BACKSTAGE at Glasgow’s SGW3 and Rina Sawayama is on a high.
We’re in her dressing room and as hairstylist Jake helps her out of her stage costume after her second night at the warehouse venue, she says: “Playing these shows every night is an absolute treat.
“I never take any of it for granted.
“It’s still baffling to me that I wrote these songs in a room and they’ve connected to people all around the world.”
It’s a month since her outstanding second album Hold The Girl, a contender for album of the year, peaked at No3 in the album charts.
And now the Japanese/British singer is wowing adoring crowds with her dazzling live show, which includes a wind machine, lasers, slick choreography and numerous changes of flamboyant outfits chosen by stylist Jordan Kelsey.
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It’s no surprise she’s being called the new Lady Gaga and she’ll undoubtedly be headlining The O2 very soon.
And Lady Gaga is a fan herself after reaching out to Sawayama to sing on her Dawn Of Chromatica remix album.
Charli XCX and Elton John also contacted her to collaborate and are now firm friends.
“I was sceptical about Elton at first,” she says, taking a sip of champagne.
“I thought we’d work together as a one-off and that would be it. But we speak twice a month, and catch up.
“It’s a very genuine friendship — we’ve been on holiday together and David and the kids are so sweet.
“Charli is the sweetest, genuine and most hardworking person. I love chatting to her and really admire her.
“And that’s how it should be. Women should not be pitted against each other.
“I grew up in a world where it was Christina or Britney, Lil’ Kim or Missy — like they were fighting when there was room for them all.
“I watched the JLo documentary which spoke about her sharing the spotlight with Shakira.
“They both can have success in their own right. It’s crazy. But I think people have changed their attitude to women in music.”
With a US tour in November and her first major film role opposite Keanu Reeves in John Wick: Chapter 4 coming out next year, things are set to go stratospheric for the singer.
And with euphoric pop anthems such as This Hell, Hold The Girl and Minor Feelings, the genre-crossing Sawayama said she wrote this album with live shows in mind.
She adds: “Playing live is what I do everything for.
“People have been through so much in recent years and so I want my shows to be meaningful.
“I don’t know how long people have been saving to afford a ticket or what kind of sacrifice they have made.
In many ways I’m experiencing this like it’s my debut album.
Rina Sawayama
“I’m aware I need to put on a good show and make people feel something.
“And tonight’s crowd was so loud. We were trying to push everything and be our best and I could hardly hear myself sing above the crowd.
“I spent my entire twenties feeling like I hadn’t achieved anything and now, age 32, all my dreams are coming true.”
With the looks of a supermodel and a degree in politics, psychology and sociology from Cambridge, she might just be the brightest pop star around.
“I’m experiencing a number of firsts with this second album because of the pandemic”, she says.
“There were things I missed out on with my first album (Sawayama was released in April 2020).
“I missed out on photo shoots, interviews, signings, live performances and late-night TV shows.
“I did Jimmy Fallon in New York in person whereas with the first album we had to film it in London.
“In many ways I’m experiencing this like it’s my debut album.”
Sawayama started making music full-time at the age of 27.
Now she says being a latecomer means she’s worked extra hard. But she’s always been a grafter.
She says: “It all started off for me when I released music on SoundCloud and videos on YouTube.
“I funded it all completely on my own by working.
“I worked as a model, as a nail technician and in an ice-cream shop and saved and saved.
“I’d put 100 per cent into everything and it taught me to hustle and work hard.
“When I first came to Britain I was put in Japanese school and when I joined a British school in Year 5, I was put back a year as my English wasn’t very good and so I’ve always worked hard.
“Then at sixth form and then with my Oxbridge application, I would cram.
“And I studied insanely hard as Oxbridge was another world to me.”
It was music that helped her make friends at school by singing songs by Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears and Kylie Minogue.
“I grew up between two different cultures,” she explains.
“So when I started singing these songs at school, it was my way of making friends, but also these pop girls were my first introduction to music besides the Japanese music I’d been listening to when I was younger.”
Born in Japan, Sawayama moved to London when she was five and was raised by her single mum, sharing a bedroom with her until she was 15.
She says it was a tumultuous relationship that has taken a while to rebuild.
The touching Catch Me In The Air on her album is influenced by the difficult mother-daughter relationship they have and love for each other.
“We’ve grown so much from where we were,” Sawayama says. “I have so much respect for single parents, and we’ve come through some really hard times.
She had some very difficult experiences but we’re in a really good place now.
“We still fight but we’re honest and she flew out for my first night in Glasgow and loved the show — even when I’m on stage shouting, ‘Shut the f**k up!’ (her song STFU) she was just beaming!”
Sawayama — who is signed to indie label Dirty Hit, home of The 1975, Wolf Alice and Beabadoobee — has been honest about her struggles with her mental health and talks openly about it and how therapy has helped her deal with her feelings.
“My mental health was so bad when I was at uni and I went through lots of emotional problems,” she says.
“I was very depressed and even when I was looking for a record deal, I’d think, ‘Do you want to be like a small fish in a big pond or do I want to be a big fish?’.
“And I thought about how my mental health would be affected and how old I am and I didn’t want to be a small fish in a big pond.”
An album and live standout is the ballad Send My Love To John, which was inspired by a friend whose mum didn’t accept his sexuality.
Sawayama, who identifies as bisexual and pansexual says: “It’s a common story in the queer community that their parents don’t accept them for who they are and my friend’s mum did not accept their long-term boyfriend.
“Then one day she said, ‘Send My Love to John’, which was the first time she’d shown support of their queerness.”
The singer also has a dig at homophobia with show-closer and tongue-in-cheek single This Hell, which sees the artist dressed in cowboy boots paying homage to Shania Twain and Dolly Parton — and had Glaswegian fans at their wildest.
She says: “It’s to celebrate community and love in a time where the world seemed hellish.
“I have a lot of people around me who are non-binary or trans and the language surrounding them is very fear-based.
“Being trans or non- binary is a journey, it’s a spectrum.
“And we just need to accept that people can just be whoever they want to be.”
At the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan, Sawayama spoke out about same-sex marriage, which is banned.
She says: “I’m bisexual, but if I try to have a same-sex marriage here, I can’t. It’s not allowed in Japan.
“Out of the G7 countries it’s the only one that doesn’t have that protection.
“I wanted to say something and I made sure I said it in Japanese.
“I’m very lucky as I’m so out and proud in a country where same-sex marriage is legal, but it’s not in Japan.
“It is technologically advanced, but it’s culturally very traditional.”
It’s not just LGBTQ+ rights that the performer is supportive of on Hold The Girl. She addresses anti-Asian racism on album-opener Minor Feelings, which was inspired by a book of essays by Asian American author Cathy Park Hong.
The singer says: “She’d written about how it feels when micro-aggressions build up.
“And that’s exactly how I felt, especially during the pandemic when Covid was being called ‘the China virus’.
“There was a lot of Asian hate crime going on and that’s when I wrote that song.”
Sawayama is one of the most positive artists to interview. Intelligent, fun and honest, she’s as refreshing as she is captivating.
And her future goals?
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“Well besides music, one of my dreams is to become a teacher. I’m doing some work with kids through the Grammys, helping underprivileged young adults who want to get into music.
“I want to give back as much as I can. Looking back at my life, none of this was ever on the cards.”
