Sawayama - Rina Sawayama

Rina Sawayama's first LP Sawayama flexes retro aspects, sythn-pop, and alt-rock vibes. With catchy form and dynamic arrangements, each song stands alone and proves Rina Sawayama is an album artist; not just here for a pop hit. The album is seriously personal about family and racial inequality she has faced being British-Japanese. All of it encompassing her autonomously creative, "don't-get-in-my-way," character.

"I'm turning 30 this year, and I just released my debut record," Rina Sawayama explained to the NPR. "a pop act, also female, I don't think that would have happened 10 years ago. I've always told myself "Oh I'm too old to do this" or "People don't reach success when they start this late." She continued, "I feel like the vision of the record — and the music videos — has been helped by what I went through in my early-to-mid 20s." Battling with the romanticism of being a young success, Rina shows that aging out of teenage years doesn't make you "old." It seems the bar for old age keeps lowering, but accumulated experience only results from living. And the album Sawayama is full of confessions about life's good and bad experiences.

Dynasty feels like music accompanying a queen entering her royal court and singing "I'm gonna take the throne this time." But Rina Sawayama rules this record as such; she's fierce and tenacious. With a pop rock-esq feel, an electric guitar accompanys Rina's powerful and dreamy vocals reign this song. However, the lyrics and meaning are quiet desparing. In an interview with NPR, Rina explained, "I wanted to write about familial pain, intergenerational trauma, and try to make it into a pop song." In Dynasty, she sings "The pain in my vein is hereditary," to speak about the pain of broken family relationships. In an interview with Pitchfork, Rina says, "The word “dynasty” is about the inheritance of money, wealth, and a name, and I’ve always grown up being very mystified about my dad’s side because I know they’re very wealthy, but all that’s come of it is pain. Why doesn’t anybody talk about the dynasty of pain?" The track is about taking your life into your own hands in spite of past family difficulties: "Fighting about money and this infidelity // Now it's my my time to make things right."

Following Dynasty is XS. A track that makes you dance with energetic, catchy rythms interrupted by a slamming rock guitar. XS is playful, memorable, and switches up the tempo, making the dynamics interesting. Not to mention, Sawayama whispering "excess" is the perfect pause between verses. All in all, the song is about society's obsession with material objects and selfish wants: "when the heart wants what it wants, what can I do? // So I'll take that one, that one, yeah, that one too //Luxury and opulence, Cartiers and Tesla X's." The track is commentary on people's disregard for ecological well-being, instead destroying natural resources for material gain. To Genius lyrics, Sawayama said, "The earth truly is taking in as much as it can hold, and even though we have everything we need we want more, at the cost of finite resources and ecological balance."

Bubbly, electronic tones are interrupted by hushed and fuzzy background notes on Akasaka Sad. Sawayama told Genuis, "I wrote this song in my favourite hotel in Akasaka. It’s a very non-descript hotel, but I choose to stay there rather than at my family home because I feel freer. I always hope that Tokyo will make me feel happier but it doesn’t, and the song is about how depression follows you around wherever you go."The music is texturized with synth pop and consonantal alliteration of the lyrics "Akasaka sad // 'Cause I'm a sucker, sucker, so I suffer //Akasaka Sawayama // Just like my mother." "This is a reference to Dynasty and the familial roots of depression and mental health issues," she told Genuis lyrics. The intonation lends to its catchy and vibrant harmony. Plus, the complex arrangement makes the track's tonality compelling. In her Genuis interview, she translated the Japanese lyrics: "From country to country // I hear tragic symphonies // Everyday searching // For a pain that turns into happiness."

Tokyo Love Hotel ~ retro-pop love song about Tokyo and Sawayama's Japanese heritage. She told Genuis lyrics, "This song is about peoples obsession with Japanese culture that hardly ever extends to the welfare of the people who live there...I’ve always been very careful of how much Japanese iconography I include in my visuals, because it’s been done over and over again by people who are not Japanese. It didn’t feel right – too basic perhaps – for me to use my culture in my music, but this felt totally unfair. Why can’t I express my culture? This song is about my selfish frustration with people taking and using my culture and not leaving any for me."

Who's Gonna Save U Now? puts you in a concert atmosphere. It's like saying 'I'm here but you're there' as she reminds someone that they "burned the bridges." The track has this 80s electric performance vibe with charasmatic vocal runs. She told Paper magazine that, "On this record, it felt like the lyrics and melody were guiding the genre wherever it wanted to go. Like "Who's Gonna Save U Now?" was not stadium rock. It started off like, 90s, Max Martin vibes. Then I'd watched that Queen movie [Bohemian Rhapsody] and A Star Is Born and I was like, it just needs to be stadium rock." In many interviews, Rina Sawayama talks about rock and alternative music influencing her style. Her genre fusions are a mirror reflecting her personal taste and character, commenting on things she's come up against. For example, Rina Sawayama also talks about racism and stereotypes on her album. "I'm sure a lot of people can relate, any marginalized people, like "Yeah, I guess I should dig up all those annoying things that happen to me every day that I have to suppress to keep going with my life," she told NPR.

Another stand out song includes the pop ballad about a "chosen family." Found Family is about people in Rina Sawayama's life who connect to her on a deeper level, even though they're not related. Their emotional connection and common experiences link her to people she's chosen as her "found family." Finally, Snakeskin closes the album with robotic repetition and alliteration meeting techno beats with a haunting piano outro.

Listen to the full album here: https://open.spotify.com/album/3stadz88XVpHcXnVYMHc4J?si=jZJXt4-LTT6nWTeQK6BfmA