On a sultry June afternoon at Tribeca’s party store Balloon Saloon, casual shoppers are treated to rows of stick-on piercings, a host of glow-in-the-dark finger puppets, a shocking selection of fake excrement and a pop star. giggling.
Rina Sawayama roamed the aisles shrieking in half joy and mild terror, snapping pictures with mannequins before settling on a rainbow flag to mark Pride Month. The Stars and Stripes in the United States for a while.
It was the final week of a pandemic-delayed tour in support of her 2020 debut. “Sawayama” And she was emotional. “I miss her stories with her fans and just sharing that incredible energy in the space,” she said over lunch hours earlier. “It’s almost like a relationship.” .”
Her show at Brooklyn Steel in May showcased the depth of that bond and Sawayama’s wide musical tastes. It was half rock concert, half spectacular pop, and part group therapy session for a young, mostly queer audience. With the bass pounding and her head bobbing, Sawayama commanded the stage, singing, cursing, and saying words of affirmation and gratitude. Later, she instructed the audience to tell each other that they were hot.
Sawayama, 32, has blazed a path to pop stardom as an avid researcher, drawing from the parts she loves: the empowerment of Lizzo, the fun and quirkiness of Charli XCX, and the genre-bending expanses of Lady Gaga. Build aesthetics and put them aside. holiday. (Her diligence isn’t limited to music; she graduated from Cambridge University with degrees in political science, psychology and sociology.)
“Sawayama” is an unexpected mix of head-banging rock and early bubblegum pop, arriving after seven years of making (and mostly funding) his own music. The April 2020 release date was no coincidence. Now, the singer and songwriter has regained the momentum she lost when the pandemic swallowed up her debut, and is looking to get her momentum back to 10 with her second album, Hold the Girl, out Sept. 16. increase.
“A lot of the time artists feel the pressure to just do a session and hit out a song, but I don’t,” Sawayama said in the first of two long interviews earlier this year. I don’t like working hard, I like working intentionally.”
Sawayama knew he needed to turn around. There have been changes big and small since her first album. The world was tense and dangerous. As she turned 30, she entered a new era of personal evolution, embarked on an intensive therapy regimen, and built that revelation into her DNA for “Hold the Girl.” She has yet to reveal these perceptions for fear of affecting fan reaction to the song.
“I think the temptation as an artist these days is to see what fans want online,” she said. “But I’m going to write something that’s meaningful and worthy of people’s time.”
The result is a sprawling album that’s a nod to all Shania Twain and Abba and packed with even more of her musical inspirations (“This Hell” features a church group facilitator accidentally creating purgatory). It’s a sassy, country-tinged song that sounds like when) Gwen Stefani (she’s writing the floaty “Catch Me in the Air” for pop star-turned-frontwoman Corez) ), Madonna (related to the sparse, echo-like introduction to the single “Hold the Girl”, “Like a Prayer”).
Combining nostalgic sounds with the latest technology, Sawayama lets you experience the best of both worlds of sound. “What I think about the New Jack Swing era, and production in general from the ’90s, is like…” she moans. “The sound was very ambitious, but I don’t think the technology at the time was enough to capture the breadth.”
Clarence Clarity, primary producer on both Sawayama’s albums, described the process of making music with Sawayama as combining different eras and aesthetics to see what works. “It doesn’t matter the genre for each song, it’s how you can evoke these different emotions,” he said in an interview.
“That’s the nice thing about working with Lina,” he added. “She doesn’t think in traditional terms.”
when we met In February, in the depths of a leafy hotel lobby, our world finally melted from the double whammy of the winter of the pandemic. I was like a ballerina wearing sweatpants and going to a bodega. Looking at her hands felt like I was peering into a silverware drawer. Almost every finger of her had silver or green rings, and her nails were painted with chrome and covered with baubles and pearls of the same shade, like golden sweat. She just got them recently and had a hard time getting used to them.
“I don’t know how Rosalia does that,” she said.
I asked Mr. Sawayama about the last really good party he attended. Her answer sounded like a civilian’s feverish dream. It’s like the kind of party where different celebrities come together with just vibes or you imagine making it. She ended up doing karaoke with Harry Styles, Karamo Brown, Bobby Burke of “Queer Eye” fame, model Kiko Mizuhara, and a stylist friend.
