Rina Sawayama performing at Coachella, 2022
(Picture: Getty Images for Coachella)Rina Sawayama has released a new single titled Catch Me In The Air. The track comes in advance of her highly anticipated new album Hold The Girl, which is dropping in September.
Described by NME as a “soaring pop cut”, the track has been penned as a celebration of Sawayama’s mum, who raised her as a single parent.
“Catch me in the air, the air, the air, the air, the air, the air (Mama, look at me now, I’m flying),” says one of the chorus lyrics. “Twenty years all alone, bound together to the phone / Was it fate?” says another line.
In a statement about the song, Sawayama said: “I really wanted to write about this weird relationship with single parents. You do catch each other in the air.”
Sawayama wrote the track with British musicians Oscar Scheller, Clarence Clarity, Gracey and Stuart Price.
To accompany the single, Sawayama released an official “visualiser” - a video that’s somewhere between a music video and a recording of a live show, which collates clips of the singer performing with clips of meadows, clouds, mountains and a sunrise.
Sawayama announced her forthcoming album in May, alongside a 40-second visual trailer.
Hold The Girl
— RINA SAWAYAMA (@rinasawayama) May 16, 2022
The new album
September 2 2022https://t.co/1r1X9PKSmk pic.twitter.com/nw59Im5ra4
In an interview on The Zane Lowe Show on Apple Music 1, Sawayama said she was also inspired by Gwen Stefani when making the track.
“It was one of the first-ever sessions that I did during lockdown in person, and so I was so anxious about catching COVID. Everyone was really feeling anxious about it,” she said.
“Gracey was like, ‘Oh, my God, Gwen Stefani’s releasing a new song.’ And I was like, ‘Why don’t we just pretend to write for Gwen? Like, ‘Let’s just get our brains out of our heads and let’s just pretend,” she added.
In an interview with Rolling Stones in May, Sawayama spoke about her relationship with her mother. She said: “Everything that she had done in the first 28 to 29 years of my life had been for me. Now, knowing how much she had to go through, I can understand and sympathise with her.”
Sawayama’s mother went to design school when the singer was 12, financing the education by taking in a lodger. In the Rolling Stones interview Sawayama said: “I remember trying to help her do her coursework and she couldn’t ever help me with my homework because she couldn’t understand what I was doing. She’s thriving now, she’s doing really well.”
Sawayama began her singing career around 2013, following a politics, psychology and sociology degree at Cambridge University. She found critical acclaim in 2020 after signing to Dirty Hit records. Her debut album Sawayama came out the same year.
