Rina Sawayama has shared her new single, ‘STFU!’.
The track arrives alongside the news that she’s signed to Dirty Hit – home of The 1975, Wolf Alice, Pale Waves et al – and also a video, too.
“‘STFU!’ is a song about releasing the RAGE against microaggressions,” she explains. “As a Japanese girl growing up in the West I dealt with an array of aggressors ranging from: sexual stereotypes, comparisons with Lucy Liu and Cho Chang, to having to be the unofficial PR person and tourist board to Tokyo (a city of Western fascination that I left when I was 4), to people shouting Asian greetings down the street (nihao! Konnichiwa!), and finally to people doing “slit eyes”.
“The way I’ve dealt with these micro aggressions in recent years has been through comedy – my Asian friends and I have bonded over our shared experiences, laughing at how truly ridiculous these microaggressions are. Through humour and we heal and can move on. This is the spirit of ‘STFU!’ It was truly a therapeutic experience to condense all the things that people have said to me over the years into a situation that highlights how ridiculous these comments are when said all in one go in a context (like a first date) of flattery.”
Check out ‘STFU!’ below.
