By Andrew Stahl
Japanese Breakfast has always been a multi-cultural project; now it’s multi-lingual too. Frontwoman Michelle Zauner recently told Pitchfork that she “wanted to just explore a different part of me. I am capable of joy and I have experienced a lot of joy. All the songs [on their album Jubilee] are different reminders of how to experience or carve out space for that.” The new music video for “Be Sweet” delivers on that promise – it is unself-consciously silly and playful.
Recorded in Simlish and based on a recent Sims 4 expansion pack, the hyper-saturated video shows Zauner singing in a field, intercut with cows doing cow things like eating grass and wearing leis, singing “Bow wanna gweb so depwa / bow wanna gweeeeb” (“I wanna believe in you / I wanna belieeeeve”). Though the album’s second half gets somewhat darker than the first, for now, it seems, Zauner can believe.