Aesthetic:Rina Sawayama

“If art doesn’t make you escape from real life, then what’s the point?” Rina Sawayama asks me. The Tokyo-born, London-based artist is on to something: it's easy to lose yourself in her world of saccharine pop and glossy futuristic visuals.

But to say her work is pure fantasy would undermine what she’s achieving as a musician. While inspired by the pop princesses of the early-aughts, Sawayama makes pop music for the self-conscious millennial. Tracks such as Cyber Stockholm Syndrome, from 2017's mini album RINA, probe our increasingly complex relationship with technology, speaking to every one of us who spends hours scrolling social media while simultaneously mulling over countless existential crises.

On top of making sense of life in the digital age with her music, Sawayama works as a model, using her own image as a tool against patriarchal, Westernised standards of beauty. “Challenging ideas of beauty is important to me, it’s an internal challenge to always do something new,” she explains.

For Sawayama, embracing the things she loves – whether it be Lady Gaga, or her new haircut inspired by 90s boybands – is a political choice. “When you change your look you are challenging other people’s idea of you – that can be quite inspiring.” She continues, “even little observations such as how your appearance can challenge femininity, that was definitely a factor in my decision to have shorter hair.”

For someone who appears so brilliantly sure of themselves, it’s surprising to hear that Sawayama hasn’t always felt so headstrong in being who she is. “Music can really help you understand yourself, but there was a time a long time where I didn’t understand myself because I didn’t allow myself to just like the things that I liked.” Feeling under pressure to exist as purely a “British singer”, she temporarily dismissed the J-Pop she adored growing up in favour of “stuff on Soundcloud”. Sawayama continues, “as soon as I let myself enjoy and also analyse the music that I used to like back in the 00s, I was able to create something that was true to myself.”