Single Review: Rina Sawayama - This Hell

“This Hell” is the lead single from Rina’s second album Hold the Girl, and it shares a lot in common with the lead single off of Rina’s debut album, “STFU!” - Rina making a commentary on how the world perceives her, sharing how she feels about that in song, and using rock music as the vessel for that. Rina’s pulling many of the same tricks in 2022 that she did in 2019, but there are a lot of smarter decisions made with “This Hell” which make it a much better song than “STFU!”. It’s not just better because it sounds better. But because there is an acute awareness that Rina has concerning first impressions, and the kind of pop star that she wants to be.

“STFU!” had a cool message, which took on a whole different and specific framing when paired with the music video. But when you strip the visuals out, I think the message of “STFU!” got lost in the audacity of the nu metal sound and the chorus being a case of somebody being told to shut the fuck up. Where-as with “This Hell” there is much more of a balance. The sound is really cool, but it doesn’t detract from the lyrics. And the lyrics are cool, but you never get so lost in them that you don’t appreciate the sound. “This Hell” just hits you with everything on a first listen, and sticks like Beyonce’s lace fronts.

“This Hell” also continues to show how good a songwriter Rina is. “This Hell” is full of quirks and clever commentaries, which by this point feel like staples of Rina’s songwriting. The sign of a great pop songwriter is somebody who is able to deliver a song with a universal message, despite the song coming from a place which is super personal and specific to them, AND for that shit to be immediately catchy. Rina has managed to write more than a handful of songs which check these boxes, and she’s done it again with “This Hell”.

As with “STFU!”, “This Hell” is clearly born from Rina’s personal experience, but something that she knows is also a shared one. Rina even name drops others who have gone through similar experiences, but there’s no sense of exclusivity with this song. The narrative of “This Hell” is so broad, because many of us have been told that hell and awful fates await us for something that we did, or just simply existing outside of what society deems acceptable.

Queerness. Let’s talk about it.

Rina is a queer pop artist. And whilst there’s no allusion or mention of this explicitly in “This Hell”, it’s a large proponent of what created the ‘going to hell’ narrative of the song, as it’s widely known that many religions condemn any form of queerness, and damn everything and everybody queer to hell - something which queer artist Lil Nas X also pulled from for the music video to his song “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)”. And retrospectively could possibly be something that Hikaru Utada was touching on with their 2004 song “Devil Inside”. But whilst the framing of the song could have been angsty and a complete kiss off to the homophobic, it’s actually very celebratory, and even beautiful. Rina isn’t condemning those who have condemned her and others like her. Instead she is choosing to celebrate herself and be thankful for being in good company. “This Hell” is a wholly joyous song which is more about self acceptance and the acceptance of others than it is vilification - which is what will make it such a great song during Pride, aside from the fact that the sound is so damn camp.

But Rina not explicitly stating the song is about queerness is part of the genius of how the song was written. Because the thing that causes society to condemn doesn’t just have to be queerness. Abortion. Race. Religion. Gender. Medical conditions. Hell ‘bout to be BUSY.

One thing about Rina and her partner in crime Clarence Clarity, is that they love a pop reference, and “This Hell” is full of them. The ‘Let’s go girls’ from Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like A Woman!”. The mention of Britney Spears, Whitney Houston and Princess Diana. Paris Hilton’s catchphrase of ‘That’s hot’. The synth bell at the start of the song sounding identical to that of which opens Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”. Saying that The devil is wearing Prada. Rina singing the hook in a very Lady Gaga-esque manner.

Pulling such references is such a big part of Rina’s writing style. And the cool thing about it is that it never feels forced, or as though Rina is referencing just to reference. Everything feels connected. Referencing Shania fits because of the country sound of the song. The mentions of Britney, Whitney and Lady Di are apt, as they are women that the media vilified and turned on the moment their public personas weren’t perfect enough for them. The Paris Hilton catchphrase is pointed, because Paris said ‘Fuck it’ and just played into the media perception of her of being a blonde airhead, the same way Rina is saying ‘Fuck it, if y’all are saying I’m going to hell for who I am, then lemme just book an EasyJet flight straight there’. And it also helps that Paris Hilton’s catchphrase was ‘That’s hot’ and the song is about going to hell. The Michael Jackson reference is…well…who really needs any reason at all to reference the king of pop? But this could be two fold. One. Because Michael Jackson was a non-white act who broke barriers and changed the game (with “Beat It” specifically) and paved a way for the likes of Rina to do the same. Two. Michael was one of the first big pop stars who had the media completely clown and vilify him at scale, long before the child molestation scandals broke. As for Lady Gaga. Well, Rina just loves her. But she’s also had a pretty tumultuous time with the media early in her career, because she didn’t fit into the boxes people wanted to put her in, and she never took the bait. She instead leaned all the way into it, and made her eccentricity something which then became a normality. And there are also parallels you could draw between Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga’s public personas, in that they used their eccentricity as deflections from their personal lives.

These could all be reaches and coincidences. But Rina seems so particular and meticulous in what she does and how she writes, that I can see them as being plausible reasons for the references, and why “This Hell” is what it is.

“This Hell” is a really good song. BUT. (Yes y’all. There is a ‘but’). There are some arrangement and production choices that I wish were made, to just make the song feel bigger and tighter. Before I get into what I wanted more of, I would like to thank Rina, Clarence Clarity and Paul Epworth for giving us a 3 minute and 56 second pop song, and not some 2 minute and 30 second bullshit. I would also like to thank them for giving us some form of a bridge section. BUT. There is still this sense of incompleteness about the song for me.

I really like the guitar solo on the bridge, but it doesn’t elevate or lift the song in the same way the guitar solo did in “Beat it”, how the guitar solo did in Usher’s “U Got It Bad”, or even how the guitar solo did in Rina’s “Dynasty”. I also think that the hook after the guitar solo shoulda just been vocals, foot stamps and handclaps, before going into a final run of the chorus with group vocals singing the hook, whilst Rina is going OFF with the ad-libs. It shoulda had big ass hand claps.

Those who check out this shit hole blog regularly will probably be tired of me talking about songs sounding incomplete, but it’s a massive problem with pop music these days. But even so, Rina’s “This Hell” still sounds more complete and sonically interesting than what a lot of the other girls are putting out. But still. It doesn’t quite feel as whole as it could have. I’m sure Rina will give live performances of the song on her tour which switch sections of the song up. Or maybe Rina will come across this review and be like ‘He might be right’ and have Clarence Clarity and Paul Epworth re-jig the song and give us an album version.

But even for its faults, (which aren’t really faults at all), “This Hell” is a great lead single. It may be a bit too safe for some who really rallied behind Rina’s choice to go with “STFU!”. But it’s a smart choice for a lead single. Not just because pop radio will actually play it, and it will get rinsed like mouthwash during pride month, but because it’s a really good showcase of the type of artist that Rina is; in ways that I don’t think “STFU!” or even “Comme des Garçons (Like the Boys)” were, as much as I adored both of those songs. “This Hell” feels like a great introduction as to who Rina is for those who have not heard anything from her before, whilst also showing growth and awareness on Rina’s part to release a song like this as a lead single in the first place.

Verdict: What Gaga shoulda been giving from Joanne instead of “Perfect Illusion”