It’s been a grand slam of a week for Michelle Zauner.
The Grammy-nominated musician and author who performs under the moniker Japanese Breakfast performed the season finale of Saturday Night Live, got named as one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People of the Year, and just last night threw the first pitch at a New York Mets game at Citi Field.
And Zauner takes her baseball as seriously as her “piggy T’s.” After all, her last band was called Little Big League.
While Zauner wore her custom #69 Mets jersey with “JBREKKIE” emblazoned on the back, she was not-so-secretly rooting for the opposing team, the Philadelphia Phillies. “My socks / heart,” Zauner captioned a close-up of her ankles, which bore the Fightin’ Phils’ Phanatic.
My socks / heart pic.twitter.com/QCPMzvzqhs
— Japanese Breakfast (@Jbrekkie) May 27, 2022
During last week’s SNL finale, Japanese Breakfast played “Be Sweet” and “Paprika” from their acclaimed album, Jubilee.
Soon thereafter, SNL‘s Emmy-winning castmember Bowen Yang provided some context about why Zauner was the perfect choice to close out the season in an admiring tribute:
My first exposure to Michelle was seeing her dressed in a Korean hanbok, shredding guitar while sitting on an 18-wheeler. I immediately knew I would be obsessed with this person. Her recent output has been just as thrilling and affecting. Crying in H Mart is a memoir I will never forget, and the Japanese Breakfast record Jubilee captures joy in its true, ephemeral spirit. Like all her work, they are beautiful conduits for empathy.
This is what makes Michelle so incredible to me and many others. While she intertwines the threads of her art into perfect plaits, she lets us find something in our own lives, a new strand with which to adorn ourselves. It doesn’t get better than that. Everybody wants to love her.
