11 Best Japanese Breakfast Songs: Indie Gold

Quick Comparison Table

I’ve been spinning music professionally for over two decades, and few artists in the indie space have grabbed me by the collar the way Michelle Zauner has with Japanese Breakfast. When I first heard Psychopomp come through my headphones in 2016, I actually stopped what I was doing mid-set prep and just listened — something that doesn’t happen all that often after twenty years. The 11 best Japanese Breakfast songs I’ve pulled together here represent the full arc of one of the most compelling careers in modern indie music.

What makes Zauner’s project so remarkable is the way it refuses to stay in one emotional lane. She can gut you with grief one moment and get you bouncing off the walls the next. As a DJ, I’m always hunting for artists who can shift energy in a room without losing the thread, and Japanese Breakfast does exactly that across three studio albums that each feel like a completely different chapter.

This list is ordered from the most globally recognisable tracks down to the deeper cuts that deserve way more shine than they get. If you’re new to Japanese Breakfast, start at the top and let it wash over you. If you’re already a fan, maybe you’ll find a fresh perspective on a song you thought you knew.

Table of Contents

1. Everybody Wants to Love You — Japanese Breakfast

2. Paprika — Japanese Breakfast

3. Be Sweet — Japanese Breakfast

4. Posing in Bondage — Japanese Breakfast

5. Savage Good Boy — Japanese Breakfast

6. Soft Sounds from Another Planet — Japanese Breakfast

7. The Body Is a Blade — Japanese Breakfast

8. Kokomo, IN — Japanese Breakfast

9. Road Head — Japanese Breakfast

10. Boyish — Japanese Breakfast

11. In Hell — Japanese Breakfast

List Of Japanese Breakfast Songs

1. Everybody Wants to Love You — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: This jangly, sun-drenched earworm is the song that introduced the world to Michelle Zauner’s effortless pop genius and it still sounds as fresh as the day I first dropped it.

📅 2016 · 🎵 Jangly indie pop · ▶️ 12M views · 🎧 45M streams

Everybody Wants to Love You appeared on Japanese Breakfast’s debut album Psychopomp, released in April 2016 on Yellow K Records. The album was originally conceived as a home-recording project while Zauner was dealing with her mother’s terminal illness, making its bright, buoyant sound all the more extraordinary in context. It’s one of those records where joy and sorrow are so tightly braided together that you can’t pull them apart.

The track itself rides a gloriously loose guitar riff that nods to the jangly post-punk of The Feelies and early R.E.M., layered over a rhythm section that just swings. Zauner’s vocal delivery is deceptively casual — she sounds like she’s telling you something obvious when she’s actually landing something deeply bittersweet. The production has a warm, slightly hazy quality that makes it feel like a memory even on first listen.

I have played this song at the start of more than a few DJ sets, in that golden hour slot when the room is just finding its feet. Every single time, I watch people’s heads start nodding within the first eight bars. It has that rare quality of feeling instantly familiar even to someone who has never heard it before, which is the holy grail of a set opener.

The song became a slow-burning viral hit, racking up impressive streaming numbers for an independent debut from an artist who had been largely underground. It helped land Japanese Breakfast on the radar of tastemaker outlets like Pitchfork and NPR Music, setting up the platform Zauner needed to reach a much wider audience with subsequent releases.

2. Paprika — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: A sweeping, orchestral anthem about the joy of artistic creation, Paprika is the rare song that genuinely earns every single one of its grand gestures.

📅 2021 · 🎵 Orchestral indie pop · ▶️ 18M views · 🎧 85M streams

Paprika opens and closes Jubilee, Japanese Breakfast’s third studio album released on Dead Oceans in June 2021. Zauner has spoken extensively about how Jubilee was conceived as an album about joy — a conscious choice after the grief-saturated Soft Sounds from Another Planet and the video game soundtrack work that preceded it. Paprika is the album’s mission statement, a celebration of the creative act itself.

Musically, the song is a masterclass in controlled escalation. It opens with delicate piano and Zauner’s intimate vocal before slowly building through strings, brass, and layered harmonies into something that feels genuinely cinematic. The chord progressions borrow from classic orchestral pop but the arrangement is thoroughly modern, and the way the whole thing crests in the final chorus gives me goosebumps every single time I hear it.

