Rina Sawayama Delivers the Ultimate Pop Period Piece in New ‘Hold the Girl’ Video

Tomás Mier
·2 min read
Hold-the-Girl-Rina-Sawayama - Credit: Thurstan Redding*
Hold-the-Girl-Rina-Sawayama - Credit: Thurstan Redding*
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Rina Sawayama experiences an emotional and temporal breakthrough in the new music video for, “Hold the Girl.”

Directed by Ali Kurr, the clip feels like a pop period piece, with Sawayama finding her self caught in a time loop that keeps her in a 19th century farm house until she’s finally able to break free. The new visual is tied to the breakthroughs Sawayama experienced in therapy that helped inspire “Hold the Girl.”

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“I had gone to therapy and had a revelation, so I decided to write this song…that was the start of it,” says Sawayama in a statement. “I was crying before going into the studio.”

The powerful track follows the singer as she realizes her self-worth and understands that even if she’s wanted to change who she is, she remembers “who I’m really made of.”

“Sometimes I get down with guilt for the promises I’ve broken to my younger self,” she sings with her stellar tone. “Moving on, maybe I’ll never will Cos I left u spinning on the carousel.” The track ends with a cinematic outro.

“Hold the Girl” follows the release of her singles “Catch Me in the Air” and “This Hell,” both of which are featured on her Sept. 16 LP. Sawayama also joined Pabllo Vitaar on “Follow Me” earlier this year and “Beg For You” with Charli XCX.

Sawayama opened up to Rolling Stone UK about her upcoming LP and how she’s learned to see herself as more than one person.  “Once I got to that part of re-parenting myself and treating myself as a ‘we’ and being like ‘Do you need to do this?’” Sawayama said. “And if it’s a no, then it’s a no.”

After releasing her LP, which follows critically-acclaimed Sawayama, the British-Japanese pop star is set to go on a tour across the U.S. during November, hitting New York’s Great Hall at Avant Gardner and Los Angeles’ Hollywood Palladium.

Hold the Girl tour dates:

Nov. 1 – Brooklyn, NY @ Great Hall at Avant Gardner
Nov. 4 – Boston, MA @ Roadrunner
Nov. 5 – Silver Springs, MD @ The Fillmore
Nov. 6 – Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore
Nov. 8 – Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
Nov. 9 – Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
Nov. 11 – Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
Nov. 12 – Austin, TX @ Emo’s Austin
Nov. 13 – Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
Nov. 16 – Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
Nov. 18 – San Diego, CA @ SOMA
Nov. 21 – Oakland, CA @ FoxTheater
Nov. 23 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium

This story was updated 8/3/22 at 3:27 with the music video for “Hold the Girl.”

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