Michelle Zauner

Michelle Chongmi Zauner (born March 29, 1989) is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author, known as the lead vocalist of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast. Her 2021 memoir, Crying in H Mart, spent 60 weeks on The New York Times hardcover non-fiction bestseller list. In 2022, Time named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world under the category Innovators on their annual list.

Zauner has performed music since her youth and was a member of the Philadelphia-based emo band Little Big League, with whom she released two albums, These Are Good People (2013) and Tropical Jinx (2014). In 2013, Zauner began to release music under the name Japanese Breakfast, and has released four studio albums to date: Psychopomp in 2016, Soft Sounds from Another Planet in 2017, Jubilee in 2021, and For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women) in 2025. Also as Japanese Breakfast, Zauner wrote the soundtrack for the 2021 video game Sable. Zauner's essays have been published in Glamour, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar.

Life and career

1989–2011: Early life and projects

Michelle Chongmi Zauner was born on March 29, 1989, in Seoul, South Korea, to Chongmi, a housewife, and Joel Zauner, a car salesman. Her mother was Korean and her father is American of Jewish heritage. In the memoir, she writes "Growing up in America with a Caucasian father and Korean mother, I relied on my mom for access to our Korean heritage."

Zauner was raised in the university town of Eugene, Oregon, United States where the family moved when she was nine months old.

Growing up, Zauner and her mother visited their family in Seoul most summers.

At fifteen, Zauner asked her mother to buy a guitar. She began taking weekly guitar lessons at The Lesson Factory, learning chords, and writing songs. Her first songs were about "friendships and their fallouts." She began playing at local open mic nights and at performance venues around Eugene under the name Little Girl, Big Spoon, much to the chagrin of her mother, who hoped that her daughter would not pursue a career in music. As Little Girl, Big Spoon, Zauner self-released a CD entitled Boats to Boxes. She began advertising her music around Eugene and frequently played at the W.O.W. Hall as an opening act for singers such as Mike Coykendall, M. Ward, and Maria Taylor. Zauner also played at school benefits. Her musical activities strained her relationship with her mother, which caused Zauner to become depressed during senior year at South Eugene High School.

Zauner attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where she created an independent major in creative production and became fond of authors such as Philip Roth, Richard Ford, and John Updike. She preferred to write fiction to avoid writing about her mixed-race identity as a Korean-American, believing that if she did, she would be playing the "race card". In the fall of 2008, Zauner joined fellow Bryn Mawr students Marisa Helgeson, Casey Sowa, and Riki Gifford-Ferguson to form Post Post, an indie pop band that rehearsed in Helgeson's dorm. Post Post released an EP, Meta Meta, on September 4, 2009, through the label Awkwardcore Records. Zauner also played in a band called Birthday Girlz; the band released one album, Bear Country, around 2009. She graduated from Bryn Mawr in 2011, then waited tables and worked at Philadelphia music venue Union Transfer's coat check while trying to get her music career off the ground.

2011–2016: Little Big League and Japanese Breakfast

In 2011, Zauner started the Philadelphia emo band Little Big League with Ian Dykstra, Kevin O'Halloran, and Deven Craige. O'Halloran and Zauner met in classes at Bryn Mawr; the two met Craige at a Post Post show and Dykstra at a party. On April 1, 2012, the band released an eponymous EP. Fronted by Zauner, it recorded music for its debut studio album in Craige's studio, at Berk's Warehouse in Philadelphia, wrapping in January 2013. The album was released on the Tiny Engines label as These Are Good People on August 6, 2013, and the band launched a tour. These Are Good People spawned the single "My Very Own You".

In 2013, Zauner began recording songs that she released under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has said she picked the name after seeing a gif of Japanese breakfast, because she thought that Americans consider it to be "exotic." In June 2013, Zauner and musician Rachel Gagliardi of the duo Slutever recorded and posted one song a day on the Tumblr blog rachelandmichelledojune. On July 1, she released the songs on Bandcamp as the album June. As Japanese Breakfast, Zauner also participated in a song project with musicians Eskimeaux, Florist, Frankie Cosmos, and Small Wonder, who posted songs daily on the Tumblr blog may5to12songs in May 2014. On June 6, 2014, she released her songs as the Japanese Breakfast album Where Is My Great Big Feeling? on Bandcamp. On July 24, she released another album, American Sound. She rereleased both in late July on cassette tape as American Sound/Where Is My Great Big Feeling?.

Also in July 2014, Little Big League and rock band Ovlov co-released an EP, Split, on the Tiny Engines label. Later that year, they signed with Run for Cover, which released the band's second and final album, Tropical Jinx, in October. To promote the album, the band toured alongside Ovlov and punk-rock band Mannequin Pussy, including a concert at Shea Stadium, a Brooklyn DIY venue. Zauner left the band to return to Eugene to care for her mother, who had been diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma.

In 2015, dismayed by her lack of success in the music industry, Zauner took a job at an advertising firm in New York City. During her free time, she recorded songs about her mother's death as a way to cope with her grief.