As a DJ who has spent years studying how to build energy in a room, I find Paprika endlessly instructive. Zauner does in four and a half minutes what it takes me an hour to do across a whole set — she creates anticipation, delivers on it, and then surpasses the expectation entirely. I keep this one in my headphones on long drives when I need to remember why music matters.

Paprika earned widespread critical acclaim upon release, with many reviewers naming it one of the best songs of 2021. It contributed significantly to Jubilee landing on dozens of year-end best-album lists and helped Japanese Breakfast receive Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Music Album at the 2022 ceremony.

3. Be Sweet — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: Slick, danceable, and wrapped in the glossiest synth-pop production of Zauner’s career, Be Sweet proved she could make a flat-out banger without sacrificing any of her artistic depth.

📅 2021 · 🎵 Synth-pop · ▶️ 22M views · 🎧 110M streams

Be Sweet was the lead single from Jubilee, dropping in February 2021 and immediately announcing that this new era of Japanese Breakfast was going to be bigger, bolder, and significantly more fun than anything that came before. The song was co-produced with Zauner’s longtime collaborator Jacob Portrait, and it shows the duo firing on all cylinders with a sound that sits comfortably alongside the great synth-pop of the 1980s while sounding unmistakably current.

The production is genuinely stunning — a punchy, pulsing bassline anchors a track loaded with crisp drum machine hits, shimmering keyboards, and guitar work that cuts through the mix like a knife. Zauner’s vocal is effortlessly cool here, slightly detached in a way that perfectly mirrors the song’s lyrical tension between desire and self-protection. The chorus is one of the most purely satisfying musical moments in her entire catalogue.

I’ll be honest: when Be Sweet dropped, I had it in a DJ set within forty-eight hours. It’s the kind of track that fits perfectly in that sweet spot between indie and dance, which is territory I love to inhabit. The crowd response every time I’ve played it has been immediate and physical — people just start moving, and that’s the highest compliment a DJ can pay a song.

Be Sweet became Japanese Breakfast’s most commercially successful song to that point, crossing 100 million Spotify streams faster than any other track in the catalogue. Its accompanying music video — featuring Zauner in a high-octane action sequence — received considerable attention and helped cement the broader mainstream breakthrough that Jubilee would deliver.

4. Posing in Bondage — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: A hazy, gorgeous piece of dream pop that showcases Zauner at her most hypnotically understated, Posing in Bondage is the kind of song that wraps around you like fog.

📅 2020 · 🎵 Dream pop · ▶️ 5M views · 🎧 30M streams

Posing in Bondage was released in late 2020 as part of the Sable EP, a companion piece to Zauner’s work on the video game Sable. The project was a significant departure — purely instrumental and ambient in places — and it showed a side of Japanese Breakfast that was meditative and patient in a way her full albums hadn’t always prioritised. This track stands out as the most song-shaped piece on the EP.

The production is wonderfully spacious, built on layered synth pads and a guitar tone so clean it almost sounds like a music box. Zauner’s voice sits low in the mix, almost conversational, which creates an unusual intimacy that a lot of louder production would simply erase. There’s something deeply cinematic about the whole thing, like a soundtrack cue that got accidentally beautiful.

In my years behind the decks, I’ve learned to treasure songs that slow a room down without losing it entirely — tracks that create space for people to breathe and feel. Posing in Bondage is exactly that kind of song, and I’ve used it as a late-night wind-down track more times than I can count. It’s the sonic equivalent of watching the city lights from a quiet window at 2am.

The Sable EP was critically appreciated as an interesting detour in the Japanese Breakfast catalogue, and Posing in Bondage was frequently highlighted by reviewers as the emotional centrepiece. While the streaming numbers are modest compared to the Jubilee material, its reputation among dedicated fans is outsized, and it frequently appears on fan-compiled playlists as a hidden gem.

5. Savage Good Boy — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: A scathing, satirical art-rock romp that demonstrates Zauner’s wicked sense of humour and her ability to wrap sharp social commentary inside an absolutely irresistible groove.

