FEATURE:
Major Feelings
PHOTO CREDIT: Olivia Lifungula for The New York Times
Saluting the Incredible Rina Sawayama
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I will end with a playlist…
PHOTO CREDIT: Han Yang for Who What Wear
featuring some of her best songs, as the amazing Rina Sawayama celebrates her birthday on 16th August. There are a few reasons why I want to discuss Rina Sawayama. In addition to it being her birthday soon, she has made the music news recently. One big reason is that she has called out another artist on the Dirty Hit label, Matty Healy. The 1975 lead is not short of controversy. This is not the first time that Sawayama has taken a shot against Healy. Here is a history of their changing relationship. It is clear that, whilst Matty Healy has some musical influence and has been important when it comes to the career of artists like Rina Sawayama, he is someone who needs to be taken to task. With so many different controversies surrounding him, he is still seen in the media as a bit of a hero. Not many articles take against him or ask him to explain himself. Since he was exposed for making racist and sexist comments he has, rather weakly, said he will change – that he is not that same person as he was then. I don’t think many people believe that for a second! There is a lot about him that is quite unsettling. Whilst many do love the music of The 1975 and they are a very popular band, how many high-profile artists like Healy are challenged and punished for their problems and controversies?! Rina Sawayama recently called out Healy again during a recent performance:
“During her Glastonbury performance, Rina Sawayama took a moment before playing her song "STFU" to address controversial comments that Matty Healy had recently made.
“I wrote this next song because I was sick and tired of microaggressions," she said. "So, tonight, this song goes out to a white man who watches [pornography series] Ghetto Gaggers and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough."
In a fan-captured video during their performance at TRNSMT Festival on Sunday (9 July), in the part of The 1975's set where Healy begins to say something controversial before being cut off by his bandmates, he appeared to acknowledge Sawayama's video.
Towards the end of "STFU", with the intro of Limp Bizkit's "Break Stuff" playing in the background, Sawayama spoke out against Healy for the second time.
“So I was thinking a lot about apologies. It’s just funny how some people get away with not apologising ever, for saying some racist shit, for saying some sexist shit... Why don’t you apologise for once in your life without making it about your fucking self?”.
Not that this applies only to male artists, but there is a certain leeway applied to them if they are accused or racism, sexism or misogyny. Whilst there is plenty of judgment and attack against Healy on social media, there is not a huge amount of condemnation from the industry. Not too many other artists calling him out. That seems a shame! Not that he is being protected but, as a famous artist, is there this sense that he is untouchable and is just being a Rock star?! That is just his way, isn’t it?! He is this rebel and outspoken figure, so what does it matter if he does a few things that raise eyebrows?! This does seem to be such a casual attitude from many. I don’t think it should take a labelmate like Rina Sawayama to almost stand alone in the industry in challenging Healy. There are other artists around at the moment who are equally unpleasant and offensive. It annoys me how it is always women who have to challenge and speak about male artists’ offenses and prejudices. There does seem to be more awareness from male artists and other men in the industry – even if there have been a few that have come out and spoke against Matty Healy. Rather than make this all about one musical minnow, I wanted to celebrate Rina Sawayama. She is an amazing and inspiring artist who, in 2020, was excluded from the Mercury Prize shortlist and BRIT nominations for her debut, SAWAYAMA. The rules have now changed, so that artists who have been a resident in the U.K. for five years or more, even if they are not a British citizen, are eligible.
