BEAUTY TIP: For an intense eye look, apply Make Up For Ever Artist Color Shadow Refill in Iceberg Blue from lid to brow.I was like, ‘Okay, maybe I’ll do something.’” Addressing the situation on Twitter and in interviews “kind of made me cringe a little bit,” she says, “because I was like, ‘Is anyone going to care?’”ĭress, Viktor&Rolf Couture. But then the nominations came out, “and there were articles about the fact that I wasn’t nominated, and people didn’t know why. “I’m not really a callout culture kind of person,” she says.
Sawayama was disappointed, but didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. “My team reached out and was like, ‘Hey, can you just change this, because Rina’s lived here for 25 years?’” she recalls. The only problem: Applicants are required to have a UK or Irish passport, and the Japan-born singer, who moved to Britain at age five, does not. When Sawayama first walked into the offices of what would become her label, she said that her ultimate goal for the album was to win the prestigious Mercury Prize, awarded to the best UK album released by a British or Irish artist. “There was absolutely no work-life balance, because there was no life to be lived.” “It was amazing, but I was literally in my room,” she remembers. Instead of playing to adoring crowds, she was at home, fermenting tempeh. “I mean, the fact that Gaga even knows I exist is just insane.” (She’d also die to work with Kacey Musgraves someday: “I think I might faint.”) But finding fame in a pandemic was a mixed bag. “To be surrounded by people who are pushing the envelope, pushing the boundaries of music in the past and present in so many ways, is such an honor,” Sawayama says. Elton John reached out to do a collaboration, as did Charli XCX (whom Sawayama says she’s been following since her Myspace days), and Lady Gaga tapped her for a song on her Dawn of Chromatica remix album.
Sawayama has been releasing songs since 2013, but her debut full-length album found an instant foothold with a glitz-deprived public in lockdown. It might have begun as an excuse, but soon enough, music became her raison d’être. But my best friends and my chosen family and I are queer, and they are not hearing the songs that represent them.” “I grew up with songs about heterosexual love, and I don’t negate them.