be new on Jubilee. There's string sections, and you talked about, you know, as your evolution as an artist went on, you started adding different elements into the scores, and this is just seems like a huge jump from psychopump. So where did the idea come from. Yeah? I started writing a lot more songs on piano for this album, and so Tactics was a song that started on the piano and I really wanted it to be this kind of Randy Newman type ballad, and Craig transposed the introduction that was originally played the piano to a string quartet and then he kept saying like he had this like Bill Withers beat in mind, and I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. This is a ballot. This is a Randy Newman ballot. And once I heard it, I was like, oh, that Bill Wither's beachs Like yeah, okay, that that makes complete sense. And that was sort of how that song came together. Cool. I feel like that song hasn't gotten it's too. That's one of my favorite songs on the record, and I'm surprised that more people don't gravitate towards it. And then Savage, Oh, yeah, if you could talk a little bit about the video too for that as well. Yeah, so Savage, good boy, I wrote after reading a news headline about billionaire's buying bunkers, and I thought, you know, that's a horrifying reality in my mind, Like that song is about a billionaire kind of coaxing a young woman to live with him in his bunker as the kind of as the world burns around them and global warming ticks over, and I think over time, it's kind of like revealed that this guy who just thinks that I'm just playing this game, you know, I'm doing what it takes to win. I'm doing what it takes to survive and protect my family. Over time, it just like that reality of just that mentality of hoarding wealth on such a high level reveals itself as a more and more menacing perspective. And so I wanted a very literal translation of that video. And I thought, you know, my dream savage good boy was Michael Imperioli because and we thought that, you know, my cinematographer and I love the Sopranos, and we followed him on Instagram and just saw that, you know, he was kind of in the scene like he's a big shoegaze fan, and he's brillianto most of Sumny and My Bloody Valentine, and I just thought that he might be down for a kind of, you know for him, probably very low budget music video appearance. And you know, he looks so great now and it's kind of like a different role for him, Like, you know, he's always been this kind of like working class, sort of tough guy, but he looks so handsome and like I think that you know, dressed up in that way, like he looks like he could be this other type of guy. And so I thought it would be fun to cast him. Really really lucky that he was in it because he's so great in it. What was it like to work with him? I mean, being a big fan of the Sopranos and then you're just like so physically close with him in while filming that video and you're like biting his neck like was that? Oh God? Yeah, it was great. I Mean he's a very generous person and a fantastic actor, and I'm really grateful that he had no ego and he would just you know, he really let me direct, you know, and he really took me very seriously, and you know, reassured me and many times to give him feedback and that he was going to take it seriously. And and you know, watch I was the first time I worked with a real actor really and a professional actor. And yeah, just seeing like the small variations that he made from take to take like and what he could give like was so fun, you know, to like watch a true actor work in that way. Was it hard to give him feedback? I mean it was it hard to articulate what you wanted. I had a real vision for it. The hardest thing was getting the blood to work to make the bite look believable. Was it in your mouth? It was in my mouth. And it was initially like I was trying to squeeze a bottle from off camera and the bottle got stuck, like the blood wouldn't come out, and actually, like during the first take, my brain kind of crossed wires and like I kept trying to squeeze the bottle, it wasn't coming out, and I was like, oh, it was on film, So I was like, oh, you're burning film. The come out, come out. And as I was clenching my hand down, my mouth also started clenching down. And I didn't realize until after the take that I had like accidentally bit the shit out of my imperial neck and he had this huge bite mark, and I was like, oh my god, I'm so sorry. Like now you think I'm just like weird, kinky, like freak trying to like get one in, and I like, I was like I was trying to explain to him, and he was very understanding, but I was like, I was just mortified because I was the last ache of the day and of course, and like you know, I was just like stressing about time and I just felt so bad. Wow, he's a trooper. Yeah, we'll have to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from Michelle's Honor. We're back with the rest of Leah Rose's interview with Michelle's Honor. Has it been performing shows? Did you feel like you were rusty at first when you were first performing? Yeah, definitely. And I think it was tough for me because I'm not the type of singer that like sings in my free time, you know, so getting my voice like back, and you know, you've been just like the swagger of being a front person after not talking to people and then