“Hold the Girl” and the healing power of dance-cry pop
To anyone who has heard Rina Sawayama’s soaring vocals or witnessed her magnetic stage presence, it is a mystery why she hasn’t blown up yet. Part of the answer may lie in the less-than-ideal circumstances that clouded her stellar debut album “SAWAYAMA,” released in April 2020 during the onset of the pandemic. With “SAWAYAMA,” the 32-year-old Japanese-British singer-songwriter exploded onto the music scene with a genre-bending sound and incisive lyrics that grappled with intergenerational trauma, consumerism and racial microaggressions. However, due to pandemic restrictions, Sawayama’s fans could only reciprocate that energy through social media. Now, on her sophomore album “Hold the Girl,” Sawayama invites listeners to unpack their emotional baggage and leave it all on the dance floor.