📅 2021 · 🎵 Art rock · ▶️ 8M views · 🎧 40M streams

Savage Good Boy sits in the middle of Jubilee and serves as one of its most unexpected and delightful moments. The song is written from the perspective of a fabulously wealthy, morally bankrupt man essentially trying to buy love, and Zauner delivers it with a straight face that makes the whole conceit even funnier and more uncomfortable. It’s the kind of character study that would feel at home on a Pulp or early Blur record.

The musical arrangement is gleefully theatrical — there’s a stomping, almost glam-rock quality to the rhythm, and the string arrangement in the bridge is the kind of thing that makes you laugh and nod in appreciation simultaneously. Zauner’s vocal performance is perfectly calibrated between earnestness and camp, walking a tightrope that could easily tip into parody but never does. It’s genuinely difficult to write something this pointed while keeping it this fun.

What I love about this track from a DJ’s perspective is how disarming it is. I’ve used it in indie-leaning sets as a palette cleanser, a moment of levity that still has enough musical substance to keep things moving. Audiences who’ve been feeling the emotion of a set suddenly find themselves grinning, and that tonal shift keeps a night feeling dynamic rather than one-note.

Savage Good Boy was widely praised by critics as one of the standout moments on Jubilee, with many noting its sophisticated political underpinning beneath the playful surface. Its music video — featuring Zauner opposite a gleefully monstrous male lead — reinforced the song’s satirical message and generated significant social media conversation around its release.

6. Soft Sounds from Another Planet — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: The title track from her most ambitious early album, this sprawling space-pop meditation proves that Zauner was already thinking on a cinematic scale years before Jubilee made it obvious.

📅 2017 · 🎵 Space pop · ▶️ 6M views · 🎧 28M streams

Soft Sounds from Another Planet is the title track and centrepiece of Japanese Breakfast’s second album, released on Dead Oceans in July 2017. Where Psychopomp was raw and intimate, Soft Sounds was deliberately more expansive — sonically and thematically — with Zauner exploring grief, memory, and the strangeness of continuing to exist after loss. The album was partly inspired by science fiction, and this song captures that otherworldly quality better than any other track.

The production is genuinely ambitious for an indie record of this vintage. There are layers of synthesiser that feel genuinely cosmic, sitting beneath guitar work that occasionally erupts into something fierce and distorted before retreating back into the drift. Zauner’s vocal here is one of her most controlled performances — cool and slightly detached, as if she’s observing her own emotions from a safe distance.

I’ve always been drawn to music that sounds like it’s arriving from somewhere else, and Soft Sounds from Another Planet sits in a lineage that includes Cocteau Twins, early Beach House, and Broadcast. As a DJ who cut his teeth on late-night electronic sets, I hear the connections to ambient music in this track, and I’ve occasionally used it to bridge a more atmospheric section of a long set.

Soft Sounds from Another Planet was reviewed as a significant artistic step forward for Japanese Breakfast, with Pitchfork naming the album one of the best of 2017. The title track was particularly noted for its sonic ambition, and it helped establish Zauner as an artist working at the intersection of indie rock, pop, and genuinely experimental sound design.

7. The Body Is a Blade — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: An aching, chamber-pop gem that cuts deeper every single time you hear it, The Body Is a Blade is Japanese Breakfast at their most emotionally precise and musically graceful.

📅 2017 · 🎵 Chamber pop · ▶️ 4M views · 🎧 22M streams

The Body Is a Blade is one of the emotional peaks of Soft Sounds from Another Planet, arriving in the album’s second half with a kind of quiet devastation. The song deals explicitly with grief and the physical sensation of loss — Zauner has described the experience of bereavement as feeling like something sharp living inside the body, and the imagery throughout the lyric is visceral without ever becoming gratuitous.

Musically, the song leans into chamber pop influences more overtly than most of the Soft Sounds material. There’s a restrained string arrangement that swells at exactly the right moments, and the rhythm section plays with a lightness that keeps the song from becoming oppressive despite its heavy subject matter. Zauner’s vocal performance is perhaps the most emotionally naked thing she committed to tape during this period of her career.

Twenty years of DJing teaches you to read a room’s emotional temperature, and The Body Is a Blade is the kind of song I reach for when I want to honour the more complex feelings in the air — not the euphoria, not the sadness, but that strange middle space where both live at once. I’ve played it at listening events and intimate shows, and it never fails to create a moment of shared stillness.

