I wish Rina Sawayama and I could be best friends. That’s the first thought that appeared in my head when I first started listening to the Japanese-British singer/songwriter’s hit single, “XS,” off of her self-titled debut album SAWAYAMA. Over quarantine, I was hopping between different Airbnbs. Between all of the moving and the chaotic news cycle, it’s safe to say that not much stayed constant — which altogether was a disorienting process. In a time that I, like many, turned to music for answers and consolation, SAWAYAMA more than provided what I was searching for. 

SAWAYAMA was the perfect quarantine album, in the sense that it helped satisfy both feelings of nostalgia and longing for life after the pandemic. Track-by-track, Rina Sawayama engages the listener to think about self-identity, society, capitalism, past relationships — all relevant topics at any point in time, but arguably even more important in a time of worldwide turmoil and uncertainty. 

According to Sawayama herself, this self-titled work is her most personal. Two tracks address family instability issues, intergenerational trauma, and navigating life as the daughter of Japanese immigrants living in the United Kingdom. We are immediately introduced to this side of Saywama’s life in the album’s introductory track, “Dynasty.” The whole album is both experimental and heavily influenced by early 2000s sounds — with “Dynasty” serving nu-metal vibes reminiscent of everyone’s favorite goth rock band, Evanescence. While “Dynasty” doesn’t set the tone for the album in its entirety, it gives us the chance to see how deep of a dive Sawayama is willing to take into her personal life and inner thoughts. 

In SAWAYAMA, you can listen to Rina Sawayama’s multifaceted musical prowess. She tackles R&B, synth-pop, nu-metal, and more with ease. And much like her music, she demonstrates how Asian women are not a monolith. On her breakout single “XS,” she is a conscious consumer wary of the increasingly materialistic world around her — demonstrated through a bubblegum pop track that’s met by metal guitar stabs in between lines. In “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys),” Rina is uber-confident to the degree that raises a middle finger to gender norms (even dressing in drag for the track’s music video) while an infectious club beat fills the background. In this way, it is incredibly liberating to see Asian women in pop using their art to defy stereotypes in the ways that Rina Sawayama has. This is most prominently shown in the heavy metal track “STFU!” which tackles Asian stereotypes in the most riveting in-your-face way possible (yelling “shut the fuck up” over metal guitar for almost three minutes). 

It is so refreshing to have an artist like Rina Sawayama to look up to, but even more so for the ways that she explores her identity through song. For me, the album’s standout track is “Akasaka Sad,” which tackles Sawayama’s double identity — feeling like an outsider in the two places she calls home, the United Kingdom and Japan. “Akasaka Sad” is where the East meets West. The production uses a synth background layered on samples of sounds from Sawayama’s Tokyo hotel room and even features a line of her singing Japanese.

 The reason I’ve been so obsessed with both Rina Sawayama and her newest album is that she unapologetically shows her Asian and immigrant identities in her art. I am an Asian girl who loves pop music, but a lot of the time, it doesn’t feel like pop music loves Asian girls or Asian-ness, at least for the right reasons. When you add in self-isolation and the growing anti-Asian sentiment the pandemic has brought on, it becomes difficult to grapple with the reality of one’s identity. I have this album to thank for helping me through it all.