Jubilee (Japanese Breakfast album)

Jubilee has been labeled as an alternative pop,[9][10] dream pop,[11] and indie pop record.[12] Zauner has described the album as being about joy.[13] This is in contrast to her previous two albums, Psychopomp and Soft Sounds from Another Planet, both of which had prevalent themes of grief surrounding her mother's death from pancreatic cancer in 2014.[14]

Zauner took music theory lessons and studied piano in preparation for Jubilee. She noted "I was just able to incorporate more interesting chord changes and write more on piano for the first time."[15]

The first song written for the album was "Be Sweet", which Zauner wrote with Wild Nothing lead singer Jack Tatum years before Jubilee's release. "I’ve been holding onto it for so long and am so excited to finally put it out there," she said.[16]

The first single, "Be Sweet", and its self-directed music video were released on March 2, 2021. In The X-Files-inspired video, Zauner and Marisa "Missy" Dabice act as FBI Agents tracking aliens.[17] To promote the album, on March 15, Japanese Breakfast performed the songs "Be Sweet" and "Jimmy Fallon Big!" on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.[18][19]

The second single, "Posing in Bondage", and its music video were released on April 8, 2021. The video, also directed by Zauner, depicts her entering a grocery store late at night while covered in blood. The store is empty except for a single employee, played by Harmony Tividad.[20]

The third single, "Savage Good Boy", was released on May 19, 2021.[21] Zauner said in a statement about the song, "'Savage Good Boy' came from a headline I read about billionaires buying bunkers. I was interested in examining that specific type of villainy, and I found myself adopting the perspective of a rich man coaxing a young woman to come live with him underground, attempting to rationalize his almost impossible share of greed and miserliness".[22] The video, directed by Zauner, features actor Michael Imperioli and is a prequel to the previous video for "Posing in Bondage". In it, Imperioli plays the billionaire in a bunker, with Zauner as the young woman he has convinced to live underground with him.[23]

Japanese Breakfast performed three songs from the album on CBS This Morning, the day after the album's release.[24] A version of "Be Sweet" with vocals in the fictional Simlish language is included in the eleventh expansion pack for The Sims 4, Cottage Living, released on July 22, 2021.[25]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
AnyDecentMusic?	8.5/10[26]
Metacritic	88/100[27]
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[28]
Clash	9/10[29]
DIY	[30]
Exclaim!	9/10[31]
The Independent	[10]
NME	[32]
Pitchfork	7.8/10[33]
Rolling Stone	[34]
The Skinny	[35]
Slant Magazine	[36]
Uncut	7/10[37]

Jubilee was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 88, based on 19 reviews.[27] Zack Ruskin of Variety wrote in his review that the album "takes all the things that have always served Japanese Breakfast well – Zauner's awareness of her voice and how best to deploy it, her knack for narrative and story as well as great hooks – and offers them fresh soil in which to grow".[38] Clash magazine's Sam Walker-Smart found Zauner to be "fully unshackled for the first time, keeping the emotive core of her songwriting and marrying it with boundless energy and ambition".[29] Sean Kerwick of DIY also observed maturation in the singer, describing her as "older and wiser with melody, lyrics and storytelling pulling focus" with results that establish her as a dominant "creative force".[30] "Each track is a confined attempt at gaiety, a succinct story in service of this greater mission of uninhibited emotion", Exclaim!'s Alisha Mughal wrote, adding that the emotion is "ultimately, hopefully joy".[31] Tom Hull was somewhat less impressed, regarding the album's first half as "glorious pop", but concluding that the rest "tails off a bit".[39]

All lyrics were written by Michelle Zauner.

Credits are adapted from the album's liner notes.[52]