The song contributed to the broader conversation around Soft Sounds from Another Planet as an important document of grief in modern indie music, sitting alongside Michelle Zauner’s later memoir Crying in H Mart as evidence of an artist working through profound personal loss with extraordinary artistic discipline. It remains one of the most discussed tracks in the deeper Japanese Breakfast catalogue.

8. Kokomo, IN — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: A wistful, quietly devastating indie rock song about leaving home and the complicated feelings that come with it, Kokomo, IN is one of Jubilee‘s most underrated gems.

📅 2021 · 🎵 Indie rock · ▶️ 5M views · 🎧 25M streams

Kokomo, IN appears near the end of Jubilee and functions as a kind of emotional exhale after the album’s more theatrical moments. Named after the city in Indiana rather than the famous Beach Boys tropical fantasy, the song is a meditation on place, identity, and the strange nostalgia of somewhere you’ve never actually been. Zauner has discussed how the American Midwest holds a particular kind of melancholy for her, and this song captures that sentiment beautifully.

The arrangement is one of the more straightforwardly indie-rock moments on Jubilee, with guitars doing the heavy lifting over a steady, unhurried drum pattern. There’s an almost Midwestern emo quality to the sound — shades of Bright Eyes or early Rilo Kiley — that feels intentional and affectionate rather than derivative. The song breathes in a way that the more maximalist tracks on the album don’t, and that restraint is its own kind of power.

I’m a sucker for songs that make geography feel emotional, and Kokomo, IN does that in spades. There’s something about the way Zauner sings about a place she’s imagining rather than remembering that gets me every time — it speaks to that very human habit of projecting meaning onto landscapes we’ve never visited. I’ve listened to this one on more than a few long drives through parts of the country that feel exactly like this song sounds.

While Kokomo, IN didn’t receive the same level of mainstream attention as the lead singles from Jubilee, it became something of a fan favourite and appeared frequently on critical year-end track lists. Its understated quality has given it a longevity in the catalogue that flashier songs sometimes don’t sustain, and it remains one of the most shared tracks among the Japanese Breakfast fan community.

9. Road Head — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: Raw, restless, and powered by a guitar riff that could strip paint, Road Head captures the scrappy, unfiltered energy of early Japanese Breakfast at its most urgent.

📅 2016 · 🎵 Lo-fi indie rock · ▶️ 3M views · 🎧 18M streams

Road Head is one of the most viscerally energetic tracks on Psychopomp, arriving with a swagger and a rawness that sets it apart from the album’s more melancholic moments. The song crackles with the kind of restless energy that only comes from making music in a specific emotional moment — Zauner has described the Psychopomp sessions as simultaneously therapeutic and chaotic, and Road Head sounds exactly like that.

The guitar work here is genuinely exciting — distorted, slightly unwieldy, and absolutely alive in the way that overproduced indie rock so rarely manages to be. The rhythm section plays with an urgency that borders on aggression, and Zauner’s vocal rides the chaos with a looseness that suits the song perfectly. It’s the kind of track where the rough edges aren’t production mistakes; they’re the whole point.

As a DJ who came up playing everything from punk to house music, I have a deep and abiding love for songs that just go. Road Head is that song in the Japanese Breakfast catalogue — the one where the craft and the wildness are in perfect, slightly uncomfortable balance. I’ve used it as a bridge between smoother material and more aggressive indie tracks, and it always hits like a jolt of electricity.

Road Head helped establish Japanese Breakfast’s early reputation as a live act with real teeth — not just a bedroom project, but something that could translate into physical, room-filling energy. While its streaming numbers are modest compared to the later catalogue, it remains a concert favourite and a track that longtime fans cite as proof that they were there from the beginning.

10. Boyish — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: A shimmering, nostalgic piece of dreamy indie pop that showcases Zauner’s gift for melody at its purest, Boyish is the kind of song you fall in love with slowly and then can’t stop thinking about.