That means, I think, that artists such as BC Camplight are eligible for Mercury inclusion. I hope that he is, but I am not 100% sure about how long Brian Christinzio has resided in Manchester. I suspect that it is more than five years now. He would be eligible (“2.1 Artists must be of British or Irish nationality. Artists are considered to be of British or Irish nationality if (i) they hold a passport for either the United Kingdom or Ireland and/or were born in the United Kingdom or Ireland (“British” or “Irish” respectively) or (ii) they have been permanently resident in the United Kingdom or Ireland for more than 5 years”). I now need to revise my Mercury predictions list, as BC Camplight’s The Last Rotation of Earth would be eligible and worthy. Whereas Rina Sawayama was excluded in 2020, she is obviously eligible now. I think that her second album, Hold the Girl, is going to be one of the dozen shortlisted. It is surely going to be one of the favourites if it makes the list! One of the best albums of last year, it confirmed that she is one of our very best artists. I wanted to highlight her amazing work. Hold the Girl is an album that you really do need. I want to quote a review for that album, before getting to a recent interview. This is what CLASH said about the awe-inspiring Hold the Girl:
“Rina Sawayama is an artist consistently pushing the boundaries of what pop music can be, blending a myriad of styles from hyperpop to nu-metal, all while juggling collaborations with everyone from Elton John to Charli XCX. Debut album, 2020’s ‘SAWAYAMA’, encapsulated this genre-fluid ideology and was executed extremely well. Critical acclaim ensued, among Mercury Prize dramata. 2022 delivers (the dreaded) sophomore LP ‘Hold The Girl’, which is once again an album that refuses to play by the rules and has Rina Sawayama doing whatever she wants. And the result is one of the best pop records of the year.
‘Hold The Girl’ ignites with sombre opener ‘Minor Feelings’, which shows Sawayama crooning over delicate guitars and synths, before exploding into an anti-climax. No loud drums or screaming guitars solos like we’ve become familiar with (see debut opener ‘Dynasty’), but a choral-tinted outro (very of the time). It transitions into the title track ‘Hold the Girl’ via some fountain sounds, and the title track has Sawayama kicking the pop factor to one hundred. Centred around a 2-step rhythm and classic garage vocal chops, Sawayama blazes through some of her best vocal performances to date and the track delivers hooks galore. ‘This Hell’ also delivers infectious hooks and is clearly a track created for a live environment.
While Rina Sawayama continues to rule as Dirty Hit’s pop princess, she is also refusing to do only that. Cuts like ‘Catch Me In The Air’ and ‘Forgiveness’ lean more into soft and pop rock territory, without ever losing her pop polish. ‘Forgiveness’, especially, crashes into a raucous breakdown, balancing delightful theatrics with crunchy guitars and synthesisers. Contrastingly, she also knows how to write a great ballad. ‘Send My Love To John’ is the token ‘slow song’ on the record but supplies arguably Rina Sawayama’s best studio vocal performance ever. ‘Send My Love’ balances folky guitars, and has some amazing riffing work vocally from Sawayama. The Cohen-esque melody lifts adds a nostalgic element, an unexpected but welcomed juxtaposition to the high-intensity modern sounds of the rest of the record.
Closer ‘To Be Alive’ seems to a track that is bridging the gap between hyperpop and mainstream pop – an event that many have been awaiting. The melodies are inherently pop, but the glitchy and beautifully jarring aspects of the beat tease the realms of hyperpop. The sporadic snare hits toward the back end of the track are reminiscent of the late SOPHIE’s incredible work, and the plucky synths wouldn’t be out of place on a PC Music project.
‘Hold The Girl’ is a record that holds something for everyone. Rock riffs, club beats, saccharine melodies, 2000s pop… it truly covers a lot of ground. Like debut record ‘SAWAYAMA’, this sophomore LP does a bit of everything, but this time around feels more refined, consistent and polished: exactly what a follow up should be. And on a label roster saturated with enormous amounts of talent, Rina Sawayama is making a pretty good claim to being the ruler.
9/10”.
