How Taylor Swift Inspired Rina Sawayama's New Emotional Album

Rina Sawayama shared that Taylor Swift was an inspiration for her upcoming album. During a recent interview with Rolling Stone UK, the British-Japanese pop visionary revealed that Swift's songwriting on the album Folklore served as a major catalyst for her own creative process. “I remember when Taylor Swift released Folklore, I was like, ‘This bitch is writing about fake stories and she just wrote a whole album," Rina told Rolling Stone. "If she can do it, I need to do it.’”

Her sophomore album is called Hold the Girl and will contain 13 tracks based on a journey of emotional evolution. She told the magazine she and her co-collaborator Lauren Aquilina would talk through her therapy and "musically translate" various issues and personal discoveries. This introspection was prompted in part by the early days of the pandemic. "Like a lot of people, lockdown made you look at yourself and the things that were not making me happy in my life... The new kind of therapy really opened up new points of exploration and I really wanted to see whether I could make those things into a pop song,” she said.

The follow-up to Rina's critically-acclaimed 2020 debut album Sawayama will arrive on September 2. So far, the singer has released the lead single called "This Hell," which features a quick nod to Shania Twain's Man I Feel Like a Woman. Before starting the song, Rina whispers "Let's go girls," the high-energy songs make more references to gay pop icons like Britney Spears, Whitney Houston, and Princess Diana.