Rina Sawayama

Genre-defying British-Japanese pop sensation RINA SAWAYAMA has today announced her debut tour of Australia and New Zealand. The announce comes ahead of next Friday’s new album release ‘Hold The Girl’. Rina will kick off the tour in Auckland at Powerstation on January 9.

In 2020 Rina’s debut album SAWAYAMA became one of the most critically acclaimed albums that year landing on over 50 album of the year lists, including the New York Times (#2), The Guardian (#3) and Rolling Stone (#6). The last 18 months have seen Rina Sawayama achieve a magnitude of milestones including changing the Mercury Prize and BRITs eligibility rules which meant Non-British artists could apply if they have been a permanent resident in the UK for more than 5 years. In 2021 Elton John joined forces with the popstar to release a special rendition of “Chosen Family”, a powerful and emotional ode to her LGBTQ+ family. Elsewhere Rina injected new life into Lady Gaga’s instant club classic “Free Woman”.

2023 will see Rina in her film acting debut as she stars in John Wick 4 alongside Keanu Reeves.

Fresh off the triumph of her UK and US headline tour, which sold out the Roundhouse in London and saw five-star reviews from The Guardian and NME, the newly minted British-Japanese pop star is following up her celebrated debut album SAWAYAMA with Hold The Girl, a colossally ambitious and utterly original record that marries intimate storytelling with arena-sized tunes.

Hold The Girl, due for release on September 16, showcases Rina's talent for bending huge chart influences and blockbuster melodies to her will with precision-tuned songwriting and powerful vocals. The 13-tracks of Hold The Girl will feature the previously released singles 'This Hell', which debuted with a performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, along with 'Catch Me In The Air' and the title track 'Hold The Girl', which came with an Ali Kurr directed video and portrays Rina stuck in a time loop within the bounds of a 19th-century farmhouse until she finally breaks free.

Hold The Girl, isn’t just a smorgasbord of monster hits-in-the-waiting – it’s also a bold and honest statement about the singer coming to terms with her own past and the jubilation of turning to the future.These are big songs in a big album, choreographing female emotion, despair and hope in a record that pulsates with the message that pop can be more complex, darker and so much more meaningful than your typical girl-meets-boy lyricism. “I'm still very much a maximal writer. I hate silences.” And that’s her down to a tee – in a world that wants women to be quieter, Rina Sawayama is finding new ways to speak up.