suddenly seeing thousands of people watching you is really tough. And so I said, I think that the tour was really really hard for me to adjust. We were also, yeah, bigger group for the first time, bigger profile, bigger crowds, bigger venues, on a bus. It was a real adjustment and I felt a lot of performance anxiety that I never experienced before, just questioning if I deserved to be there, and you know, it was just a huge change. And also like my stamina I think has really suffered, and I feel like I've heard about this from a lot of people with any job. I just it's harder to do more than one thing a day. And it used to be I would work on my book or work on a soundtrack while on tour, I would multitask or be able to do press and stuff. And this time I just really I felt like I was on that show naked and afraid, like towards the end of the days, where people are like it's just not worth like exuding the calories to move and so you're just kind of like sitting still for a really long time to just survive. I felt like that where I just all I could do was play the shows and I could really just focus on surviving tour this past couple of runs. Yeah, So when you were just starting out and you were starting to do live shows, how did you think about what you were going to be like on stage? Who did you model yourself after, if anybody? I wanted to have like a kind of like orchestral classic element, Like I always think of my dream show as being as curated as like the b York Vesperutine shows with the choir from Greenland and the hard Player and mottin Muse, Like I would love to be able to get to the point where it can just be more and more creative and curated and inventive like that. But then there's also bands like Wilco or Death Cab who are these like rock bands who have had these really long careers with really diverse, ever changing albums, and I and just seem like there are bands that have really good head on their shoulders and are also kind of just always pushing themselves to do better. And so I feel like those are my two main models that I tried to go for as we get bigger. And then I've heard you talk also about Karen Oh how you really admired her growing up and your interview with her in interview was so great and so nice to hear you two connecting. Tell me a little bit about meeting her. Were you super nervous for that? Did it live up to what you were hoping that it would be. Yeah, I feel like that was my like meeting the president, like for other people, you know, Like I felt like that was the person I was the most nervous about meeting. And I feel I almost like didn't want to meet her because I didn't want to ruin my image of her or whatever my fantasy for we didn't meet in person because it was during the lockdown, and I didn't we zoomed, but it was just our voices, which I was kind of nice, honestly, because I feel like I could just really concentrate on the conversation and made it a little bit less nerve racking. But I also really appreciate that she's a very She's just a career of genius and my hero and so brilliant and intelligent, but she also is very nervous and relatable and earnest and uses a lot of filler and talks kind of like fast and jolty in the way that I do. So I think I felt kind of naturally pretty comfortable with her. It felt like we were kind of cut from a similar cloth. And she read my book and enjoyed it, and you know, it's very encouraging of me in the perfect way. And I wish I wish I had a full record. I did ask Interview to send me the recording, but I think they thought I was joking. I was like, I want to listen to this recording like every night when I fall asleep, because you know, I'm pretty sure at one point she called me like a singular artist, and you know, hearing your hero call you that or just appreciate your work. It's just a real career highlight dream come true. It was. It was everything that I wanted that conversation to be. I was really really lucky. That's incredible. Yeah, thinking about you watching Karen Oh when you were younger watching videos, it reminded me of in your book when you talk about when you finally started to tour after Psychopomp came out. You would see the like the sixteen year old girls and the audience who were looking up at you in wonderment and how much that meant to you. Can you just talk about sort of like that full circle moment. Yeah, I mean I would say that our demographic, more than other indie bands, has a lot more young Asian people, particularly young Asian girls. And yeah, I mean I think that people enjoy like seeing themselves, you know, and it's kind of like a rare thing when you're a minority in America. And yeah, I mean it's just a real honor. I've had a few young girls come up to me and say, you know, you're my care know and I can feel what you feel. And yeah, that's really strange coming from a place where you know, I talk about this in the book, but there was still this real scarcity mentality that I had to kind of tackle of just seeing this woman who inspired me to see myself represent sented in this very white, male dominated industry, and then also this feeling of insecurity that you know, oh, there's already one Asian American woman doing this, there's not really going to be room for another. It's exciting to see that change, and the younger generation have a lot more role models to look up to