Rina Sawayama’s New Music Is Coming

Rina Sawayama is ready to give fans what they’ve been waiting for. “I think I’m the most grateful I’ve ever been, because my fans are still interested in what I’m going to release, which is crazy,” she says. “I feel like I’m confident about the music, and I’m confident about my fans.”

The pop star hasn’t released an album in over four years. Hold the Girl, her sophomore LP, was released in September 2022. Since then, she hasn’t exactly been away, but fans have been wondering, Where’s the music? Yes, she started a beauty brand, Godmode, with Chloë Grace Moretz; starred in John Wick: Chapter 4, with a new installment on the horizon; and has a slew of acting projects coming up, like Apple TV’s Prodigies with Ayo Edebiri and Will Sharpe. She’s also been featured on a few tracks by MUNA and Empress Of. And, of course, she’s also the first-ever global ambassador for Haku Vodka, starring in its new campaign “Made to Shine.” “I like a dirty martini. I have, genuinely, Haku Vodka and Noilly Prat Vermouth, and then lots of brine, like murky,” she says. “Being Japanese as well, being asked by Suntory, [who makes Haku Japanese Vodka and is an Osaka-based company], to be an ambassador is a huge honor.”

Yet her fans, who love her genre-bending, high-production music, have been craving another Rina album. Well, their wishes are finally coming true. “I am ready to release music,” Sawayama admits. “We’re really getting all the ducks lined up so that can happen in a really good and effective way. I’ve changed so many things about the internal structure of my business. But I’m ready to release stuff next year.”

Sawayama’s namesake debut album, released in 2020, put her on the map, with standout tracks including “XS” and “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys).” Hold the Girl and its smash single “This Hell” came next, further solidifying her as one of pop music’s brightest stars. With her success came fashion campaigns, tours, and a rising public image. Then suddenly, it all came to a screeching halt. “When things grow as well as that, you can’t process what’s going on. Your body can’t keep up, your mind can’t fully keep up, so I think it was nice in that break that I just took that I was able to actually appreciate what happened,” she says.

Now, Sawayama is more confident than she’s ever been, and she’s ready to share her work with the world. “The best art comes when you can stand being the most uncomfortable for the longest time,” she says. “I think I’ve done that.”

Below, read about Sawayama’s new project, her collaboration with Haku Japanese Vodka, and why she changed the Hold the Girl cover on streaming.

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You have new music on the way. How are you feeling?

I’m feeling the best I’ve ever felt, actually. Life happened really fucking quickly. My debut album, [Sawayama], came out, it did better than I expected, and then I was promoting it throughout U.K. lockdown. When that finished, I went straight on tour, and then I went straight into [Hold the Girl] promotion, and was touring that, and then I promoted [John Wick: Chapter 4]. It was a lot on my body, and I wasn’t in a place where I could create. I had to take some time away. Unfortunately, that meant canceling some tours that I was really wanting to do, but I just couldn’t. I had some really weird physical symptoms. It was just exhaustion. I think I’m the most grateful I’ve ever been, because my fans are still interested in what I’m going to release, which is crazy. I feel like I’m confident about the music, and I’m confident about my fans.

What can we expect from your new music?

I’ve taken two years to record it. My debut album, I spent my whole life writing it. Second album, I probably took six months to write the whole thing. This one, it’s been a lot of living through different emotions and writing from an absence of something—absence of stimulation, absence of a rigorous schedule. With this record, I was really able to just sit with my feelings. I isolated myself. I lived in Tokyo on my own. The record is so much more intentional. I’m able to really hone in on the detail and narrative. I’m going places that I was way too scared to before, not just in the sonics, but also in the storytelling. It’s been a really amazing creative journey.

What were you listening to while creating this album?

Actually, nothing. I didn’t engage with pop music. I haven’t listened to any newly released music for about three, four years. I wanted to isolate myself and challenge myself to not create from a place of comparison, but really from a place of feeling. When you’re in the pop world, it’s really easy to want to keep up with the thing that just got released, or even subconsciously just to compare yourself. If I did listen to anything, it was like Joni Mitchell.

When creating Hold the Girl, which you mention you made in six months, did you feel you were too influenced by pop music?

Not in the sonics of things, but I think in the immediacy. I think I was rushing the process, which, it was good to do that to know not to do that again. The music that I love the most is the records that have taken six years to do. If I had another two years, I would. But I think four years is a good time for this one. Maybe the next one is in six years. Who knows?

You’ve done a lot of collabs, too. Can we expect any collabs on your project?

I have a trend of not having any collabs on my records. I followed that trend.

Sawayama had so much rock influence. Hold the Girl got a little country at times. Is there a genre that you didn’t experiment with in the past that you’re experimenting with more in this next record?

I think certain genres are really good at carrying certain messages. It kind of [depends on] what I vibe with, really. I always tend to go towards the more produced side of things. I just love being maximal. It’s heavier, this record. It’s got rock. It’s industrial. I’m quite happy to say that because I’ve taken so much time on the record that I think in the past it’s felt as though, “Oh, that’s rock,” and, “Oh, that’s this genre. Oh, that’s dance.” Whereas I’ve worked so hard on this record for it to sound like my own thing.

There’s some songs where, and again, I don’t listen to new music, my producers will tell me that there’s still nothing like that out there, which really excites me. To successfully pull off the melding of genres in my own way is really satisfying, because that’s something I think I’ve strived towards for the last two records. I think this album gets there.

