Japanese-British singer Rina Sawayama will perform in Pittsburgh on June 8 as part of Pride Rocks PGH. Dazed wrote, in 2017:
“Being east Asian and trying to be a pop singer in the UK where there is no precedent has sometimes been quite hard,” says London-based musician and model Rina Sawayama. “There aren’t many east Asian singers in the western pop world.”She will open for Toni Braxon, the event's headliner. Tickets for the standing-room only show are available online.
Sawayama’s music, which she describes as “cute R&B with a subliminal pop sheen”, takes influence from her early childhood in Tokyo, where she weaned herself on J-pop (having “literally missed the boat” on the Spice Girls). Her glistening track “Cyber Stockholm Syndrome”, the first from her planned album, tingles with a Justin Timberlake-esque guitar hook and spotlights anxiety in the digital age.