Michelle Zauner shares the 'sage rock advice' Karen O gave her that changed her life

As a teenager, Japanese Breakfast's Michelle Zauner looked up to Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs not only as a female musician who knew how to rock a stage, but as a fellow half-Korean American woman.

"She was everything that any Korean mother tells you not to be," Zauner tells Q's Tom Power in a recent interview. "That was so exciting for me and a big reason why I think I felt the courage I did to start playing music."

In 2022, the Japanese Breakfast frontwoman got the chance to meet her hero when she opened for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs at Forest Hills Stadium in New York and later at L.A.'s Hollywood Bowl. The timing couldn't have been better for Zauner, who was desperately in need of a female role model who could help guide her through some big career changes.

Just a year earlier, in 2021, Japanese Breakfast found massive critical acclaim for their breakthrough album, Jubilee, which received two Grammy nominations. Zauner's debut book, Crying In H Mart: A Memoir, also became a surprise New York Times bestseller.

But all of that attention came at the cost of Zauner's mental and physical health. In her conversation with Power, she recalls feeling burnt out and scared about the new expectations she felt she'd have to live up to — so she took a break and moved to Seoul for a year to regroup.

"I didn't realize how much stress and pressure can manifest in the body," she says. "I thought I was struggling with some kind of illness, but then when I went to Korea for a year, all of that kind of reset and I realized how all of that was just mental, which was pretty wild."

The biggest takeaway from our conversations is not to be afraid to say no.- Michelle Zauner

By the time Zauner met O, she was feeling much more grounded, but she was grappling with how to balance her career as a touring musician with her desire to start a family. She says O was able to give her some "sage rock advice" about the power of a single word: "no."

"I think the biggest takeaway from our conversations is not to be afraid to say no," Zauner says. "She's so, so creative and no one is ever not going to wait around for her to do something, you know? So that was her big piece of advice: the power of no. And I think that was really hard for me as someone who came from a DIY background … because I said yes to everything."

Watch or listen to the full interview with Zauner to hear about her new chapter and new album, For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women), which is out now.

The full interview with Michelle Zauner is available on our YouTube channel and on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and follow wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Michelle Zauner produced by Vanessa Nigro.