CULTURED’s second annual CULT100 issue spotlights 100 names across five generations who are shaping our culture in real time. Some members of the list are household names; others have been working behind the scenes to make possible the encounters that stop us in our tracks. They are all thinking big, sharing generously, and embodying courage. We hope their work makes you a little braver, too. Order your copy of the CULT100 issue here.
In 2012, Michelle Zauner was looking for a name for her new band. While scrolling through pictures of small portions of rice, miso soup, and salmon—a Japanese breakfast, so distinct from the excesses of a typical American spread—she thought the name might stir something in a country with an enduring appetite for palatable forms of otherness. Now, Zauner is a two-time Grammy nominee whose memoir, Crying in H Mart, spent a whopping 60 weeks on the bestseller list. Many of her casual listeners might still be surprised to find that she is, in fact, Korean.
It’s ironic, since Zauner’s heritage—she was born in Seoul to a Korean mother and American father, who raised her in Oregon—is central to all that she creates. Last year, she left her current home base in New York for Seoul, with the goal of immersing herself in the language of her birthplace.
While there, she directed music videos for her latest album, last month’s For Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), with all-Korean crews—a test of her burgeoning fluency. “It’s hard enough to communicate in your native tongue. Especially with art, where you’re creating something that doesn’t exist,” she tells me, calling in from Los Angeles, where she’s beginning to promote the album. The experience will eventually be the subject of a yet-undated second book.
The album is Zauner’s first since 2021, when she released Japanese Breakfast’s breakthrough record, Jubilee, and her bestselling prose debut, which charts her repeated visits to the cult Korean grocer H Mart following her mother’s death. In the span of a year, Zauner went from indie upstart to a staple of the mainstream music and literary circuits—an exhilarating and all-consuming crash course in hyperexposure.
The now-36-year-old mentions a dinner party around that time where the filmmaker Cameron Crowe, an idol of Zauner’s, leaned over to recite a line of her book back to her. “Who writes like that? You write like that!” he exclaimed. “That was maybe one of the top five moments of my life,” she recalls animatedly.
Zauner’s genre funambulism echoes the latitude of artists like Patti Smith, whose M Train and Just Kids share many of the same bookshelves as Crying in H Mart. The tomes are more than memoirs penned by musicians—they’re snapshots of the cultural moments that sparked them, and glimpses into the emotional topographies of the artists who soundtracked those periods.
In 2021, Zauner was reaching for levity in the midst of grief, and the resulting Jubilee was shot through with the same unwavering optimism and sugary sweet production of K-pop bands that, though wholly distinct from Zauner’s sound, had begun to familiarize American audiences with Korean culture, the absence of which Zauner felt acutely growing up. That album was a salve during a hard time, and Crying in H Mart’s intimate depiction of losing and finding one’s own culture hit stands at a moment when audiences seemed particularly hungry for “diverse” voices—a now-dubious appetite when our current political framework prizes conformity.
On For Melancholy Brunettes, Zauner follows this darker turn to its inevitable end. “Plotting blood with your incel eunuchs / I could be the home you need,” she laments on “Mega Circuit,” an account of hitching oneself to a young radical. The 10-track record explores the seductive nature of ambition and vice—and in the wake of Zauner’s sharp ascent, fame.
Poets are called to sea by sirens, spouses slink off into infidelity, and on one track, Jeff Bridges laments the insidious dangers of “Men in Bars.” “I was looking at people in my life succumbing to some sort of temptation or wanting too much,” she says. “I think it’s partially my age. I’m reflecting on the future in a somber way. It’s not necessarily negative, it’s just a fixation on the passage of time.”
Prior to her stint in Seoul, Zauner spent three years touring Jubilee. Earlier this spring, she headed back out on the road in a country that’s revealed itself to be a starkly different cultural landscape since the last time she traversed it. By the time you read this, the musician will be somewhere between the Deep South and Canada, two seeming antipodes in our political climate. But Zauner is no stranger to confronting dichotomies.
“Who am I to leave behind,” she and Bridges harmonize on “Men in Bars.” “We built this / And even when it breaks apart / It’s ours.”
THE CULT100 QUESTIONNAIRE
What is your trademark?
Happy slash sad.
What keeps you up at night?
Evil.
What’s something people get wrong about you?
My persona is more wholesome than I actually am.
Name an influence of yours that might surprise people.
Describe a recent crossroads at which you found yourself.
Living in Korea and not wanting to come back.
When you were little, what were you known for?
Being loud. And clumsy, hitting my head a lot.
What do you want to see more of in your industry? Less of?
I love [sound] engineering becoming a more diverse field. I'm really glad that it's becoming a less white male-dominated field. [Less] misogyny, sexism, transphobia, and bigotry in art spaces.
What question do you ask yourself most often while you’re making work?
Is this good?
If you could attribute your success to a single quality, what would it be?
Stupid hard work. Just a stupid amount of effort. Tenacity.
What’s one book, work of art, or film that got you through an important moment in your life?
In 2023, I read Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain. I wanted to read it while we were touring Switzerland and funnily enough, it's about a man who intends to visit his cousins at a sanatorium in Switzerland and winds up staying there for 12 years. I got terribly sick while I was reading it and wrote a song that ends my new album, called “Magic Mountain.”
What do you want next for yourself, above all else?
Artistic fulfillment and happiness.
Creative Direction by Daphné Mookherjee
Hair by Gor Duryan
Makeup by Natsuki Oneyama
Set Design by Julia Zagury
Production by Management Core
Production Assistance by Sandra Soltane
Hair Assistance by Lucile
Lighting Assistance by Kazo Digital
Special Thanks to Samira Simon and Lucile B
