Rina Sawayama has spoken her disappointment towards misogyny and racism in the music industry, writing on Instagram that she “can’t release an album under my current conditions.”
For International Women’s Day on Friday, March 8th, Sawayama was one of several female artists interviewed for The Independent’s article about the misogynistic states that women in music work through. For her part, Sawayama immediately references her seething call out of Matty Healy at Glastonbury in June 2023, where she told the crowd “Tonight, this goes out to a white man that watches Ghetto Gaggers, and mocks Asian people on a podcast… he also owns my masters… I’ve had enough.”
Speaking to Chloe Little and Roisin O’Connor, Sawayama shared: “Since summer last year, I’ve felt intense racist misogyny in a way that I’ve never felt before. In public and private I feel as though I’ve been repeatedly gaslit, disrespected, ignored, even cyber-bullied for calling out blatant racist and sexist behaviour.” She continued, saying “It’s horrifying seeing how the forts around men get built overnight and the techniques used to try to discredit and confuse the narrative. It’s been wild to see men and women around me turn.”
Sawayama elaborated on the mental toll these experiences have had on her. “It’s the first time I’ve been honest about my past year (or to a level of detail I feel safe to). Honestly my mental health has been awful and though I was able to complete my 2023 commitments I can’t say it’s been the same this year,” the pop star wrote. “I’ve been lucky to have found ways to keep my business afloat and support myself as well as my team, but when it comes to new music I can’t release another album under my current conditions. I feel really trapped and don’t know what to do.”
Rina Sawayama released her last album, Hold the Girl, in September 2022, and has been on the label Dirty Hit since she signed with them in 2020. Matty Healy of The 1975 was previously the creative director of Dirty Hit before leaving in August 2023, and is a shareholder of Dirty Hit alongside his bandmates.
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