Everybody Wants to Love You
Japanese Breakfast
Everybody Wants to Love You is a two-minute burst of fuzz and nerve, the brightest thing on an album otherwise consumed by grief. The guitars are compressed and cheerful, the drums push slightly ahead of the beat, and the whole arrangement has the charming ramshackle quality of a record made quickly on limited means — Psychopomp was written while Zauner's mother was dying, and this song sounds like a young woman grabbing at aliveness with both hands. The lyric is a rush of flirtation escalating absurdly fast: can I get your number, can I get you into bed, will you marry me anyway — desire and dread of loss collapsed into the same breathless sentence. Her voice is buried a little in the mix, doubled and slightly distorted, more shouted than sung, which suits it. The video, with Zauner in a hanbok chugging at a wedding, made the Korean American specificity of her project legible early. It became her first genuinely viral song and remains the one that fills rooms live. Play it loud at the start of a night out, or whenever you need permission to want things too quickly.
fast
2010s
fuzzy, scrappy, bright
United States (Korean American)
indie rock, garage pop. lo-fi indie pop. giddy, urgent. A breathless rush of escalating flirtation collapses desire and fear of loss into the same sentence, never slowing down to resolve either. energy 9. fast. danceability 6. valence 7. vocals: buried in the mix, doubled, distorted, shouted more than sung. production: compressed cheerful guitars, drums pushing ahead of the beat, ramshackle lo-fi arrangement. texture: fuzzy, scrappy, bright. acousticness 2. era: 2010s. United States (Korean American). loud, at the start of a night out