Hold the Girl

Sawayama has named Kelly Clarkson, the Corrs, Paramore, and Sugababes as artists who influenced Hold the Girl, as well as Taylor Swift's 2020 album Folklore. Variety Thania Garcia described Hold the Girl as "an evolution in [Sawayama's] style that will meld influences from across the pop spectrum". In a September 2023 interview with BBC News, Sawayama revealed that she was sexually groomed by a school teacher when aged 17. This heavily influenced the lyrical meaning behind Hold the Girl, particularly the album track "Your Age". Sawayama received sex and relationship therapy for the trauma. Musically, Hold the Girl is produced, performed, and recorded in a wide variety of genres. Primarily a pop record, specifically styled under the dance-pop and alternative pop subgenres. It also contains elements of 1990s alternative rock, pop rock, soft rock, Europop, trance, industrial, country pop, hi-NRG, pop punk, Eurotrance, stadium rock, Britpop, disco, R&B, hyperpop, J-pop, house, Eurodance, electronic, UK garage, techno, folk and psychedelic music. Songs The album's lead single "This Hell", a country pop song with "glam rock riffs", Sawayama stated: "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". Writing for Rolling Stone UK, Hannah Ewens stated that the album's title track presents Sawayama singing with 2000s R&B vocals and "opens like a holy gesture to Madonna's 'Like a Prayer' and becomes an emotional dancefloor filler". Rob Sheffield of the American edition of the same publication likened the track to Lady Gaga. The author described "Catch Me in the Air" as a celebration of Sawayama's relationship with her mother, written like a "Corrs song as if pitched to Gwen Stefani". The seventh track, "Your Age", is a "mix of bhangra and electro-warp sound effects". The ninth track, "Frankenstein" is a "tense and tetchy indie track featuring the singer begging someone to therapise her, to 'put me together, make me better'", and featuring a "digital 'hey, hey, hey' chant halfway between AC/DC and the Village People". == Promotion ==

Before an official announcement, Sawayama's second record was listed among the most anticipated albums of 2022 by Stereogum and DIY. In May 2022, Sawayama began advertising a forthcoming release through social media content and pamphlets with "blood-red" background and the text "Rina is going to hell" in all caps. The same month, she released lead single "This Hell", and announced Hold the Girl, a release date of 2 September and an accompanying tour beginning on 12 October. Following the announcement, the album was named one of Vulture's "36 Albums We Can't Wait to Hear This Summer". The singer performed "This Hell" in The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on 19 May and during the BBC Radio 1's Big Weekend on 29 May. A music video for the song, directed by Ali Kurr, premiered on 15 June. A second single, "Catch Me in the Air", was issued on 27 June. The album's title track was released as the third single on 27 July; the same day, she announced that the album was pushed back to 16 September due to "production issues" and that a fourth single would be made available before the date. Kurr also directed the music video for "Hold the Girl", which was released on 3 August. The fourth single, "Phantom", was released on 25 August. The fifth single, "Hurricanes", was released on 12 September, four days before the album's release. The album's second concert tour, the Hold the Girl Reloaded Tour was announced in March 2023, and took place across North America between June and October 2023. ==Reception==

Hold the Girl received universal critical acclaim upon its release. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 based on reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a score of 84 out of 100, based on reviews from 20 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". The album was rated an 8.1 out of 10 on the aggregator AnyDecentMusic?. Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Neil Z. Yeung called it "one of those albums where each of the vastly different songs could be a hit and, no matter how many times it's been spun, a moment of pause is needed to fully absorb just how good it really is," and claimed it as, "the sound of an artist taking their rightful place on the pop throne." Writing for Pitchfork, Cat Zhang called the album "decidedly more earnest and weighty" than its predecessor and likened it to "an attempt to merge the full-throated spectacle of Born This Way with the surviving-through-trauma emotionality of Chromatica". Zhang additionally opined that the myriad of "genre mash-ups and key changes" mean that "almost every song strives to be Sawayama's 'Bohemian Rhapsody'" but the album's "constant pivots make it hard to track its central concept: revisiting and empathizing with a younger self". Hannah Mylrea of NME called the record "the best British pop album of the year", complimenting Sawayama's "laser-precision melodies and hooks", "distinctive lyricism" and "impressive level of intimacy" in spite of the "high-octane" tracklist. ==Commercial performance==

Hold the Girl debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart; the highest-charting album by a Japanese-born solo artist in the history of the chart, and Sawayama's highest-charting album to date, with sales of 13,961 (of which 7,148 were vinyl copies). In the United States, the album debuted at number 166 on the US Billboard 200, making it her first entry on the chart. ==Track listing==

Notes • signifies an additional producer • All tracks vocal produced by Cameron Gower Poole. • "Minor Feelings" contains a sample from 2019 British film Rocks. ==Personnel==

Musicians • Rina Sawayama – vocals, programming • Clarence Clarity – synthesizer, guitar, programming • Paul Epworth – synthesizer, drum programming • Vixen Jamieson – guitar • Matt Tong – drums on "Frankenstein" Technical • Rina Sawayama – executive production • Clarence Clarity – production • Paul Epworth – production • Riley MacIntyre – engineering • Cameron Gower Poole – engineering, vocal production • Evie Clark-Yospa – engineering • Jonathan Gilmore – engineering • Joseph Rodgers – engineering • Stuart Price – production • Robin Schmidt – mastering • Geoff Swan – mixing Artwork • Chester Lockhart – creative direction, design, layout • Samuel Burgess-Johnson – design, layout • Thurstan Redding – photography ==Charts==