RINA

With two spectacular albums, Sawayama and Hold The Girl, under her belt, Rina Sawayama is on fire—and she isn’t slowing down anytime soon.

- AMELIA CHIA

Rina Sawayama is on tour at the moment for her sophomore album, Hold The Girl, which released in September this year. Her shows in the UK and Ireland, as well as her upcoming Australia and New Zealand shows, are sell-outs. This was announced through her social media pages with several crying emoji to express her gratefulness. It doesn’t come as a surprise, though, given Sawayama’s bubbling popularity over the last two years since her self-titled debut album dropped in 2020. She’s been touted as an It girl, a face (and voice) to keep on your radar, and the next Lady Gaga.

“It’s a bit ridiculous,” the 32-year-old tells me candidly when asked about the comparison to the inimitable singer-songwriter. “Incredibly flattering of course, but she is an icon who is incomparable. I was lucky enough to see her show in Las Vegas and meet her. She is magnetic and amazing.”

Her fans, affectionately known as Pixels, take pride in how long they’ve been a stan for. The relationship between Sawayama and her fans are two-way—in 2018, she asked fans with “hard-to-pronounce” names in English to record a short video for her as part of a marketing campaign. Born in Niigata, Japan, and emigrating to London at the age of five, this sheds light on her growing-up years—she was in a place where she wasn’t the majority race, or had a common name.