“Orlando in Love,” might be the best song about a man falling in love with a siren that I’ve ever heard. “Orlando in Love” is Japanese Breakfast’s latest single and it’s a perfect reminder of why I love this band in the first place.
Japanese Breakfast was formed in 2013 by lead singer and frontwoman Michelle Zauner. The band has released three studio albums to date, with “Psychopomp” in 2016, “Soft Sounds from Another Planet” in 2017 and “Jubilee” in 2021. “Orlando in Love” is the first single from their upcoming album, “For Melancholy Brunettes (& Sad Women),” which will be released on March 21, 2025.
Like many, I first stumbled upon Japanese Breakfast after reading Zauner’s amazing (and often melancholic) memoir, “Crying in H Mart,” which chronicles the relationship between Zauner and her mother before the latter’ untimely death in 2014. The memoir is haunting, beautiful and brimming with humanity and heart. It deserves an entire article in its own right, so I will keep my opinion of it brief here. In short: go read it.
I’m no music expert, but I can confidently say that there is no other band quite like Japanese Breakfast. After devouring “Crying in H Mart,” I couldn’t get enough of their music, which is laced with many of the same themes as Zauner’s memoir, from the grief-infused “In Heaven,” the longing in “Posing in Bondage” and the joyous glee in “Be Sweet.” They’re a band that I can listen to in any mood, which is something I can’t say for most other artists. Their music has made me cry, laugh and want to run in a field with my arms wide open in a Hallmark-esque movie.
“Orlando in Love” strikes a tone similar to its unique nature. Unlike “Jubilee,” which is about, well, jubilee, “Orlando in Love” and the “Melancholy” album as a whole, are about sadness. And yet, while it would be easy to make a song about a man dying as a result of his love for this siren, this isn’t a song that I would sob to. Instead, I’m enthralled by how ethereal it is. As always, Zauner’s voice is hypnotic; I could listen to her sing for hours on end (and I have) and never get bored of it. She acts as a narrator here, giving us Orlando’s tale with her usual flair. Her melodic voice, along with the classical violins, the acoustic guitar and a plethora of instruments that I don’t know the name of but that sound gorgeous, lull us into a sense of security and contentment, just as the siren lulls Orlando into his hypnosis.
The lyrics themselves are also impeccable. If they weren’t set to music, they would work perfectly on their own as a poem, with sweet similes and melodic metaphors. Zauner writes, “She came to him from the water/Like Venus from a shell/Singing his name with all the sweetness of a mother/Leaving him breathless and then drowned.” For me, this imagery brings to mind classic poetry, like what a Romantic like Shelley and Wordsworth would write, or perhaps the Ancient Greek tales that invented siren mythology in the first place. I’m not a music expert, so I don’t think that I can say specifically what attracts me to this song. Perhaps it’s Michelle Zauner’s perfect voice, the impressive instrumentation or the storytelling nature of the song.
Knowing Japanese Breakfast, it’s probably all of the above.