March 21, 2025
Japanese Breakfast/YouTube
A young woman struggles in her relationship in the new music video for 'Picture Window' by Japanese Breakfast.
It's been almost four years since Japanese Breakfast dropped their last album, the Grammy-nominated "Jubilee." But the band made up for lost time Friday with a flurry of new releases.
The biggest was their fourth album, "For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women)," a moody collection of 10 tracks. A new music video for one of those songs accompanied the release.
In the video for "Picture Window," directed by frontwoman Michelle Zauner, a young woman drifts in and out of scenes with her boyfriend. The couple joyfully skips through a park, but there's tension and hesitation as they run across a bridge. While the woman sits alone on a fire escape, Zauner sings, "Do you not conceive of my death at every minute while your life just passes you by?" The woman later drops her boyfriend's hand and bolts down a Seoul sidewalk as the music swells. The video ends on her smiling alone by the water.
Zauner explained the idea behind the video in a statement.
"Ever since I was a young girl I’ve dealt with intrusive thoughts of loved ones dying horrible deaths," she said. "When someone is running late or they’ve neglected a text or even if they’re just looking over a balcony, my mind has a tendency to run to the worst case scenario, a reflex only exacerbated by my experience of many real deaths. It can be both a relief and a struggle to love someone who doesn’t share this same proclivity for anxiety. 'Picture Window' explores that dynamic.
"We shot the video while I was living in Seoul last year. My idea was to follow a couple, constantly tracking left to right, as one partner charges boldly forward and the other, progressively anxious, becomes increasingly reluctant to follow."
Japanese Breakfast, which formed in Philadelphia in 2013, will begin touring with the album Saturday at a sold-out show in New York City. The band will then play Coachella, several Southern states, Chicago and Toronto before a homecoming show at the Met Philadelphia on Friday, May 16.
The group also wrote a new song for the upcoming film "The Materialists." A trailer featuring snippets of the track debuted Tuesday.
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