What is ‘indie rock’? Is it truly free from the restraints of corporate record label mandates, or is it simply the audio equivalent of a finely assembled glossy fashion spread in a magazine? Commerce usually likes to think it can manage the tastes and inclinations of the record-buying public, but  in recent years some artists have challenged and expanded the pre-conceived notions of genre conventions that have been long populated (and dictated) by white people. Japanese Breakfast and Mitski are two artists adding their voices to the critical ongoing conversation on identity, diversity, and representation in the popular American music scene.

In the summer of 2022, with COVID 19 still a moving target, Boston is ready to risk it all.   This month and next, music fans can look forward to the strong return of two highly anticipated music festivals featuring two young singer/songwriters.  Japanese Breakfast is playing on the third day (May 29) of the 2022 “Boston Calling” festival, and the season finale (May 21) of NBC’s long-running comedy show “Saturday Night Live.” Mitski is playing July 26 at the Roadrunner Festival.

Michelle Zauner, despite her band’s name, is actually not Japanese. She is biracial, with a Korean mother and a Jewish-American father. Zauner was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1989 as Michelle Chongmi Zauner, where she stayed until her family moved to Oregon when she was nine months old. Her interest in music began at an early age– she began playing the piano at age five, although it wouldn’t be until a decade later that she began playing the guitar, which led to her start in songwriting.

Zauner’s music career began in her early twenties with Little Big League, which was a Philadelphia-based rock band. It struggled for five years before ultimately breaking up. She was also working on a different band around the same time, though, releasing a song with the now much more well-known band Japanese Breakfast in 2013.

Unfortunately, she had to take a break from music in 2014 when her mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and then passed away four months later. Songwriting became a way to communicate that grief, and Zauner released a solo album under Japanese Breakfast called Psychopomp through Yellow K records two months later. This would be a turning point in her career, and her popularity began taking off.

While Psychopomp was her way of expressing grief, she got even more in-depth about her identity and relationship with her mother in her 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart, based on a previous viral essay she wrote for the New Yorker.  She wrote about her grief in her book as well as her music, and it is clear through it how much she treasures her heritage. In a 2018 profile article by Emily Burack for heyalma.com, Zauner reflected on her life growing up in the predominantly white city of Eugene, Oregon:

             “In my adolescence I hated being half Korean. I wanted people to stop asking ‘Where are you really from?’ I could barely speak the language and didn’t have any Asian friends. There was nothing about me that felt Korean- except when it came to food.” Zauner clearly found her writing voice when she won a 2016 Glamour magazine essay contest for her piece called “Real Life: Love, Loss and Kimchi.” In it, she reflects on the power of Korean food and a message from her mother when it comes to finding your partner in life:

“[She told me to] …never  fall in love with anyone who doesn’t love kimchi; they’ll always smell it coming out of your pores.”

In the wake of her mother’s 2014 death, Zauner created Japanese Breakfast.  In a fall 2021 Pitchfork profile upon the release of her third album Jubilee and on the heels of her memoir’s release, Zauner reflected on mortality:

“Once death was really close to me, I suddenly became very fearful of it. I think that lit a fire in me like, What do you have to say before it happens?”

            In a 2022 Vanity Fair interview, Japanese Breakfast’s reflections of relief upon touring again probably echo many people, performers or not, eager to make steps into the “new normal” world of Covid mask wearing and vaccination cards:

“…It was tough to get confident again…I think we were all hoping to burst out into the world into this beautiful renaissance of freedom…it was more complicated than that.”

With a film adaptation of Crying in H Mart expected in the near future (from a script written by Michelle Zauner herself),  the future seems limitless for Japanese Breakfast as an important force in the music business.

          While Japanese Breakfast can be seen as a confessional, personal musical presence,  Mitski is much more private about her personal life. She is also biracial, half Japanese and half Caucasian. She was born in Japan in 1990 to a Japanese mother and an American father as Mitsuki Laycock. However, she has declined to give any further information about her family. What we do know is that she traveled frequently in her childhood, moving from Japan, Malaysia, China, Turkey and the Democratic Republic of Congo. She identifies as Asian-American, although she often felt like an outsider growing up due to her mixed heritage.

This feeling of not belonging is echoed in her music, the first album of which she first (self) released in 2012, titled Lush. She would attract a much wider audience in 2014 with her album Bury Me at Makeout Creek. After a break from music in 2019, she has continued to release music in the form of film soundtracks to singles. She often experiments with many genres of music, and her creative lyrics draw in many fans to her work.

Mitski was only 28 when her 2018 album Be The Cowboy was named (by Pitchfork) Album of the Year. NPR proclaimed her “the 21st century’s poet laureate of young adulthood.” In a move that was bold for any rising star in 2019, be they 29 or much older, Mitski stepped away from the spotlight and clarified her reasons to her 130,000 followers:

“I’ve been on non-stop tour for over 5 years, I haven’t had a place to love during this time…if I don’t step away soon, my self-worth/identity will start depending too much on staying in the game, in the constant churn.”

In a move that many stars much older probably couldn’t have so conclusively made, Mitski soon afterwards deleted her account. She moved to Nashville and by early 2022 released Laurel Hell, her most successful commercial album to date, with songs that are equal parts “sleek, danceable” and “eerie…dronelike.” It was definite proof that we all need to take a break to reassess our priorities.

One song emblematic of Mitski’s comments about Asian identity in a world that still seems to favor blonde white women is “Strawberry Blonde.” In a June 4, 2021 posting from June 4, 2021 (“Mitski, Misinterpretation, and Asian American identity,”) writer Shepherd Lee Wlliams notes that the bright, fun tone of the music is at odds with the message, which in fact is about “…how women of color are time and again seconded in favor of white women.” It’s a striking juxtaposition of tone and content that becomes all the more jarring when the listener considers Mitski’s lyrics of longing and desire:

“All I need darling/Is a life in your shape/I picture it, soft/And I ache.”

Rather than construct a pop song aimed towards a romantic ideal, she’s addressing her longing to be seen externally as an idealized woman. It’s a song like this that stands so striking and unique when compared with mainstream releases by mainstream female performers

Michelle Zauner was born to a Caucasian father and Korean mother and Mitski is the child of a Korean mother and Caucasian U.S. State Department father who was born in Japan but spent time in Turkey, China, and Malaysia. Both women represent a common thread for so many hyphenated American identities today. While we are more divisive than ever, Japanese Breakfast and Mitski are two artists who have lived in an indie-rock world and are taking huge, welcome strides to the mainstream.

SAMPAN, published by the nonprofit Asian American Civic Association, is the only bilingual Chinese-English newspaper in New England, acting as a bridge between Asian American community organizations and individuals in the Greater Boston area. It is published biweekly and distributed free-of-charge throughout metro Boston; it is also delivered to as far away as Hawaii.