album Rina Sawayama - 'Hold the Girl'

[Club classic]

5 hours ago, Ice Cream Skies said:

 

I don't think it's for everyone, honestly.  It can be a little niche, in that respect. And I get how pretentious that sounds. But if you can relate... this is one hell of an album.

this!!

[smoore95GAGA]

24 minutes ago, Verge of Obscene said:

if you don’t like it, you just don’t get it

We get it, you’re insecure and need to lash out at people that disagree with you to make yourself feel more secure in your opinions 

[Verge of Obscene]

11 minutes ago, smoore95GAGA said:

We get it, you’re insecure and need to lash out at people that disagree with you to make yourself feel more secure in your opinions 

hold your inner child smoore95GAGA

[Rider]

@Verge of Obscene could you pls make Supervillain the OP of the thread  

Im not that good at updating 

[smoore95GAGA]

18 minutes ago, Verge of Obscene said:

hold your inner child smoore95GAGA

I’ll wait for the self-awareness to kick in. I’ll probably be waiting for awhile 

 

OT: The album is definitely a mixed bag. HTG, This Hell, Holy, Imagining, Frankenstein and Hurricanes are amazing. The rest is honestly forgettable. I understand people liking and not liking this. The only person that doesn’t get it is miss Verge of Obscene 

Edited September 9, 2022 by smoore95GAGA

[Jagger]

She saw the success of Chosen Family (worst song on her debut btw) and decided to fill her album with disney soundtrack ballads. Shameless 

 

also if you’re gonna whine about your childhood/family for your entire career you might want to be a bit edgier and/or actually go into detail about the horrible things that happened. Her lyrics are serving bratty kid. Like take some notes on Trouble by Natalia Kills. That's an album about ****** up family done right 

 

I keep trying to like this but This Hell plus tracks 6-9 are the only good songs. 5/13  tragic 

Edited September 9, 2022 by Jagger

[bluevelvetcrowbar]

Nnnnn all these reactions for liking and disliking tbh, for me, Sawayama was a 9/10, and Hold The Girl is a 7.5/10. I concede there is a bit of a downgrade in experimentation and edginess for HTG, but it's by no means a *bad* album. In fact, I would go as far as to say songs like Holy and Imagining are some of her best songs period imo.

 

But as some have said, she's verging on corny in some of these songs. I wish she could've portrayed these themes in a way that doesn't sound like an after school special, but there's nothing as crap as Chosen Family on here so I count that as a win 

[RideOrDie]

first they hate you then they switch

[Tyrion_LMG]

When this album ends up with a higher Metacritic score than SAWAYAMA 

[Club classic]

the album has so many highlights, I can’t believe she dropped CMITA as the second single which is imo the weakest  

[Tyrion_LMG]

13 minutes ago, sbenci said:

the album has so many highlights, I can’t believe she dropped CMITA as the second single which is imo the strongest  

Fixed

[Delirious]

All the singles took 3 listens to get. Now I’m obsessed with all of them. This album will be the same.

 

i will dislike the songs at first and think it’s a mess but after 3 listens, it’ll turn into crack

[Supervillain]

I think the only bad single choice was CMITA, it's nothing more than an album track really

[getawaycar]

41 minutes ago, Delirious said:

All the singles took 3 listens to get. Now I’m obsessed with all of them. This album will be the same.

 

i will dislike the songs at first and think it’s a mess but after 3 listens, it’ll turn into crack

No like it really is, I think the melodies are strong and make you want to sing along, her vocals are stellar too

[Dragonfly]

definitely a step down from Sawayama, but I expected worst tbh

 

not Minor Feelings being the best song  Hold the Girl and Phantom complete the trinity

Catch Me, Frankenstein, Hurricanes, Send My Love and To Be Alive are all decent

This Hell is still the biggest musical abomination I've heard all year

[liammmmacbtw]

the 1-2-3-4 punch of Holy, Your Age, Imagining, Frankenstein 

 

carries the album along with This Hell 

[smoore95GAGA]

59 minutes ago, Dragonfly said:

 

I am still the biggest musical abomination I've heard all year

Fixed 

[campelo]

The album has some very good songs but some quite bad ones for RINA. So it's mild 

[campelo]

Send My Love To John, Frankestein and Hurricanes are my top 3 

[bluevelvetcrowbar]

My top 3 are Holy, Imagining, and Your Age 

[東京.]

