Rina Sawayama, Album, Pop, News, Music News

Rina Sawayama Announces Second Studio Album & Shares New Song 'This Hell'

Rina Sawayama has concluded her Dynasty Tour, and has been back to work in the studio. Sawayama has just announced her second full-length album, and shared a new song titled "This Hell."

The upcoming album is titled Hold the Girl and will be released September 2 via Sawayama's indie label, Dirty Hit. It will be the follow-up to her breakthrough record, Sawayama, which was released back in 2020.

Hold the Girl was created over the last year and a half by Sawayama and her long-term collaborators Clarence Clarity and Lauren Aquilina, with contributions from Paul Epworth, Stuart Price, and Marcus Andersson.

With the album announcement comes several other goodies. First, Sawayama has cleared her social media and uploaded new content related to this new Hold the Girl era. She's shared an album trailer, promo photos, and even October European tour dates.




"This Hell" has been billed as the lead single off Hold the Girl. Sawayama wrote the tune alongside Epworth and Aquilina, and it was co-produced by Epworth and Clarity. Sawayama is also set to debut the song on tonight's episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (May 19).

Sawayama said in a press release: "I had so much fun writing 'This Hell.' The past couple of years I’ve been listening to lots of female country singers and wanted to write a euphoric and tongue-in-cheek country-pop song. Country music at its core to me represents comfort, brilliant storytelling and authentic expression of the writer's reality. I’ve been dreaming of working with Paul Epworth my entire career so I knew it was meant to be when we finished this song in a day. I put in as many iconic pop culture moments as I can, but the song is more than that."

She continued: "It’s an important song for me given the human rights that are being taken away from minorities at a rapid rate in the name of traditional religious beliefs, more specifically I was thinking about the rights being taken away from the LGBTQ community when I wrote this song. When the world tells us we don’t deserve love and protection, we have no choice but to give love and protection to each other. This Hell is better with you."

You can pre-order Hold the Girl here.

Listen to "This Hell" and see the Hold the Girl album cover below.



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Article Image: Rina Sawayama performing at School Night in Los Angeles in 2018. (Justin Higuchi [CC BY 2.0] via Wikimedia Commons.)

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About Kathryn Milewski

  • New Jersey