📅 2017 · 🎵 Dreamy indie pop · ▶️ 7M views · 🎧 35M streams

Boyish was released as a single ahead of Soft Sounds from Another Planet and became one of the most beloved tracks in the early Japanese Breakfast catalogue. The song deals with a relationship defined by power imbalance and longing, but Zauner wraps the emotional content in a production so warm and inviting that the ache sneaks up on you. It’s a quintessential example of her ability to make something painful feel beautiful rather than bleak.

The production has an almost sun-bleached quality, with guitars that chime and shimmer over a rhythm section that keeps things grounded without ever feeling heavy. There’s a classic quality to the melody that makes it feel like it’s been around forever — the mark of a genuinely great pop song. The bridge in particular is a small masterpiece of tension and release, arriving exactly when the song needs it most.

I discovered Boyish in the run-up to Soft Sounds and played the pre-release single in a few sets before the album dropped. The response from audiences who didn’t know Japanese Breakfast was consistently one of recognition — people would lean in, cock their heads, and look around like they were trying to figure out where they’d heard it before. That sense of instant familiarity is one of the rarest things a song can achieve.

Boyish remains one of the most streamed songs from the Soft Sounds era and was widely cited when Zauner’s profile rose dramatically around the publication of Crying in H Mart in 2021. New listeners discovering Japanese Breakfast through the memoir frequently cited Boyish as the song that fully converted them, which speaks to its remarkable accessibility without any compromise of depth.

11. In Hell — Japanese Breakfast

🎯 Why this made the list: Closing this list with one of the darkest corners of the catalogue, In Hell is a gothic, unsettling piece of indie pop that proves Zauner has always had a restless experimental streak running beneath the melodic surface.

📅 2017 · 🎵 Gothic indie pop · ▶️ 2M views · 🎧 12M streams

In Hell appears in the back half of Soft Sounds from Another Planet and represents one of the album’s most sonically adventurous moments. The song operates in a space that feels genuinely unsettling — there’s a dissonance in the production that sits just below the threshold of comfort, and the lyrical content explores a kind of spiritual despair that Zauner rarely revisits with this degree of directness. It’s a genuinely brave piece of music.

The production choices are fascinating — the track uses a combination of treated vocals, unconventional rhythmic patterns, and textures that blur the line between pop music and something more experimental. You can hear echoes of art-pop predecessors like Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson in the approach, though the execution is thoroughly Zauner’s own. It’s the kind of track that rewards close listening through headphones rather than speakers.

In twenty years of DJing, I’ve learned that the songs that unsettle me slightly are often the ones I return to most obsessively. In Hell is exactly that kind of song in the Japanese Breakfast catalogue — a track that sits in a corner of the catalogue feeling slightly apart from everything else, daring you to come closer. I keep it as a personal listening experience rather than a DJ tool, which is its own form of respect.

In Hell is not among the most-streamed Japanese Breakfast tracks and rarely appears in mainstream discussions of the catalogue, which is precisely why I wanted to include it on this list. Among the most dedicated fans and serious music listeners, it’s consistently held up as evidence that Zauner’s artistic ambitions have always exceeded what any one album can fully contain. It’s the kind of deep cut that turns casual listeners into true believers.

Fun Facts: Japanese Breakfast Songs

Everybody Wants to Love You — Japanese Breakfast

Lo-fi origins: The entire Psychopomp album, including this track, was recorded in Michelle Zauner’s childhood bedroom in Eugene, Oregon while she was caring for her terminally ill mother.

Paprika — Japanese Breakfast

Grammy nomination: Paprika contributed directly to Jubilee earning a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album at the 64th Grammy Awards in 2022, the first nomination in the Japanese Breakfast catalogue.

Be Sweet — Japanese Breakfast

Action hero video: The Be Sweet music video, directed by Bradley and Pablo, features Zauner in full action-movie mode as a secret agent, a visual concept she has described as a deliberate embrace of pure, uncomplicated fun.

Posing in Bondage — Japanese Breakfast

Video game connection: This track was composed as part of Zauner’s work scoring the open-world adventure game Sable, making it one of the few Japanese Breakfast songs with a direct connection to interactive media.

Savage Good Boy — Japanese Breakfast

Character inspiration: Zauner has cited the song’s morally bankrupt narrator as a composite of various real-world examples of extreme wealth and entitlement she observed during Japanese Breakfast’s rise through the music industry.

