7.5

GENRE: Pop/Electronic
YEAR OF RELEASE: 2022

Earlier today, as I walked through a moving crowd on a bustling street in Manhattan, Rina Sawayama’s new album Hold the Girl blasted on my headphones. I was listening to the title track, in which Sawayama talks to herself with potent, echoing vocals over garage house beats. “Sometimes I get down with guilt, for the promises I’ve broken to my younger self,” she crooned in the calming second verse that came before the more explosive chorus. As the song went on, the beat grew stronger, and eventually, a change in pitch came. And I felt good. I felt good about walking, good about myself, good about my day. When a song makes you feel something, that’s when you realize an artist is making meaningful music, even if initially for themselves. Sawayama’s sophomore studio album, Hold the Girl, is full of these euphoric moments that cause involuntary bliss. Most of them are constructed over the singer reflecting on her own life and singing back to her younger self, yet you feel the lyrics just the same because, at some point, you too have wished you could travel from the future to say some nice things to your child self. She does it for her and for you.

But Sawayama’s new album is not without its pitfalls. From songs that resembled Britney Spears to music videos with colorful make-up and an album cover with typography from the early 2000s, the singer previous—and her debut—album, released in 2020, was heavily inspired by Y2K aesthetics, albeit its sound palette went beyond that in many moments. It was a jaw-dropping, sonically diverse record, weaving together pop, nu-metal, R&B, and dance music with lyrics about family, friendship, and social matters like capitalism. On Hold the Girl, Sawayama gets less ambitious and abbreviates her sound to variations of pop: ballads, pop rock, glam rock, and a ton of electronica. She goes for house music on “Hold the Girl,” drum & bass on “To Be Alive,” and trance and Zedd-like distorted EDM beats on “Holy (Til You Let Me Go).” Full of club bangers and pop paeans with introspective lyrics, the album feels like a party for one—as if Sawayama is having a revelation while spending the night alone on the dancefloor.

Music by female pop singers is often sold as a complete package: album artwork, photoshoots, visuals, live performances with choreographies, and last but almost always not least, the music. While Sawayama offers all of the above, the most characteristic thing about her is that she’s not afraid to use her voice. There are usually no slinky vocals or soft croons; her delivery is always potent, albeit always on key and under control. Much of Hold the Girl sees the artist intonating her voice like an opera singer, overarching elation through euphoric hooks and reverberated vibratos, seeking songs with stadium proportions. There’s also an accurate sensibility to Sawayama’s songwriting style that balance out her empowered vocals. Like when she captures a fraction of her past in one single line on “Phantom,” singing of “stickers and scented gel pens” and encapsulating a whole decade in five words.

A good portion of Hold the Girl speaks to the conflicts of adulthood. At 32, Sawayama sings of remembering who she used to be and conciliating that with the person she has become, opening back wounds that have been unhealed since she was a kid. On the opening track “Minor Feelings,” she reflects on the increased hate that Asians have been targeted with since COVID hit and realizes that racial microaggressions result in macro feelings. “The pain isn’t done/When the battle is won,” she sings on “Forgiveness,” revealing that internal trauma doesn’t go away with professional success, even if people try to gaslight and invalidate your emotions. “Struggling to recognize the sight of me,” she lets out on “Imagining,” her voice heavily altered by autotune and bolstered by pulsating UK electronica mixed with riffs that remind you of Evanescence.

This unshakable feeling of “this reminds me of another song” is pretty recurrent on Hold the Girl and gets in the way of Sawayama’s ambition for innovative pop, making the record feel less urgent. There is an overly explicit influence of 2008’s Kelly Clarkson on the pop-rock tracks “Catch Me In The Air” and “Hurricanes,” and a never-ending Gaga imprint that lingers on all the dancing tracks. “This Hell” has the glam-rock, beats, and bells of “Marry the Night” and a similar theme to “Born This Way,” and tracks like “Your Age” and “Holy (Til You Let Me Go)” bear undeniable similarity to “Dance in the Dark” from Gaga’s The Fame Monster. It doesn’t come as a surprise that Sawayama sought to recreate her own versions of The Fame Monster, Born This Way, and even Chromatica: she has always been open about being a fan and was featured on Gaga’s Dawn of Chromatica. But what made Sawayama special was that she didn’t quite fit into any mainstream lane, and even better, she was a breath of fresh air for pop; now, that differential gets diluted amidst so many nondescript tracks.

These overt similarities with other albums and artists will be looked upon with disdain by some people, who will think of the record as something they listen to by accident when shuffle’s on. In all honesty, some parts of the album are as easy to dismiss as an “it’s time to stand up” alert on an Apple Watch. But even so, it’s still possible to enjoy Hold the Girl and its therapeutic atmosphere. “I finally know what it feels like/To be alive,” she sings on the upbeat closing track, leaving you intoxicated by her optimism and new-found joy. Even though the record lacks the immediacy of SAWAYAMA, Hold the Girl is a suitable soundtrack to unravel inner traumas. The bumps on the road here are not enough to make Sawayama any less exciting of an artist; much to the contrary: by looking inward now, you know that she’ll bounce back stronger in the future. So “get in line, pass the wine” because Sawayama’s pop takeover is just starting.

Listen to Hold the Girl: