It all points to an unstoppable upward trajectory, and Hold the Girl scales accordingly.

She's always given stadium and is revered as a superstar among extremely online pop fans she's collaborated with Elton John and she was a must-see act at this summer's festivals. In 2018, I witnessed an early headline set at a 300-capacity London basement where, just like at those apocryphal early Lady Gaga shows, Sawayama and two dancers performed flawless choreo to essentially a desk fan. She was, as she's often said, a late-starter in pop terms - 29 before she signed a record deal with Dirty Hit, the artist-friendly pop label home to The 1975, Wolf Alice and Beabadoobee - and raring to catch up.

Released in April 2020, that audacious record was enough to keep Sawayama's fledgling star high even as the pandemic hampered her real-life progress. Songs like 'STFU!' and 'Dynasty' sounded as if Sawayama had written the abrasive, flashy hit to broker a truce between TRL-era foes Christina Aguilera and Fred Durst - albeit with appealingly knowing lyrics about microaggressions and intergenerational trauma. That tactic worked strikingly on her 2020 debut, SAWAYAMA, filled with cheekily clever and often genuinely surprising hybrids that pilfered from Y2K pop and nu-metal, finessed by Sawayama's sharp focus and clear wit. It's a funny idea given that music from every era is perpetually available and there's no knowing what arcane curio or yesteryear hit TikTok might funnel down the pipe next. In a recent interview, Sawayama explained that by bringing together 'out-of-fashion' styles that no other artists dared touch, she could escape sounding dated and surprise listeners. Restoration is also the strategy that underpins her genre-clashing pop. To help the British-Japanese popstar recover from the pains of assimilation, homophobia and sexual trauma that had cheated her out of being her true self since her youth, she would 're-parent' herself, reclaiming what had been lost.

Rina Sawayama's second album, Hold the Girl, is named after a term she learned in therapy.

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