Rina Sawayama Shares Final Hold the Girl Single, “Hurricanes”

Rina Sawayama’s star continues to go supernova in the lead-up to Hold the Girl, and the British-Japanese pop artist has shared one last single ahead of her sophomore album’s release this Friday (Sept. 16) via Dirty Hit. “Hurricanes” is our fifth preview of Sawayama’s much-anticipated SAWAYAMA follow-up, after “Phantom,” “Hold the Girl,” “Catch Me in the Air” and “This Hell.”

Sawayama sets the stage for “Hurricanes” over melodic guitar and glimmering synths, describing a disconnect between external changes and internal stasis (“April showers finally making way for warmer weather / But yet I still feel the same”). The song as a whole sees her confronting the hard truth of that numbness, and coming to terms with the self-destructive tendencies that stem from her emotional detachment: “Chasing hurricanes / ‘Cos I can’t feel the rain,” she sings, “Second guess my pain / ‘Cos I’ve been walking round in chains.” Massive drums accompany Sawayama through the track’s galvanizing choruses, with a stadium-rock riff leading her into an epiphanic bridge in which she harnesses the storm’s power as her own: “I’m in a cyclone, I’m spinning, crashed through the floor / Don’t give me heaven, I’m flying / Tearing down the doors of this city.”

This November, Sawayama heads out on a North American headlining tour, with 13 shows that include stops at the Great Hall at Avant Gardner in New York City, Roadrunner in Boston, The Eastern in Atlanta and the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles. Prior to that leg, she’ll tour the U.K. and Ireland in October. Ticket info is here.