That night was four years ago. “Have I been to a party since then?” she wondered aloud. Not likely. Even in her early 30s, Sawayama was a retired socialite who got everything out of her system as a teenager.She was born in Niigata, Japan, and lived with her parents briefly when she was very young. I moved to London. They soon divorced, which not only changed her home base—she ended up staying in London—but also changed her family’s class status. shared a bedroom with her mother. That combination of her claustrophobic proximity, adolescence, and language barrier—neither of whom spoke much English—all weighed down on her and allowed Sawayama to form a new identity for herself: pop music. Fused into fanatics.
She used the genre to connect with her classmates, forge close friendships, and take her out of her home and into the wider world. Party) for hours. Once, she followed her favorite group to Paris with a fellow fan of hers whom she met on the show. When she was 16, she started uploading her own music—covers of her favorite songs—on the internet.
“I was very angry when I was a teenager, so going out was a reaction to that,” she said. People basically said they were pretending to be on the British TV show “Skins”, which was similar to “Euphoria”, which was airing around this time.) Because I didn’t have time to be alone , find your own creative voice later in life,” she said.
One morning when she turned 15, Sawayama walked into her kitchen and announced that puberty was over. (Her mother wasn’t easily convinced.) But she pulled all the partying out of her system just in time: She recommitted to her grades and enrolled at Cambridge. Her shock was severe. Sawayama spent most of the program depressed and her relationship with her mother continued to deteriorate until she was kicked out of her house.
Sawayama has worked as a model, at an Apple store (until she was fired as a model for a Samsung ad), at an ice cream truck, and as a nail tech. Meanwhile, she developed her own music, uploading new recordings of hers to SoundCloud between her shifts, eventually gaining recognition while she had her pedicure, so gave up on the gig.
Her manager introduced her to producer Clarity and they collaborated “Lina” An EP about digital and cultural anxiety released in 2017. Sawayama performed small tours at home and in the United States, but had to keep up with various jobs to support herself between shows.
“I signed my first record deal when I was 29,” she said in a second interview in May over fries at the Odeon in Tribeca. Too much, but I love being able to change that in a positive way, so I can come to the table with a few more stories, like life experiences and things to write about.”
Maturity has other benefits as well. In between Sawayama’s albums, some of the artists she looked up to became collaborators.she rewrote her own song “Chosen Family” with Elton Johnteamed with Charli XCX on Popstar’s single “please” Provide vocals on remix of Lady Gaga’s ‘Chromatica’ track “free woman”
Her reach still shocks her. “I was listening to all the people I grew up with” — her fans include Katy Perry and producer Jack Antonoff, she said — “They were my existence. “I can’t believe you know,” she said.
But Clarity, who noted that Sawayama’s new album is much more personal than her debut, isn’t surprised. “She was going to be a pop star.” rice field”
many years, many keeps lists of interesting quotes and phrases in the Notes app on iPhone as potential sources of inspiration from books and conversations with friends. The title of her one of her new singles, “This Hell,” came from that list. Initially, she yelled, “This heaven is better for you,” but by the time she entered the studio, this phrase had changed. Hell could embrace her reality more.
For one thing, parts of the pandemic have certainly been hell. For another reason, restrictive religious beliefs are being codified into law around the world. Like Lil Nas X, another artist who reacts to Judeo-Christian homophobia with queer nonchalance, the song’s lines are: fine! / Buckle up and into the dawn we ride”—implies that there are many good companions on the road to ruin.
“I said, ‘If you have the belief that it’s wrong to want your body or identity to have autonomy, [expletive] Sawayama said, laughing and adding a few more curses. She identifies as pansexual. The song’s music video features the singer in a three-way marriage with a man and a woman. “Obviously hell will be the place.”
On stage in Brooklyn in May, Sawayama took her fans to her version of Devil Chic, walking around the stage in a blood-red, strong-shouldered unitard. Supple yet powerful, she twisted and twisted her upper body like a snake, adding rhythmic flicks when needed. At one point, her guitarist came forward and joined her in front of the stage, shredding forcefully and losing herself as if in a trance. As if possessed, he turned his gaze to the string and danced in response to the sound.