Rina Sawayama has announced her sophomore album. The follow-up to SAWAYAMA is called Hold the Girl, and it’s out September 2 via Dirty Hit. Check out lead single ‘This Hell’, and scroll down for the album’s cover artwork (by Thurstan Redding).
‘This Hell’ was co-written by Sawyama, Paul Epworth, and Lauren Aquilina and co-produced by Epworth and Clarence Clarity. In a statement about the track, Sawayama said:
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.
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.
Sawayama will perform ‘This Hell’ on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on May 19.
Hold the Girl Cover Artwork: