album Rina Sawayama - 'Hold the Girl'

[skyandground]

Catch Me In The Air

Forgiveness 

Hurricanes

Phantom

To Be Alive

 

My favorites so far 

[unino]

she better gets back to studio and come up with a better one asap.

[brraap]

Catch me in the air >>>> 

 

I cried on first listen 

[brraap]

On first listen I agree with the term “mid” that’s being used to describe this album

 

But Rina is fav so I’m gonna play it 3-4 times until til I make a solid conclusion. Espec since I’m going to see this heaux at a signing next month 

[KatyPrismSpirit]

The album debuted with over 2.2M streams yesterday. thats more than i expected to be fair

[Ariel]

I really like this, it gets better with every play

[Guy12345]

Something's not hitting with the more pop-orienated tracks. This Hell and To Be Alive, for me, are by far the worst on the album.

Hold The Girl (song) also kinda tacky in the mix.

 

I didn't expect to love the 2000's pop-rock moments as much as I do but Phantom, Catch Me and Forgiveness are all fantastic.

Hurricanes is a pleasant track that suffers from questionable mixing choices that sometimes are almost impossible to get through.

the run from Catch Me to Frankenstein is great indeed.

 

overall it's a good pop album and one that will probably benefit from revisits in the future, just like SAWAYAMA did.

I personally would have changed a lot of the choices that were made here, but it's an impressive showing of her talent.

Edited September 18, 2022 by Guy12345

[KatyPrismSpirit]

I think we can all agree hold the girl is the og worst song on this album its NOT this hell babes !

[Guy12345]

1 minute ago, KatyPrismSpirit said:

I think we can all agree hold the girl is the og worst song on this album its NOT this hell babes !

For me it's To Be Alive by a landslide.

I can't with how bland it is.

[KatyPrismSpirit]

4 minutes ago, Guy12345 said:

For me it's To Be Alive by a landslide.

I can't with how bland it is.

Hold the Girl is the only song i could agree is just plainly bad. The singing part is off, the car sound in the beginning makes zero sense at all? (the transition doesnt even make sense lol) and the vocals sound too forced / kinda 2008 Eurovision tease / bon jovi karaoke night.

 

To Be Alive isnt a standout by any means but its a cute Disney type song. It reminds me a lot of a upbeat version of Gaga's "I'll Never Love Again" in the beginning mixed with something Elsa from Frozen would sing

Edited September 18, 2022 by KatyPrismSpirit

[Sky Engineer]

The dramatics

[dreamofyou]

phantom is still one of my fave pre-release tracks, maybe even one of my fave songs this year

[josesuxx]

The fact that I can't bring myself to even give this one listen 

[est. in 90s]

Maybe if she would have switched out Hurricanes for Flavour of the Month and gave To Be Alive, Phantom, Catch Me In The Air and the title track a chop, this might've been one of the best pop albums released this year, but I digress. At least we got Your Age, Holy, Imagining and Frankenstein, so 4/13 

[Cain]

Your Age and Imagining are cute

[Supervillain]

55 minutes ago, KatyPrismSpirit said:

I think we can all agree hold the girl is the og worst song on this album its NOT this hell babes !

Nobody agrees lol

[Tyrion_LMG]

29 minutes ago, Supervillain said:

Nobody agrees lol

This. Hold the Girl is amazing. 

[wraith]

Honestly the only skip for me is To Be Alive but even then, I do enjoy it when listening front to back. 

[KatyPrismSpirit]

1 minute ago, Tyrion_LMG said:

This. Hold the Girl is amazing. 

34 minutes ago, Supervillain said:

Nobody agrees lol

From the album i think it's the least good, however most people think it's This Hell - which is actually one of my favs  . I think Hold The Girl (s) wouldve been better with less maximalist production. Her vocals kinda get drowned in the production sometimes + she tries too much at once. UK Garage, pop, orchestral vocals - its a tad bit on the cloudy side. I think it wouldve been better if it was just a guitar ballad

 

[Alex]

this is still the worst project of her career (so far) no matter how you put it 

[Rider]

Send my Love to John is soooo beautiful it makes me emotional always  

[kweenofxanax]

Phenomenal album

[Lord Gaga]

I dont wanna be a monster anymore  I need the halloween emojis immediately. 

