RINA

POP’S BIGGEST POLYMATH IS ON A MISSION TO SPREAD JOY—WHILE CLAD IN THE SEASON’S MOST DIRECTIONAL LOOKS. BY VÉRONIQUE HYLAND

Before Rina Sawayama was a pop star, she was a gamer. With her hands on a controller, clambering around a virtual world, she could get out of her head and “be that character for the 50 hours or whatever the game’s going to take.” Video games were also a huge influence on her songwriting (and not just because she samples the Final Fantasy theme song on “Snakeskin,” the final track on her debut studio album, 2020’s Sawayama). “For me, everything’s about stories. A good video game is a great story,” she says, adding that whenever she puts pen to paper, she asks herself: “Who’s the main character, who’s the side character, what’s going on around them? Who’s going to listen to this, and what are they going to feel?”