Is it her best body of work? Absolutely not. But is it bad? No. All the singles apart from Hold The Girl are duds, along with one or two other tracks from the album. It’s a bit disappointing because of the quality we know she’s capable of, so it’s definitely a middle of the road kind of album for me. HTD, Holy, Imagining, and Frankenstein are top tier though. Everything else is fairly average and not listenable again. 

[Club classic]

I relate to this masterpiece so much  I’m so so excited to get my bundle

[Blueberry Kisses]

I've been listening to the album for the past day and I have a lot of feelings about it so please excuse the essay.

 

I love most of the songs individually but as a whole this is an extremely bizarre release. It's like she made 3 completely separate, unrelated EPs and then stapled them together:

 

Rina Does Early 2000s Pop/Rock - CMITA, Forgiveness, Hurricanes, Phantom

Rina Does What We Wanted/Expected - Holy, Frankenstein, Imagining, Your Age

Rina Does Radio Fodder - This Hell, HTG, To Be Alive

Bonus: Rina Does A Very Un-Rina-like Good Ballad - Send My Love

 

I don't really know what the point of Minor Feelings is because that's not sonically connected to any of the other sections either  

 

It's hard to figure out what the intended effect is and it's extra weird because in the What We Expected section you can literally hear the musical motifs from SAWAYAMA but with different influences, so that section feels like a natural evolution, but it's book-ended by the pop-rock stuff which isn't bad at all but is really tonally dissimilar and a little cheesy. The Radio Fodder section really kind of drags it down for me, not because the songs are bad (though I really dislike Hold The Girl, it's just so all over the place and incoherently melodramatic. Her singing on it is also...really bad ) but because they sound kind of ridiculous in comparison to the edgier sound of the album's best songs. She's clearly a really talented conceptual musician but her lyrics have always been her weak point and that + the very, like, Disney Channel Original Movie sound of some of the songs compounds and makes them stand out in a bad way. To Be Alive, for instance, has a nice melody and good production but as soon as she hits you with "Flowers are still pretty when they're dying", etc., it feels like an excerpt from a tween's diary

 

Like, if she had just made a light pop/rocky album or a radio friendly house album I wouldn't have been thrilled but it probably would've been a solid record and very listenable. But instead she was like "here's 4 tracks to tease you with what I could do, and then here's a bunch of...other stuff." I do really like the pop/rock songs on their own but it's so jarring to go from them to high-concept avant garde pop songs and then back again. 

 

Though one thing I am really pleasantly surprised by is Send My Love. Her straight ballads have, so far, dipped unpleasantly into cheese territory (case in point: Chosen Family) but this one is really beautiful and restrained. The way she used country influence on This Hell was...a choice, though I guess it actually does represent the album pretty well, but on this song it's really suitable and her vocal performance on it is appropriately delicate. Does it fit with the rest of the album? Not really, but the rest of the album also doesn't really fit with the rest of the album, so

 

Overall, I think the project is like a 7/10 for me. It's definitely a bit of a step down from SAWAYAMA and also kind of a lateral move in that its best moments are great but its worst moments are baffling and disappointing. All that being said, though, you can't say she's not keeping it interesting.

[Hannah Hunt]

This is the definition of a 7/10 album

[smoore95GAGA]

2 hours ago, 東京. said:

HTD, Holy, Imagining, and Frankenstein are top tier though.

HTD? Hold the D?