Rina Sawayama has unveiled her new single Lucid, which features on the upcoming deluxe version of her eponymous debut album Sawayama. The track, an unapologetically poppy electro-dance number, has been produced by BloodPop (Michael Tucker) who has previously worked with the likes of Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, John Legend, Justin Bieber and Kendrick Lamar.
Speaking about the new track to DIY, who described the number as a ‘Gaga-esque banger‘, Sawayama said “It’s about living a different life through dreaming, whether it’s to be with the dream girl or to be the dream girl. Me and Lauren Aquilina wrote this together on the floor of my tiny rented living room back in early 2018. BloodPop sent us the beat and the melody flowed out so easily that I remember at one point I started hoovering cos I knew this would be easy to write lol. I’ve kept this song secret for 2 years so I’m so excited to finally release it to the world! 2020’s been a tough year so I wanted to finish it off with a dance bop to take us into a more hopeful 2021.”
Lucid is the sixth single from Sawayama, which reached number two on the UK Independent Album Breakers Chart earlier this year. The Japanese-born, London-raised singer – who first cut her teeth in the business as a member of hip-hop outfit Lazy Lion with Wolf Alice bassist Theo Ellis – has said that the new album explores the themes of identity and belonging.
She told Pitchfork: “The album ultimately is about family and identity. It’s about understanding yourself in the context of two opposing cultures (for me British and Japanese), what “belonging” means when home is an evolving concept, figuring out where you sit comfortably within and awkwardly outside of stereotypes, and ultimately trying to be ok with just being you, warts and all.”
Earlier this year the singer also spoke about how she hoped to break down barriers for Asian representation in pop music. She told NPR: “When I was starting out, I was very, very fixated on what I represented to people. At the time, I remember looking around being like “There’s not a single Asian pop artist that I can name.” Hayley Kiyoko was sort of coming in a bit, but I was like “I can’t name people who have pushed their Asian-ness to the fore and made art out of it.” Even just in the process of writing this album, there’s so many artists now. I definitely felt the pressure for me to reach this next level of representation. I feel like the first step was me talking about the fact that there’s no representation, and then the second step was just being as successful as possible doing something that I would be proud of.”
Sawayama received near-universal critical acclaim on its release in April. NME described it as “honest, genre-exploding self-portrait“, blending styles from “raucous nu-metal to glittering R&B“; while Rolling Stone opined that “…each song on ‘Sawayama’ sounds like the type of music you dream of hearing at an unbearably cool party, meticulously unique and fun from second to second.” There was also praise from British pop royalty in the form of Sir Elton John, who called the LP “the strongest album of the year by far.”
Sawayama will take the record on tour in the UK and the US next year, with four sold-out British gigs in Glasgow, Manchester, Birmingham and London pencilled in for March 2021. She will also see out the year in the capital with a homecoming gig at Camden’s iconic Roundhouse venue on November 17th.