On Hold the Girl, “This Hell” clearly had a message around LGBTQ+ individuals, the concept of them being condemned to hell and pushing back on that narrative. A lot of your music has messages laced throughout. Why do you find that important in your songwriting?

Maybe it’s received as a message, but telling a story is really important to me. To put things into a narrative is actually quite a hard thing to do, because you really have to give it the three parts of a story—the hero’s journey of it, if you wish. Hold the Girl definitely does have that three-part sort of hero’s journey narrative arc to it. When I’m approaching an album, it gives it structure for me just to think about it in that way. I wish I was better at just seeing how it goes. I have no chill.

You are known to speak out on issues and social justice. How do you navigate that as a public figure?

That’s a really good question. I don’t think I have the answer to it, to be honest. When you’re a public figure, I think you’re expected to speak on something, and in the process of trying to think about how to say it, you can end up being quite righteous. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve wondered if how you communicate that in a righteous way—so that you’re establishing that what I’m saying is the absolute truth—is the correct thing to do, and whether that actually is conducive to bringing people together. I think in the past, I haven’t always gotten it right; I have created divisions.

Stepping away from music and the expectations of a public figure, it is still a process. Trying to figure out how to remain strong in my values, whilst being compassionate, and almost trying to circumnavigate this temptation to be righteous, and really just try and balance the importance of having your own values whilst also being kind—I think that’s the tricky thing. What I’ve said, what I’ve done in the past, is run to be righteous, and I don’t know if it’s worked every time. I don’t know if that’s helping the world.

I feel like the world needs community and for people to come together, and it’s hard to navigate that and stand up for what you want.

It’s hard. And you know what’s hard? Community is hard, because people tend to think that community means a group of people who think the same, and it’s really, really not….I think it’s about holding your values compassionately—strongly but compassionately.

You’re the first global ambassador of Haku. How did this come about?

Haku came to my show in Seattle in 2023, and they wanted to come and say hello, and they had this proposition. At the time, I hadn’t really tasted Haku Vodka, so they brought it with them, and I tried some martinis. I really loved the vodka. It just tastes different. I was never really a huge martini girl, but then when they made a martini for me, since then, I’ve only drank martinis.

You also have a beauty brand, Godmode, which you started with Chloë Grace Moretz. How did that come about?

Godmode approached me maybe three, four years ago as well. They talked to me about the brand. It kind of intersects this gaming world, which I think has come a long way in the last decade [or] two. To create a brand out of that was really interesting, because there’s a lot of possibilities. I’ve been part of different makeup campaigns in the past, and they’ve all been great, but to create a brand and to be the founder was a really new and exciting challenge that I was really interested in. I just had a bit more head space to engage with a different creative project than my music.

You’re also acting more. How has that been?

I was very lucky that my first role was John Wick: Chapter 4. It was a real crash course in acting. Then, when that came out, I was approached by several different projects. It’s just such a fortunate position. No one gets to have that sort of break.

How would you describe the intersections between making a film and an album?

The magic of seeing a TV show or episode or a film come together, and how many people it takes to do it every day, it’s magic. The amount of professionalism and hard work it takes to do that is just really astounding. It is really, truly blood, sweat, and tears [from] everyone. It’s such long days. The routine [of making music and making a film] is very different, I’d say.

Something that I’ve really come to value much more in music, now that I’ve acted, is the feeling. Being sensitive to feeling, being open to feeling, just really having that confidence to look into someone’s eyes and sit with that feeling.

It’s next-level to be able to turn it on like that when you’re exhausted or it’s night shoots. Actors can’t be sick. You can’t take a day off. You can’t not turn up to work, which is a hard lesson I learned on John Wick: Chapter 4. I got the COVID booster shot, and I got really sick the next day. I was in the background of a shot and I was like, “I feel really ill. I think I need to take a day off.” My agent was like, “What do you mean you need to take a day off?” I was like, “I’m in the background, they can just use a body double or something.” And they were like, “No, you need to fucking turn up.”

So then, since you’re having all of these successes outside of music, why return?

For a while, I’d say half a year, I didn’t want to do music anymore. I just didn’t have any inspiration, just a huge writer’s block, and I think I found being a public figure really just daunting. I didn’t feel like I was good enough, really.

I think it was that thing about the story again, just wanting to tell another story. I also just love being on stage, connecting to that many people, bringing that many people together in a room. Because when you do a live show, of course people are coming to see you, but really what happens in the room is that people see a version of themselves in you. The privilege of being part of that, it’s amazing.

I think about that scene in Interstellar where he’s falling through the tesseract, when he stops and he sees all these different snapshots of everyone’s lives. When I used to do meet-and-greets before shows, people would come with so many different stories. They’ve come from so many different walks of life, or they’d travel in to come and see the show. You really realize you have the privilege of having a snapshot of all these thousands of people’s lives at one time. It gives me goosebumps every time.

Is there a track of yours that you think is underrated?

I kind of want to say “Your Age,” off of Hold the Girl, is quite underrated. I’m going to say “Who’s Gonna Save U Now?” from the first record is underrated.

You changed the cover for Hold the Girl on streaming from the original cover. Why?

You know what? I’ll leave it as…I think you know why.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.