Rina Sawayama is singing to her food. “Oooooh!” she coos when a bowl of Beyond Beef clatters onto the table. “Oh my gosh!” she trills at a helping of crispy brussels sprouts. “Oh that’s so cute!” she squeals upon seeing a Thai iced tea with a straw buried in whipped cream. When each of the many dishes she’s ordered for us—“You’re not allergic to anything, are you?” is one of the first things she says to me—arrives, she cuts off her thought about climate change or morality and gasps.
We’re at Spicy Moon in Manhattan’s East Village, a vegan Chinese restaurant where vines tangle overhead and tangerine lights accentuate the chunks of dyed orange in Rina’s hair. She wasn’t sure what to wear to dinner, sorting through the rack of clothes hung up in her hotel room before settling on a chunky sweater swirled with color. It’s fashion week in the city, and everything is frantic for the 29-year-old singer, who has modeled for Versace and Uniqlo over the past few years, as her musical career has developed. For her, the week involves attending fancy runway shows as well as enjoying the wicked Instagram videos of Average Fashion Blogger, who takes aim at the ridiculousness of fashion and influencer culture. She also attended a party hosted by the luxury department store Bergdorf Goodman, where she met Rihanna. “She smells amazing,” Rina confirms, her inches-long nails tapping against her chopsticks.
While much of the album is rooted in Rina’s past, some tracks are anchored by small coincidences. Swaggering single “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys),” which sends up male privilege, was originally inspired by a conversation she had about the arrogance of would-be presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke. Rina wrote the heart-tugging highlight “Bad Friend” after checking Facebook for the first time in a while and seeing that a formerly close friend had a new baby. The track details a trip they took to Tokyo in 2012, when they got drunk and danced naked to Carly Rae Jepsen in a karaoke booth. It was ultimately produced by Kyle Shearer, whose resume includes work with Carly Rae Jepsen—“which is wild,” Rina says, shaking her head. “Just what are the fucking chances?”
Our plates are streaked with neon oil and crumbs when a waiter finally takes them away. Right then, Rina places a gem-covered nail in the air. “I just want to pick at them a bit more,” she says. She hums to herself, and takes a bite.
Rina Sawayama: Definitely. In my early teens, I was so fucking hormonal. My parents were recently separated, so I had a lot of anger. The song “Paradisin’” is based on a true story—I would go out, and my mum would hack into my MSN and talk to my friends and be like, “Where the fuck is Rina?” One time I lied to her and said I was going to a sleepover but I was actually going to an after-party with this band I was a groupie of. I think I was 15. My mum somehow found out which hotel the band was staying in, called the hotel, and demanded to speak to the manager of the band. Then the manager had to call the band and be like, “What the fuck are you doing? That girl is 15, I’m on the phone with her mum right now.” They shoved me into a taxi, and my mum did not speak to me for a week. She always threatened to send me to boarding school, but we could never afford it.
I’m really glad I went through that, though, because I got proper life experience. Like, I went to Paris on my own when I was 15 and stayed with this 30-year-old woman I met through going to gigs. Her house was actually quite gross. She lived with two cats and she smoked inside, so the walls were covered with tar. It just smelled of cat. It was so weird. But a good story.
She forever hated me for that time, though she also understands why I was acting out. I was embarrassed about my mum because she could barely speak English. She had such a thick accent and she would always prepare me really Japanese food for lunch, and I just wanted normal white people food. She would always turn up late to parent-teacher meetings because she was busy working. Even though we literally lived in the same room, we lived very different lives. She represented something that was stopping me from assimilating into my class at school. So yeah, we fought a lot.
It was really hard to hear about how she feels regretful about things. She said that when I was the most depressed, it was also when she was going through the divorce—it was really messy, and she was basically alone. She didn’t want to be responsible for anything that would stop me from going to Cambridge, so she kept it all to herself, but it just meant that her mental health wasn’t great. Now she’s like, “I really wish I was there for you when you were depressed, but I just couldn’t give you that.” It’s upsetting to hear that, because I used to be like, “You’re so fucking cold.” But now, being an adult, I can’t imagine a husband suing me and wanting all this shit when we had barely any money, it’s just mental.
It’s sometimes hard to accept that she lives a very different life than me and has very different values. But to me, a family isn’t beautiful because they present themselves that way. I think my family’s very beautiful because it’s fucking messy.
It was awesome actually. It felt quite uncomfortable and comfortable at the same time, trying to find this spot for myself, in terms of the sound and what I want to talk about. It really tied a bow around my whole youth and family life. My mum’s heard a lot of the demos, but she’s not heard the final version. She actually closes the album—it’s her voice talking at the end. But I’m not going to show it to her until it comes out.
Yeah, those are my best friends. It’s really about my queer family, just apppreciating the journeys they’ve been on. I know people who have been kicked out of their house because they came out, and the song is all about accepting each other for who they are. I needed to write very authentically about that, because you can very much straight-wash the whole thing—interestingly, when I showed that song to people, they thought it was about marriage. Chosen family has been a queer concept for a long time, and it felt very special to be able to write that.
When I was following bands around as a teenager, it was when indie music was really big in the UK, like 2006-ish, and I’ve always looked up to rock bands. For each song, I always led with the lyric and then decided which genre would be best to express what the song has to say. Like “Who’s Gonna Save U Now” only felt right to be a stadium rock song. I wanted it to feel like that moment when Aly steps up on stage with Jackson in A Star Is Born, very visceral. And “Dynasty” felt right for it to be pop-metal, and “Fuck This World” felt right to be R&B, and “Chosen Family” felt right to be a bit country.
Climate grief is such an interesting feeling. It’s like you go between feeling My life is shit, these are all the things that make it hard, but then Fuck, the world’s ending, I can’t do anything. There’s constant feelings of helplessness for yourself and then helplessness for the world, and then just like fainting in between. I didn’t want to romanticize it, I just wanted to say how shit it was.
Once when I was 19. I’ve been so severely depressed. When I was 13 or 14 I was self-harming. I’ve had eating disorders. Saving yourself also refers back to self-care and mental health in general, which is a big part of the album.
In “Dynasty,” I’m talking about how my fucking family has been so selfish at times—with my dad’s side, it’s just a mess. 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?
