On its best song, Rina Sawayama pretended to be a rich girl, but on its best song, Rina Sawayama pretended to be a poor girl. Sawayama whispered “excess” as if it were the name of a designer perfume, the scent of “more”, because “Xs ” was intended as an anti- capitalist critique in an age of climate crisis. A great pop persona goes a long way. Even if Sawayama becomes the type of star who stinks up the Earth with her private jet, as long as she delivers fun hooks, haute looks, and damn good live performances, she’ll have people obsessed.
There are rates for being home educated, goths, and instinctive.
The artist has been reading self-help books and having revelations in therapy, so her second album, Hold the Girl, is decidedly more serious. Sawayama has framed the album as part of a process of “reparenting” herself, and the emphasis on one’s “inner child” may explain why the record’s imagery leans elementary. She wants to create belonging because she knows other queer people have had complicated upbringings. The spiritual successor to Hold the Girl is the Chosen Family.
Hold the Girl is an attempt to combine the full spectacle of Born This Way with the surviving- through-trauma emotionality of Chromatica. There are many other influences beyond Gaga, and Sawayama wears them on her sleeve. The half of Sawayama’s slogan for “Catch Me in the Air” doesn’t get the point. She opens her tribute to her mother with a song that sounds like it was written by Céline Dion, and then she sings a song that sounds like it was written by KellyClarkson.