Japanese Breakfast – “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” (Yoko Ono Cover)

Japanese Breakfast leader Michelle Zauner had an insanely busy 2021: A great album, a bestselling memoir that’s being adapted into a film, a video-game soundtrack, a couple of big Grammy nominations. It doesn’t look like she’s about to slow down anytime soon, either. Today, Japanese Breakfast have shared a new song. It’s a lovely, stripped-down version of a song that Yoko Ono wrote before Michelle Zauner was born.

Ono’s “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” comes from Season Of Glass, the 1981 album that she released just a few months after the murder of her husband John Lennon. As with many of the album’s songs, “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” works as a heartbreaking farewell to Lennon. It’s simple and personal and devastating.

Japanese Breakfast recorded their version of “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” for Ocean Child, the forthcoming Yoko Ono tribute album compiled by Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard. (We’ve already posted David Byrne and Yo La Tengo’s take on “Who Has Seen The Wind?“) On the cover, Zauner sings over nothing but a piano. If anything, that simplicity makes the song’s pathos hit even harder. Below, listen to Zauner’s version of “Nobody Sees Me Like You Do” and the Yoko Ono original.

Ocean Child: Songs Of Yoko Ono is out 2/18 on Canvasback Music. Pre-order it here.