1. Michelle Chongmi Zauner was born on March 29,1989 and is an American musician, singer, songwriter, and author, known as the lead vocalist of the indie pop band Japanese Breakfast.
42 Facts About Michelle Zauner
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Michelle Zauner's essays have been published in Glamour, The New Yorker, and Harper's Bazaar.
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Michelle Zauner released her first book, Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, via Alfred A Knopf in 2021 to commercial success and critical acclaim.
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Michelle Zauner has directed most of Japanese Breakfast's music videos; she has directed videos for American singer Jay Som and power pop band Charly Bliss.
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Michelle Chongmi Zauner was born on March 29,1989, in Seoul, South Korea, to Chongmi, a housewife, and Joel Zauner, a car salesman.
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Michelle Zauner's mother was Korean and her father is American of Jewish heritage.
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Michelle Zauner was raised in Eugene, Oregon, where the family moved when she was nine months old.
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At fifteen, Michelle Zauner asked her mother to buy a guitar.
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Michelle Zauner began taking weekly guitar lessons at The Lesson Factory, learning chords, and writing songs.
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Michelle 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.
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Michelle Zauner 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".
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In 2011, Michelle Zauner started the Philadelphia emo band Little Big League with Ian Dykstra, Kevin O'Halloran, and Deven Craige.
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O'Halloran and Michelle Zauner met in classes at Bryn Mawr; the two met Craige at a Post Post show and Dykstra at a party.
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In 2013, Michelle Zauner began recording songs that she released under the name Japanese Breakfast.
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Michelle Zauner left the band to return to Eugene to care for her mother, who had been diagnosed with stage IV squamous cell carcinoma.
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In 2015, dismayed by her lack of success in the music industry, Michelle Zauner took a job at an advertising firm in New York City.
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In January 2016, Michelle Zauner formed the band Dog Island with Alanna Nuala Higgins from the band Moon and Kat Casale, former drummer for Japanese American singer-songwriter Mitski.
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The band released no music; Michelle Zauner mainly focused on recording with Japanese Breakfast.
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Michelle Zauner had decided to quit music and not tour after releasing the album, but changed her mind after it received critical praise and more attention than she expected.
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On July 13,2016, Michelle Zauner won the 11th edition of the Glamour magazine essay contest with "Real Life: Love, Loss, and Kimchi", which discussed her mother's cancer diagnosis and death and the bond they shared over Korean food.
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Michelle Zauner said the essay was "largely about cooking along with" Korean-born American YouTuber Maangchi's cooking tutorials.
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Michelle Zauner was contacted by literary agents and publishing houses, which convinced her to write a book-length memoir.
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In 2020, Michelle Zauner formed BUMPER with Ryan Galloway of the band Crying.
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On June 7,2021, Orion Pictures announced that it would adapt Crying In H Mart into a feature film and pay Michelle Zauner to write the film's screenplay and supervise its soundtrack.
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On March 20,2023, Michelle Zauner said the film would be directed by Will Sharpe.
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In 2023, Michelle Zauner said she planned to move to Seoul in December to work on a new album and her second book, which is to document her experience in learning Korean for a year.
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Michelle Zauner grew up listening to Motown music, girl groups, and British-American rock band Fleetwood Mac, which she says inspired her to write pop music that is "interesting and has lyrical depth".
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Michelle Zauner has called the 1975 her "fave band" and contributed uncredited guest vocals to its track "Part of the Band".
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Michelle Zauner has called Bjork's discography "perfect" and said that Japanese Breakfast's third studio album Jubilee was inspired by Bjork's third studio album, Homogenic.
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Michelle Zauner decided to be a musician after watching a DVD of Korean-American musician Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
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Michelle Zauner said O "rejected the stereotype of meek Asian girls" and "'made music more accessible'" for someone who was like her.
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Michelle Zauner described the video for the Japanese Breakfast song "Boyish" as her "magnum opus".
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Michelle Zauner married her bandmate Peter Bradley in 2014, just two weeks before her mother's death from squamous cell carcinoma of the bile duct.
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Michelle Zauner wrote the Japanese Breakfast song "Till Death" as a love song and thank-you note to Bradley.
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Michelle Zauner has said that her relationship with her mother, and its end, inspired her to collect "evidence that the Korean half" of her identity "did not die" when her mother and aunt did.
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Michelle Zauner followed cooking tutorials from Maangchi, with whom she became friends.
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Michelle Zauner, who is not fluent in Korean, sometimes uses Korean phrases while speaking English.
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Michelle Zauner said that the Japanese Breakfast song "Everybody Wants to Love You" was written about her relationship with a woman.
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Michelle Zauner has said that she is estranged from her father, who lives in Thailand.
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Michelle Zauner spoke out on Twitter after the 2021 Atlanta spa shootings, expressing her anger and calling it important to acknowledge anti-Asian racism in the United States.
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In 2022, Michelle Zauner and Chicago-based Goose Island Brewery released a limited-edition lager at the Pitchfork Music Festival to raise money for the "Heart of Dinner" charity, which helps elderly Asian-Americans struggling with food insecurity.
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Michelle Zauner has said she hopes to inspire more Asian-Americans to be involved in music.