[Miracle]

Minor Feelings: 7/10. If this song didn't serve as the opening and was randomly in the tracklist it would be like a 6 cause it doesn't really add much to anything, besides warning us that the album will go full on Disney (Channel) at some points

Hold The Girl: 8/10. I used to like it more when it was released, but with the album having superior dance tracks, some of the melodies in here don't feel right and production doesn't quite elevate those. The outro tho >>>>>>>

This Hell: 4/10. I forced myself to like it and listened to it a lot so I could get into it, cause I definitely wasn't expecting this from Rina Sawayama. The lyrics have to be one of the worst of the year. It's like taking a discarded demo from a Britney Spears instrumental and a discarded demo of Lady Gaga and turning them into an abomination. With that said, the song is catchy af and the chorus, while not explosive, is good.

Catch Me In The Air: 8,1/10. This is the only disney-like song that truly works, and it's all because of good songwriting, especially in terms of melody. Who doesn't love a bigger-than-life chorus?

Forgiveness: 3/10. This is why we get into Disney Channel ad song territory: but not some masterpieces that Disney Channel used to play some times (like Love Story by Taylor Swift), no, but rather the ubergeneric songs by random artists which probably don't even have a Wikipedia page by now. A disgrace. What are those oh oh ohs?

Holy (Til Let You Me Go): 9,8/10. From a vapid mid to late 2000s Disney channel ballad from a literal techno cultural baptism: if Hold The Girl has any defining quality is it's ability to surprise in its choice of genres. Holy doesn't only have very smart songwriting choices but also arrangements that, despite being taken straight from pop raves in London in the 90s, feels fresh and new. Chapeau!

Your Age: 9/10. Great song overall, had potential to be the best in the album, but i feel like she turned the pop-nu-metal volume too hard on what could've been a perfec, robotic yet raw electropop extravaganza. 

Imagining 8,8/10. While the melody isn't as infectious as the ones in the two previous tracks, Imagining feels the most innovative in an album which only concept, musically, is, not to elevate, but to randomly use marginalized, guilty-pleasure genres with less or more success depending on the song. Imagining is one of the tracks that fully success in bringing something, that, while not new, feels very elevated.

Frankestein 8,8/10. Very enjoyable. While on Your Age I felt like the rock-pop excess should have been avoided, here it fits like a glove. The lyrics are still embarassing (though they have never been Rina's forte) but everything else about the song is top notch.

Phantom: 2/10. It just bores me to death. The lyrics are manipulative in the worst way possible and truly represent the blandest of one of the "inspirations" from this album, which it's Rina reading self-help books. Phantom could be a decent 5/10 ballad if it didn't try to be a healing song.

Hurricanes 6,5/10. Loved the live snippet, the song itself is not bad but the Speak-Now esque chorus deserved a better song with better instrumentation. 

Send My Love To John 7/10. Cute song and the best songwriting in the album. It should feel like a palette cleanser after so much forced excess, but it's just there. 

To Be Alive 8,8/10. Finally a slow tempo track that doesn't feel like straight from Disney. The melody is irresistible and the instrumentation of this song is the direction the entirety of the song should have followed

 

 

Final rate. In terms of how much I enjoy the album and replay album, this is like a 7.8/8. In terms of quality, it's a 6.5. While SAWAYAMA was an album made to take some of the most generic, overdone and maligned sounds of all time, Hold The Girl uses them to get a nostalgia-driven hit on Tik Tok. But Rina demontstrates she's still one of the most talented pop stars nowadays tho, cause 1/3rd of the album is genius. 

 

 

[TrueBlood]

Flavor of the Month is giving me edgier Paris Hilton album track, and this is a major compliment for me. It could have been on the album instead of Hurricanes.