For their July Issue, British Vogue caught up with Rina Sawayama. Not only did she get the BRITs and Mercury Prize to change their rules about eligibility. She has always opened doors for other queer Asian artist. A definite role model and inspiration for so many people out there. Ahead of a possible Mercury nomination on 27th July (and her birthday next month), we need to celebrate this incredible artist:
“Since blasting down pop fans’ doors with her breakout 2017 EP, Rina – an exhilarating blend of bubblegum melodies, industrial guitars and lyrics charting the anxieties of online life – Sawayama has established herself as part of a new generation of pop stars reshaping the industry model to fit their own Mugler-clad mould. (So much so, in fact, she convinced the Brit Awards and Mercury Prize to change an arcane set of rules that excluded her, as a Japanese citizen but a near lifelong British resident, and others like her from competing.)
Next came her debut album, Sawayama, in 2020, which received overwhelming critical acclaim – oh, and led to a much-deserved Brit nomination in 2021. “Everything was so exciting,” she recalls of her head-spinning ascent, which saw her return to live shows after the pandemic to play venues 10 times the size as before, decked out in avant-garde cowboy gear and kaleidoscopic Vivienne Westwood bodysuits.
“When the world started to open up, everyone just did everything they could – with work, with their social lives… I went full force.” That also included a role in John Wick: Chapter 4, opposite Keanu Reeves, a collaboration with self-confessed superfan Elton John and taking her chopped-and-screwed Y2K style all the way to the front rows of Schiaparelli and Balenciaga at Paris Fashion Week. (“In my day-to-day life, I could honestly just have a capsule wardrobe and I’d be happy,” she says of her style. “But on stage, I’m all about the gag.”)
It’s not surprising, then, that she began to hit a wall while promoting her second record, Hold the Girl, last autumn. “I think I did over a hundred interviews, almost,” she says of the lead up to the album, which charted more personal terrain, including the re-parenting therapy she’d recently undergone to address childhood trauma. “It was not OK. I was just saying the same shit over and over – and when you repeat the same thing, even if you’re saying it in different ways, you start muddying what the actual record means to you.”
When I meet Sawayama, at a west London café, however, she’s feeling upbeat: perhaps because she’s been spending her time a million miles away from the flurry of stages and red carpets that have defined her year so far. “I’ve mostly been in Wickes,” she says, describing her latest obsession – powerwashing her deck – over a plate of potato waffles. “I’m a DIY girl now.”
The time she’s been able to spend with her tight-knit circle of queer friends during this current two-month break, she explains, has been especially grounding. While Sawayama came out as bisexual to that same group upon graduating from the University of Cambridge – “Having them, my chosen family, and being able to express myself… my body and my mind, was like, I feel safe to come out now,” she remembers – it was the release of her 2018 single “Cherry”, a butterflies-in-stomach ode to infatuation, that saw her introduce herself as pansexual to the wider world. “It doesn’t really matter what your gender expression is to me,” she explains of the term, adding that her understanding of it was prompted, in part, by close friends coming out as nonbinary. “Because it’s a new-ish term, people are still coming to grips with what it exactly means – but if I’m attracted to you, then that’s it, really.”
The weight of expectation placed on Sawayama as one of the few queer Asian musicians in the public eye has come to feel like less of a minefield than it once was too – a shift she describes as “freeing”. “Now, I don’t really think about it,” she says. “Although recently some guy I met in the music industry in America said, ‘You should be getting more commercial opportunities, because you tick so many diversity boxes.’ And I was like…” Sawayama pauses between a bite of waffle to pull a bemused side-eye.
“We’re still not where I want to be, but I think even since I started in music there’s so much more representation now,” she continues, reeling off a list that includes Parasite and Squid Game. “Seeing Blackpink headline Coachella… I could not have imagined that as a teenager – it’s huge. It’s nice to not have that pressure and just enjoy all the art that Asian people are making”.
From calling out a labelmate in need whose opinions and disgraces need to be put under the microscope, to a phenomenal second studio album, to the way she has inspired change and progress in the industry, the stunning Rina Sawayama should be treasured and cherished! Mixing the high-octane and thrilling with intimacy and personality, there are few out there like her. The phenomenal Rina Sawayama is definitely…
A modern icon.