Listen to Rina Sawayama’s Japan exclusive Hold the Girl bonus track, “Flavour of the Month”

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A shot of Rina Sawayama looking over her shoulder, whilst wearing a white sleeveless dress, with her hair slicked and styled into a Japanese inspired style bun. The background behind Rina is blue, and the silhouette of tree branches can be seen on the right-hand side.

The Japanese version of Rina Sawayama’s second studio album Hold the Girl includes a bonus track titled “Flavour of the Month”.

Japan exclusive bonus tracks have been a thing for YEARS. It’s a nice extra amongst the general better packaging you get with Japanese versions of albums. You always get a jewel case, with a cute obi strip. You always get a lyrics booklet. Sometimes you’ll even get a nicer album cover.

HENNYWAY.

Here’s that Rina song.

If you’ve heard Hold the Girl, I’m sure you’ll understand why this song was left off the album as part of the standard tracklist. The sound of it doesn’t really fit the album, and neither do the lyrics. Hold the Girl has a very clear theme and narrative which “Flavour of the Month” kinda goes against. It feels more like a Sawayama cut. But, I do think this song would have made for a good Japanese single.

J-pop needs a 90s music revival, and “Flavour of the Month” would help fuel that. There is also a massive gap in the market for women releasing these harder edged rock pop tracks. Ayu is enjoying not releasing singles. Kumi’s kinda given up on that rock sound. Sheena Ringo is calming her ass down and going all lounge jazz on hoes. And MiChi off being a mother, eating leaves on bread, and painting skateboards.

Rina’s team have been doing a really good job of having her do extra bits of promo for the Japanese market for Hold the Girl. But it would be great for Rina to take this a step further and release a single exclusively in Japan. The intersections at which Rina exists as a British Japanese pop girl opens up so many cool possibilities in terms of the audiences she can reach, and the level of promo she could do in Japan.


💿 Rina reviews: This Hell | Sawayama | Rina
📀 Rina revision: Sawayama (The Random J Pop Revised Expanded Edition)
🗄️ Rina shit: That time Rina performed This Hell on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon | That time Rina performed at Coachella | That time Rina got shafted because of racism and xenophobia | That time Rina met Hikaru Utada | That time Rina released a gay anthem and gave it an awful music video

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