At 10am this morning, Rina Sawayama had this to say about the music video for her latest single: “bad friend video is like nothing I’ve ever done before”. Until the video for “Bad Friend” drops at 3pm tomorrow, we only have scraps to go on. But compared to the greenscreen surrealism in “Comme Des Garçons (Like the Boys)” or the extravagant production value of the appropriately named “XS”, it looks from these snapshots alone like she’s not kidding.
bad friend video is like nothing I’ve ever done before
— #STREAMSAWAYAMA DEBUT ALBUM OUT NOW (@rinasawayama) May 19, 2020
An hour after her initial post, the Japanese-born, London-raised singer officially announced that the music video for “Bad Friend” would be released the following day alongside a still from the video. The video will be debuted via Sawayama’s YouTube channel (which she has dubbed ‘RINATV’). You can subscribe to the channel for notifications about Rina-related content here.
– BAD FRIEND OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO – TOMORROW 3PM BST – SUBSCRIBE SO U DONT MISS https://t.co/jMLBZt2s4g pic.twitter.com/AuZHJJW80k — #STREAMSAWAYAMA DEBUT ALBUM OUT NOW (@rinasawayama) May 19, 2020
Judging by the forlorn look of the still above (and this one teased earlier in the week) be sure to expect to see a far cry from the ecstatic tone of the last two. But given the melancholic lyrical content of “Bad Friend”, this alternate approach might be just what the song needs. In an interview with Pitchfork, Sawayama told Dani Blum that the song came about after she checked Facebook, only to find that a former close friend had recently had a baby. In the track, Sawayama reminisces about a trip the two of them took to Tokyo after graduating from uni, when they got drunk in a karaoke booth and danced naked to Carly Rae Jepsen. The track, as it happens, ended up being produced by Jepsen collaborator Kyle Shearer.
BAD FRIEND THIS WEEK
SUBSCRIBE: https://t.co/jMLBZt2s4g pic.twitter.com/yQ2GfJrG8Q— #STREAMSAWAYAMA DEBUT ALBUM OUT NOW (@rinasawayama) May 18, 2020
“Bad Friend” will be the third single to come attached to a music video from Sawayama’s eponymous debut album. SAWAYAMA was released on the 17th of April via Dirty Hit records to universal acclaim. Review aggregate site Metacritic awarded the album a Metascore of 90/100, based on 13 professional reviews (placing it as the second best received record of the year after Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters). You can buy the album here, or stream it and her 2017 EP RINA through Sawayama’s own spotify playlist embedded below:
