Hold The Girl Tracklist
Hold the Girl is the second studio album by Rina Sawayama, released on September 16th, 2022 under Dirty Hit and following her 2020 debut LP, SAWAYAMA. Although the record was first teased by the London-based artist in April 2021, its official announcement came more than a year later, on May 19, 2022, alongside the release of the lead single “This Hell”. A second single, “Catch Me In The Air,” was then made available on June 27.
Rina started working on Hold the Girl, together with Clarence Clarity and Paul Epworth, shortly after she had decided to embark on “intense therapy” in order to deal with an unresolved trauma from her adolescence, as revealed during an interview with Rolling Stone UK:
For me, it’s important that the listener is able to listen to it as a pop record first without that background, [and] make their own feelings about it. And then, when I’m ready, I think I will be able to talk about what it’s actually about.
With influences ranging from progressive rock, through ‘90s rave music to country music, Hold the Girl was directly inspired by the insights the artist gained during the sessions with her therapist. As she told in a press release, the album has been structured so that its thirteen tracks reflect Rina’s journey to come to terms with her past, going through the revelations and the personal growth she experienced while going through therapy:
I’ve designed the tracklist so it takes you on a journey, and by the end, you feel released by it. […] It’s a very adult record, because it’s really only fully understood when you become an adult and you can look back on experiences [you had] as a kid. It’s about escapism. It’s about looking after yourself, reparenting yourself and finding yourself.
On July 6 2022, the official track-list for the album was released through Rina’s Instagram profile.
“Hold The Girl” Q&A
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Translations
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What is the album about?
During an interview for Who What Wear, Rina revealed that the topic of healing is predominant theme throughout the album, most notably in the songs “Phantom” and “To Be Alive,” and said:
Hold the Girl is about holding your inner child. It’s about speaking to the girl that’s gone through a lot. Through this process of reparenting myself and looking at my inner child to see what I would have wanted, I’m holding space for myself and giving myself creative freedom.
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Album Trailer
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Is there official animated artwork?
Yes, Apple Music features an animated artwork for this release.
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What motivated Rina to make this album?
I was completely uninspired. But time was passing, and I was having a chat with my label and my management and they’re like ‘Look, if you work on it now, then by the time everything opens up, there’ll be a new record and then there’ll be momentum,’ and I was like ‘Oh, God, I dunno. I don’t feel ready to move on.’ I think people were feeling so unmotivated in general throughout lockdown because we had no release. There was nothing to be excited for. I actually read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and she talks about how you get through your creative blocks. That in conjunction with seeing artists like Charli XCX and Taylor Swift releasing lockdown albums was really inspiring because I was like, you have to think of another way. I really was digging my heels in. I just didn’t want to write. I just wanted to sit at home and be sad, basically. […] When I don’t know how to do something, I always look to books to find out how to do it. And there are so many books on creative blocks. […] Listening to podcasts about creating, and just speaking with friends who are in the industry being like, “How do you feel?” And them being like, “Yeah, I feel the same way, too” was really encouraging because I didn’t feel like I was being stupid by not wanting to write. It was books and just kind of necessity: I had to.
–via Grammy
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What are Rina's own favorite tracks on the album?
It’s amazing to see people reacting to the songs. The release of a song for me isn’t complete until you’ve played it live, so my favourites have changed from the writing process, to when the album came out, to now playing them live. Currently “Imagining” and “Frankenstein” are up there because I love the audience response—there’s this unbelievable energy from them.
–via Vogue Singapore
