After Japanese British singer-songwriter Rina Sawayama released her second album “Hold The Girl” on Friday, my high expectations were left hanging like a high-five in the air.
I fell in love with the sound of her gritty and eclectic 2020 debut album “SAWAYAMA” because it was like a breath of fresh air, especially during the coronavirus pandemic.
Sawayama brought all the sounds of the 2000s together and the energy I so desperately wanted to hear in the throes of isolation.
When I saw Sawayama perform live in concert in April in San Francisco, she previewed “Catch Me in the Air,” a power-ballad from “Hold The Girl” detailing her relationship with her mother and the support they have shown each other in hard times.
While the lyrics resonated with me, I couldn’t help but feel slight trepidation in how it sounded and I had concerns the album wouldn’t be just as off putting.
On “Hold The Girl,” Sawayama continues to address marginalization, human rights and authenticity. It feels as though Sawayama took herself to therapy and chose to heal her inner child.
Sawayama tries to juggle all of the themes while balancing her pop prowess by incorporating elements of Europop, trance, techno and psychedelic music.
Her previous album had Sawayama exploring nu-metal in songs like “STFU!” and disco-pop house beats in the song “Commes des Garçons (like the boys),” which showed her talents in multiple genres. “SAWAYAMA” cemented her as one of the new-pop girls of our generation.
But Sawyama failed to continue with the stadium-rock sounds featured on “Dynasty” and “Who’s Gonna Save You Now” from her debut album.
On “Hold The Girl,” Sawayama sounds like she is trying to invoke the musical aspects of Elton John and Queen, but it ends up feeling like a shallow pride month advertisement.
The tracks on the album sounds like a straight person’s take on what being LGBTQ+ means, which seems odd considering Sawayama’s personal journey into her queer identity.
She just attempts to do too much while trying to earnestly navigate topics close to her heart.
Her 2018 single release “Cherry” was her proud proclamation of her sexual identity as a pansexual & bisexual woman. It was a beautiful and incredible expression of queerness and helped me and probably many others find peace in identifying as bisexual.
“Hold The Girl” on the other hand, feels sterile and basic the more she explores those themes.
The entire album doesn’t feel that way and in songs like “This Hell,” where Sawayama’s unique pop savviness comes out, creating a glitzy pop-country song reminiscent of Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman.”
With lyrics like “Flame red, caught the moment, posing for the paparazzi fuck what they did to Britney, to Lady Di', and Whitney,” Sawayama directly confronts the treatment of women in media while also speaking to how the LGBTQ+ community is viewed by society.
In another favorite, “Imagining” navigates losing her sense of self, questioning reality and confronts gaslighting in a song that sounds like racing through a freeway tunnel under neon lights driving at 105 miles per hour.
Even with this, it still doesn’t stand out like her previous album that includes her popular single “XS,” which had Sawayama decrying capitalism through the voice of a girl who desperately wants to be rich, cruising in a Tesla X, wishing to owning a mall while being blinged out in Cartier jewelry was a wonderfully fun critique on the extreme consumerism and “excess” many people thrive to have.
Sawayama tries to create an album that is relatable to everyone, creating what sounds like her first mainstream attempt and that’s what makes it so disappointing.
There is too much going on in “Hold The Girl” and everything sounds incohesive.
There are glimmers of Sawayama’s talent in her ability to blend genres together, however she tries too hard to sound like the musicians that inspired her.
In an interview with Rolling Stone U.K., Sawayama spoke on how the story-building of Taylor Swift’s 2019 release “Folklore” inspired Sawayama to write an album reminiscent of it.
“I was like, 'This bitch [Taylor] is writing about fake stories and she just wrote a whole album,’ ” she lightheartedly explained. ‘If she can do it, I need to do it.’ ”
Sawayama’s talent shines when she stays true to herself and her originality. I don’t need another Queen, Elton John or Taylor Swift, I just need Sawayama.
