
Japanese Breakfast - For Melancholy Brunettes ( & Sad Women )
For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) is the fourth studio album by Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner), released March 21, 2025 via Dead Oceans. It marks a return to more introspective territory after Jubilee (2021), leaning into melancholy, longing, myth, and narrative rather than pure cathartic joy.
This is also her first “proper studio” album in a full professional studio setting, produced by Blake Mills.
Themes & Sound
Melancholy & Desire: The album deals heavily in states of longing, temptation, retribution, and reflection. Zauner has said it emerges from cycles of “temptation, transgression and retribution.”
Literary, Mythic, Gothic References: Myth and classical mythology show up (“Leda,” etc.), along with gothic romance, and literary figures. For example, Men in Bars features Jeff Bridges, and Magic Mountain references Thomas Mann’s novel.
Contrast of Beauty & Grief: Even as she leans into sadder emotional territory, there's a sense of creating something beautiful — strings, careful arrangements, poetic imagery. Melancholy isn’t just despair, but a kind of awareness of both loss and beauty.
Sound & Production: More guitar-focused in parts than Jubilee, richer layers, studio polish, orchestral touches.
Reception
On Metacritic, it scored around 80/100—generally favorable reviews.
Metacritic
Critics praise it for its maturity and emotional depth, though some say the album feels “sketch-like” in places—beautiful moments, but not always fully realized.
Some standout praise for tracks like Picture Window, Honey Water, Leda, Orlando in Love.
Track Listing
- Here Is Someone
- Orlando in Love
- Honey Water
- Mega Circuit
- Little Girl
- Leda
- Picture Window
- Men in Bars (feat. Jeff Bridges)
- Winter in LA
- Magic Mountain
For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women) feels like Japanese Breakfast embracing her duality: the public and the private, the mythic and the mundane, the longing and the acceptance.
Zauner turns sad girl tropes on their head—there's irony, there’s self-awareness. The album title itself nods to cultural tropes surrounding women when they express grief or melancholy. But the music doesn’t stay trapped in sorrow—it acknowledges it, gives it shape, lets beauty sneak through.
In many ways, this is her most literate album. She isn’t only reflecting on personal loss (which has been a through-line in her earlier work) but on cultural expectations, myth, and the way stories of desire often come with costs. The result is intimate yet expansive, melancholic yet full of small raptures.
If you like, I can pull up a track-by-track deep dive for this album, or compare how this one builds on or diverges from Jubilee or Soft Sounds from Another Planet.