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Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner has opened up about finally getting to perform at Glastonbury – after the band were forced to pull out in 2023.
The group were scheduled to play The Other Stage that year, but had to cancel their set after experiencing “travel delays”.
“We hustled out of Luxembourg at 9pm, woke for customs at 3am, and again for a 6am ferry, hired an additional driver to floor it to our 12:30pm set and due to various travel delays out of our control we are just not able to make it in time,” Zauner shared on social media at the time. “We are devastated. I’ve always wanted to play Glastonbury and we did everything we could to be there. Hopefully we will be back for another year.”
Speaking to NME backstage at Glastonbury 2025, Zauner reflected on that experience and finally getting to play at the hallowed festival. “It was a major bucket list two years ago. And in the history of Japanese Breakfast, it’s also the only show that we’ve ever not been able to play because of something that we’ve done,” she said.
“[Playing today] was hard won. Our bus broke down in Sweden a couple days ago and we still don’t have a working bus. It’s a really intense, hard time for our band and crew, but we did it and it felt really hard won.”
Japanese Breakfast released their latest album ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women)’ earlier this year. In a four-star review, NME assessed: “True to the literary whimsy of its title, ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women)’ sounds like living inside a classical piece of art, every detail an elaborate brushstroke.”
Since the record’s release, the band have also contributed a new song, ‘My Baby (Got Nothing At All)’, to the soundtrack of Past Lives director Celine Song’s new movie, Materialists.
“It’s really fun because it’s such a fun assignment,” Zauner told NME at Glasto of writing for film. “I think especially ‘For Melancholy Brunettes (And Sad Women)’, our new record, it’s a very moody and, at times, difficult album; a very sombre record. So to follow that classic pop structure was really fun to get to return to this year.”
Zauner has also collaborated with Korean indie band Silica Gel on their upcoming single, ‘南宮Fefere’. “ I was so honoured that they tapped me to do a feature with them,” she said. “I spent the last year living in Korea and studying Korean. Everyone was always like, ‘When are you going to write your Korean song?’ And so I wrote Korean lyrics for the first time, and that will be debuting next month.”
Speaking about her time in Korea, the musician added that she “100 per cent” felt like she had made a new community within the music scene there. “There’s a lot of creativity over there, and I’m excited to see it make more waves,” she said.
Check back at NME here for the latest news, reviews, interviews, photos and more from Glastonbury 2025.
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