Feature

On Rina Sawayama’s debut EP, released little over a year ago, she fused the joy of early 2000s pop with a more political and future-forward outlook. She’s no ordinary superstar.

Published: 4:38 pm, December 19, 2018 Words: Abigail Firth.

With a new year, comes the weight of expectation on a new batch of artists, thrust into the spotlight and expected to set the agenda for the twelve months ahead. That's what The Hype List is about - a series of interviews, profiles and more highlighting who we think will be making a noise in 2019.



On Rina Sawayama’s debut EP, released little over a year ago, she fused the joy of early 2000s pop with a more political and future-forward outlook. We caught her at the end of her first tour, and with almost all of this year’s wishes coming true, she’s prepping for a massive 2019. She’s no ordinary superstar.

Hiya Rina, how’s life?

I just finished tour, so I’m knackered. I feel like I’ve been touring a lot, but I love it, I love it so much, it’s like my favourite part of it, so I like instantly miss it, but I’m really tired.

How’s 2018 treated you?

It’s been absolutely crazy; it’s been really mad. It’s gone so quickly. Even compared to the beginning of this year – it’s only been a year since I released my EP and I’ve done so much, I don’t even know where to start.

What’s been the biggest change for you since that came out?

I guess I was able to do music full time. Before I was doing two part-time jobs and making ends meet, but now I’m able to focus on the music and really fine-tune my songwriting and collaborate with some exciting people, like cool people who’ve got in touch directly. And because I’m doing this without a label, like the tour and everything I haven’t received label support, it’s just been me and my team killing it. Every single person on the team has just smashed it; they’ve been working so hard.

You funded the EP yourself, right?

Yeah, I saved up. I didn’t receive any help from my mum or anything either, haha. I had to prove to my family that I was taking this seriously so I didn’t wanna ask them for help, I just did it all myself, I worked my butt off and saved up. Just kind of beg, borrow, steal in the beginning, did everything on the cheap. I recorded everything in my bedroom, and now I’m kind of annoyed because now I’ve been in sessions and stuff I know how you record stuff properly. My room isn’t treated for vocals so I can’t mix it properly. I love my EP still, I’ve just learned a lot since then.

A lot of your lyrical concepts are super fresh, is it important to you to do something different to the usual in pop?

I just really want my identity to be there in the songs, and to me like a lot of things are still political, and I find it hard to write a straightforward love song, still. So my next single is about – hate the word, but – it’s about empowerment, and it’s taken from when my primary school teacher couldn’t say my surname. I remember when she was taking the register, and I remember being so embarrassed I asked them to just say my first name when they said the register, because they’d just butcher my second name. I only remembered that recently and it is a conscious decision to put my surname in my stage name, I mean it is my real name obviously, but I didn’t wanna just call myself Rina. It was important that that part of my identity was always present, so I wrote a song about that. But it’s also a wider message of remembering who you are, even though for me it’s specifically about my name.