that look different. In your interview with Mark Ronson, you were talking about how you've never recorded in an actual big recording studio and worked with an outside producer. Is that something you're considering for the next project or do you think you'll sort of stay in line with what you've done with the past three Yeah. I think that that's actually a really exciting new terrain for me. You know, we did do our Spotify sessions in at Electric Lady and you know, which is a very legit studio, and I did record some strings and piano at this very nice studio called spice House Sound and Philly, and I think that those experiences were what led me to you know, gave me the experience of what it was like to record, like what makes a studio like that special. I had this moment where I was recording better than Mask for the Sable soundtrack, and I had recorded you know, ten to twelve vocal performances just on like an SM seven and my Apollo twin, and I had camped them together feeling like, you know, oh, it's the performance that really matters. And then I recorded a scratch vocal at spice House sound on like they're in very nice vintage Norman and these all these preampts, and you know, that scratch vocal sounded way better than any saying that I had come together. And I think that that was kind of a really eye opening experience, or like hearing what an acoustic guitar can sound like when it's engineered properly and electric lady, and you know, it's kind of like always like the simplest stuff like that that really you can hear the difference now, and I think that that's what's really So I'm really glad that I did the records that I did this way because I learned so much and I think maybe just like I have more reverence for studios now that I would I can afford to go in and record and bring this sort of elevated version of a new record too. It sounds like your voice is getting over the course of the three projects, like your voice is getting clearer and clearer and more upfront. Is that a conscious decision sort of? You know? I mean it's it's nice to hear you say that. I think that there are a couple of things, like, I think certainly the fidelity of our recordings improved over time. The budgets certainly improved over time. My knowledge and ears I think have improved over time. But I also think I've always been really shy about my voice. And I think touring for the last five years has made me a much more confident singer and performer. And I've gotten a lot. I've become a much stronger vocalist. I feel like that something I can personally really hear from album to album is just becoming you know. I think I've challenged myself more just the songs that I write. Yeah, I think I've just become a much better singer just because I do it every day, you know. And when I was younger, you know, I wasn't touring regularly and I had a lot less confidence in my voice. I've heard you talk about possibly wanting to make a more pop album at some point in the future. Absolutely, I think it was something I actually started to do on Jubilee More and you know, I have like dabbled in over time. Like you know, there's a song like called Kokemo, Indiana on Jubilee. You know, I'm a thirty two year old woman that's married and it's a very stable, generous relationship, but you know, no one wants to hear about that really, and like you know, Kokomo, I wrote from the perspective of a young boy living in Cookemo, Indiana who's saying goodbye to his high school sweetheart, who's moving to Australia for a study abroad program. That was the narrative in my mind. And I've certainly never been a young boy in Cocomo, Indiana, but I know what it's like to feel stuck in a small town. And I know I remember what it was like in high school when a relationship ended before you were ready, And so I wanted to write a sweet love song about just a boy that was like you know, I know this isn't forever, and you're about to go impress the whole world with the person that I fell in love with, And what if he could just be okay with that? What if you had the maturity at that age to just like have it and then let it go. So I feel like I've already started to write that way and it's been really fulfilling, and it can be just as moving or better. The Mask is a song I really love that I wrote for Sable and you know that has nothing to do with me, and I feel like that's the most compelling song I've ever written as an artist, truly, and I didn't put any any personal detail there and that is really exciting to me, and I think that I'm really looking forward to harnessing that more and more over time as a recording artist. What has been your biggest pinch me moment up until this point. There's so many things that happened this year that are totally unreal. I mean, the first one was the New York Times bestseller list. That was That's something that like, I'll always be that now, you know, I get buried with that, which is incredible that that was the first huge thing of the year. Yeah, Playing five nights at Union Transfer in Philadelphia. We sold out five nights at the venue where I used to work the coach Check and my old boss, Sean ackknew had had the coach check a big coach check painted sign that that's called Michelle's Honors CoA check now, which is incredible. And Yeah, Jeff Tweedy covering uh Cocoma Indiana was really a major pinch me