Rina Sawayama says she can’t release her next album “under my current conditions”

Rina Sawayama has said she can’t release her next album “under my current conditions”.

The popstar opened up about the status of her album whilst sharing an interview she gave to The Independent as part of International Women’s Day (March 8), which revolved around women’s experiences with sexism and misogyny in the music industry.

In the caption, Sawayama admitted her “mental health has been awful” in the past year, and said: “I’ve been lucky to have found ways to keep my business afloat and support myself as well as my team, but when it comes to new music I can’t release another album under my current conditions.

“I feel really trapped and don’t know what to do.”

The comments come amidst Sawayama’s public battle with her label Dirty Hit, which is co-founded by The 1975‘s manager Jamie Oborne. At Glastonbury 2023, Sawayama called lead singer Matty Healy out for his controversial comments made on The Adam Friedland podcast whilst introducing her song ‘STFU’: “Tonight this goes out to a white man that watches ‘Ghetto Gaggers’ [porn] and mocks Asian people on a podcast. He also owns my masters. I’ve had enough.”

Each member of The 1975 has a stake in Dirty Hit, with Healy previously serving as creative director for four years before stepping down from the role in April 2023.

In her Independent interview, Sawayama also shared she has “felt intense racist misogyny in a way that I’ve never felt before” since summer last year. Though she did not name Healy during the interivew, she said: “In public and private I feel as though I’ve been repeatedly gaslit, disrespected, ignored, even cyber-bullied for calling out blatant racist and sexist behaviour.”

“I just want to leave this world a fairer, safer and kinder place for future generations to live in,” she continued. “That’s always been my mission from the start and I’ve always used my voice for this, but time and time again, women are punished for inconveniently holding a mirror up to men who were not willing to be held publicly accountable.

“My peers and I share stories and it’s clear there are a lot of men working in this industry who continue to get away with awful behaviour.”

In other news, Sawayama recently dropped her remix of ‘Imagining’ with Amaarae.