Listen to Rina Sawayama’s soaring new single ‘Catch Me In The Air’

Rina Sawayama has shared ‘Catch Me In The Air’, the second single to be lifted from her forthcoming second album ‘Hold The Girl’.

The singer’s latest, written with Oscar Scheller, Gracey, Clarence Clarity and Stuart Price, is a soaring pop cut written as a tribute to her mother, who raised her as a single parent. “I really wanted to write about this weird relationship with single parents,” she explained in a press release. “You do catch each other in the air.”

“I wanted the whole song to sound like it was on an Irish coastline, like a Corrs video,” Sawayama continued. “We put in a key change to go into the chorus, at the end of the pre-chorus to make it lift and soar like a bird.”

Watch the accompanying visualiser for ‘Catch Me In The Air’, made up of fan-shot footage of Sawayama performing live, below:

Speaking in a new interview with Apple Music‘s Zane Lowe, Sawayama said the song was influenced by Gwen Stefani.

“It was one of the first ever sessions that I did during lockdown in person, and so I was so anxious about catching COVID. Everyone was really feeling anxious about it. And then, so I think because of that, I wasn’t able to write and nothing was coming,” Sawayama told Lowe.

“Gracey was like, ‘Oh, my God, Gwen Stefani’s releasing a new song.’ And I was like, ‘Why don’t we just pretend to write for Gwen? Like, ‘Let’s just get our brains out of our heads and let’s just pretend.’”

Sawayama announced ‘Hold The Girl’ last month, revealing that the follow-up to 2020 debut ‘SAWAYAMA’ will arrive on September 2 via Dirty Hit. Two days later, she shared its lead single, ‘This Hell’ alongside UK tour dates for October.