Soft Sounds from Another Planet — Japanese Breakfast

Sci-fi influence: Zauner has mentioned reading classic science fiction extensively during the writing of this album, with the title track directly inspired by the emotional resonance she found in stories about isolation and distance in space.

The Body Is a Blade — Japanese Breakfast

Memoir connection: The visceral body imagery in this song closely prefigures the language Zauner would later use in her bestselling 2021 memoir Crying in H Mart, suggesting the song served as an early articulation of ideas she would fully develop in prose.

Kokomo, IN — Japanese Breakfast

Not that Kokomo: Zauner has confirmed in interviews that the song is entirely unrelated to the Beach Boys hit Kokomo and is instead inspired by the emotional geography of the American Midwest as an imagined rather than experienced landscape.

Road Head — Japanese Breakfast

Live favourite: Despite its modest streaming numbers, Road Head has been a consistent part of Japanese Breakfast’s live setlist since 2016 and is frequently cited by concertgoers as a highlight of the live show.

Boyish — Japanese Breakfast

Breakthrough single: Boyish was the first Japanese Breakfast song to receive widespread radio play on college and independent stations across the United States, functioning as many listeners’ introduction to the project.

In Hell — Japanese Breakfast

Art-pop lineage: Zauner has cited Kate Bush as a specific influence on the production approach of In Hell, making it one of the most direct examples of the art-pop lineage that runs beneath the more accessible surface of the Japanese Breakfast catalogue.

Those are eleven songs that, taken together, map the full terrain of what Michelle Zauner has built with Japanese Breakfast — from the raw bedroom grief of Psychopomp to the orchestral ambition of Jubilee. This is one of those catalogues I genuinely believe will be talked about for decades, and I’m grateful every time I get to introduce someone to it for the first time. Keep listening, keep digging, and I’ll see you on the floor. — TBone

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most popular Japanese Breakfast song of all time?

Based on streaming data and cultural impact, Be Sweet holds the crown as the most commercially successful Japanese Breakfast song, having crossed 100 million Spotify streams and introduced millions of new listeners to Michelle Zauner’s work. However, Paprika arguably carries greater critical weight and is the song most frequently cited in year-end lists and retrospective discussions. As a DJ, I think Everybody Wants to Love You is the one that best captures the essence of what the project is all about.

What makes a great Japanese Breakfast song?

The hallmark of the best Japanese Breakfast songs is the tension between beauty and pain — Zauner has an extraordinary ability to wrap difficult emotional content in arrangements that feel warm, inviting, and sometimes outright joyful. There’s also a consistent melodic intelligence at work; even the more experimental tracks have hooks buried in them that reward repeated listening. What separates Japanese Breakfast from peers in the indie space is that the craft never feels like a shield for the emotion — it feels like the emotion’s most honest expression.

Where can I listen to Japanese Breakfast music?

All three studio albums — Psychopomp, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, and Jubilee — are available in full on Spotify, Apple Music, and Tidal, along with the Sable EP. YouTube has official music videos and live performances from festivals including Coachella and Glastonbury that are absolutely worth your time. If you ever get the chance to see Japanese Breakfast live, do not hesitate — Zauner and her band are one of the best live acts working in indie music today.

Who are the most famous Japanese Breakfast artists?

Japanese Breakfast is fundamentally the project of Michelle Zauner, a Korean-American musician, writer, and filmmaker who grew up in Eugene, Oregon. While the project functions as a full band in live contexts — with collaborators including Peter Bradley on drums — Zauner is the creative centre around whom everything orbits. Beyond music, she is also known as the author of the bestselling memoir Crying in H Mart, which brought an enormous new audience to her music in 2021.

Is Japanese Breakfast popular outside the United States?

Japanese Breakfast has built a genuinely international following, with particularly strong audiences in the UK, Australia, South Korea, and across Western Europe. The project’s name — which Zauner has said refers to a specific type of meal aesthetic rather than any direct cultural reference — has occasionally created curiosity in East Asian markets, and Zauner’s Korean-American heritage has resonated strongly with diaspora communities worldwide. Festival appearances at events like Glastonbury and Primavera Sound have helped cement the project’s status as a global indie act rather than a purely American phenomenon.