moment. I've you know, Wilco is the perfect band. They are what I aspire my band to walk in the footsteps of. They're just a classically great and everyone loves them. And when I wrote Cocomo Indiana and we were coming up with a string arrangement for it, I mean we had a moment where we were like, is this too close to Jesus, etc? Like this is I mean, this is so inspired by just like the elegance of that arrangement. And when I wrote posing for Cars, I was like, I want this solo to feel like the solo and at least that's what you said. And so to see like my one of my songwriting heroes like cover my song was really wild and really really pinched me special. Yeah that's incredible. Yeah, three days from now, I'm gonna be covering Jesus Etcetera with him at ACL So that's like my big pitch pitch does my I'm in Austin early, so I'm really excited. But yeah, I've been practicing. I know Jesus Etcetera. I've like listened to as songs since I was a teenager, and like I actually walked down the aisle at my wedding too. She's a job like to a Wolco song, but I've known. I mean, Jesu et Cetera is like the biggest Wolca song and like I love that song. But even still, I'm like so nervous, like like what if I forget I thought you don't get nervous before a gigs, I weirdly do know. And I get really nervous about doing anything on other people's stuff because if it's my own thing, like I don't really care about messing it up because that's like just me. But if I'm doing something like for someone else's band, I get really nervous about it or even just like I was thinking, like I get really nervous about even just like sustaining a syllable for the right amount of time, like I don't want to like change the melody at all, you know, yeah, Or I don't want to say like so instead of this or you know what I mean, Like even like small changes that are so like negligible, Like I get like really anxious about like tampering with someone else's work in this way that I don't I don't care if I like, isn't that part of it? Like isn't that okay to sort of slightly change it internalize it? And I'm sure it is. I mean, like when he covered Kokemo, like he definitely like changed the melody, and I thought it was like, you know, it's like endearings, it's him, you know, and it's fun. But like as a young one being invited to do this huge thing, like I want to do it perfectly, and sometimes like that'll like really psych me out in this way that I don't get as nervous about for my own show. So are you guys going to be singing it together? You like trading off verses or how's it gonna I actually don't know. I have rehearsal and two day on Wednesday, and I guess we'll figure it out there. That was texting Jeff tweetie and I was like, I'll like sing the chorus with you or like I'll see you know, we treat verses, and he seemed to like really want me to like kind of take it over. He's like, oh, people are tired of hearing me sing my songs and I was like, no, they're not, okay, but yeah, we'll see what happens. I don't know, that's so excited. Yeah. So ultimately, when you think about your career and where you are now and what's happened just really over this past year, how big do you want to be? I think that, like my mentality is like I'm gonna push as far as I can go, just out of like curiosity of like how far we can go? Like how would I even be in control of that. I have to just do my best, and I'm curious about like making it as big as I you know, I could do this. Yeah, I think that like Mountieri does, like where it's just it's just him and he does all his own press and booking and you know, management and all that stuff. But you know, there's also like a curiosity that I feel like of just well, how far can it go? You know, like I never thought I would be in a bus, Like I never thought I would be playing five nights at Union Transfer. I never thought any of this stuff, and we're far beyond my wildest ambitions. Even as like a sixteen year old girl that knew nothing about the music industry, I never ever thought that I would make it this far. So I kind of just I'm always going to write music that's interesting to me. I'm always going to like follow like principles that are meaningful to me. But I also I'm very curious of just like well, I'm not going to like shy away from it getting bigger cool. Well, thank you so much for taking the time to day to talk. It was so much fun connecting. I've been like completely immersed in your world for the past month, so it's really nice to talk to you about I really appreciate it. This was so thoughtful and I really enjoyed my time here. Thanks for Michelle's honor for the insightful view into her creative evolution. You can hear a new album you Belie, along with our favorite Japanese breakfast songs at Broken record podcast dot com. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record, Broken Records, produced with helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, but engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer is Mia LaBelle Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content an uninterrupted ad free listening for four ninety ninety month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts subscriptions, and please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast staff. Our theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm justin Michmund