Get to know… Rina Sawayama

We pick five essential songs by the rising star.

Rina Sawayama’s debut album SAWAYAMA has had the kind of response most musicians could only dream of. “Revolutionary”, “pure pop gold” and “thrilling musical adventure” are just some of the plaudits critics have given to the near-universally praised record since it dropped last month.

While pop melodies form the base of Rina’s music, no genre is off limits: R&B, nu-metal, bubblegum pop and house music seamlessly sit side-by-side on SAWAYAMA. Think early-2000s Britney Spears mashed up with Korn-style thrash guitars. Or peak Destiny’s Child with flourishes of Evanescence-esque emo.

Born in Niigata, Japan in 1990, Rina and her family moved to London when she was five – and it is her embracing of her British-Japanese culture – and the chaotic, genre-spanning charts of the early 2000s - that has helped steer her unique brand of pop.

Rina talked about the album’s creation and took questions from viewers in the first instalment of The Record Club, our new Facebook livestream series in conjunction with Record Store Day and National Album Day. Watch below:

If you are new to Rina, here are five essential songs to get you up to speed:

XS

The best place to start in Rina’s catalogue is her current single XS (pronounced ‘Excess’). A blast of brash, N.E.R.D-styled guitars on the intro give way to pure early Noughties R&B pop, where Rina sings about opulence and extravagance over super-slick beats. The track has been on heavy rotation on radio and is arguably her genre-bending at its most accessible.

STFU!

Rina led her debut album with its boldest track; an explicit response to the casual racism she receives as a Japanese woman living in the west. Its startling in all the right ways, with Korn-inspired guitars and a Shirley Manson-style vocal by Rina giving way to a pure, bubblegum-pop chorus.

Commes Des Garçons

The slinky disco-house number – released as a single earlier this year - has hints of Donna Summer and Vogue-era Madonna. It’s about, as Rina says, “feeling like THAT bitch”, whilst also exploring the idea of people having to adopt negative male tropes to appear confident (the song is supposedly about US politician Beto O’Rourke).

Cherry

Cherry, released as a standalone song in 2018, proves that Rina can also do straightforward pop well. The “Hello?” missed call connection on the intro sets the Nineties nostalgia tone, while lyrically it succinctly captures complex feelings about a teenage crush with a bright ‘n’ breezy singalong chorus.

Bad Friend

A friend-breakup song by the guilty party (“Don't ask me where I've been/ Been avoiding everything/ 'Cause I'm a bad friend” she sings on the chorus), Bad Friend is one of the more earnest, straightforward pop songs on SAWAYAMA… until it ramps things up for a choir-backed, lighter-waving finale.