This is the end of the tour, so it is the last day. It its been a really insane, intense run. Im sure when i go on stage itll be fine, but, like, wow, ifeel really, really anxious. Like, my hearts just racing. Usually, i have one of those gel packs that athletes, you know, take, the sugar packs, before i go on and then in, like, ten minutes� time itll kick in and itll be. Itll be good. Venues, please take note. And put tampons in your toilets. Crowd cheering since Rina Sawayama broke out into the music scene in 2017, she has been doing it her way. Shes campaigned to change rules for the brit awards, landed a hollywood role, come out as pansexual, and has been hailed as the future of queer pop music. And ive come to ask her how she got to this point and whats next. Youre preaching even though im dead like the first time im in my prime. How come you dont expect me to get mad when im angry . Youve never seen it done. Rina sawayama, welcome to in conversation. Thank you so much forjoining us. Thank you for having me. Its surreal. How would you describe this particular moment in your life . It feels like so much has happened in the past few years. The first phrase that comes to mind is probably a sigh of relief. Ithink, you know, my career really took off during the pandemic, and im so grateful for that, you know . It was really unexpected. But at the same time, i worked solidly through the pandemic, then out of the pandemic, then since then, i havent stopped and the majority of the work ive been doing after the pandemic was touring because everyone, like me, all the artists were catching up on the tour dates that we had to cancel for two years, and so it was nonstop. You were born injapan and you moved to the uk when you were a child. What was that like . What are your memories of that time . Well, i was five years old when i moved, and we moved because my dad worked forjapan airlines. And so i was injapanese school, so, continuing my education so that when i went back it wouldnt be so disruptive, but after five years we were eligible for an indefinite leave visa, and so we decided to stay. My mum said that. She was like, i realise how much of a weirdo you were, and that if you stayed. If you went back to japan, you might not reach your full potential. Like, you might get bullied, and she said that she was just really worried, so she wanted to, you know, she wanted to keep me here. But i remember, yeah, back then it was hard, because i couldnt speak english, you know . Cultures. It couldnt be more different, priorities couldnt be more different, and i remember all through my childhood and adolescence really struggling with this home life, of very japanese home life japanese cooking, japanese lunches, my mum speaking japanese to me, you know, her not necessarily being able to help with, like, homework, for example and then straddling that with london, and in particular central london, like, state school life. I remember being really, you know, pulled in two directions. How much do you think straddling two cultures has affected you as an artist . I come at it, even though i very much consider myself a londoner and i also considerjapan as my home, as well i often feel like i can look at Western Culture with quite an objective lens. And, you know, a lot of my music like xs and stfu you know, it really looks at things that are very normalised in Western Culture that i think are wrong, or the priorities are wrong, and that, i think, is what people connect with me, because i am able to point that out and put it into music, rather than just create a, you know, another love song or whatever. You know, my first single for my first record was stfu, and i wrote that because i grew up with this sense of. I guess now i recognise as anger that i had to always be representative of my race. And at the time, i was in my mid 20s or mid to late 20s, and i had gone to one too many weddings where someone would come up to me and theyd. Theyd Start Talking to me, and maybe the first couple of things would be quite standard. Whats your name . But then, then on, it would just be about japan. It would be about how i looked. Wheres your parents from . And i remember thinking, wow, ive done so much i feel like ive got an interesting life. I went to cambridge. I was seeing conversations happening with other people who arent japanese or whatever, and the conversation would be like, oh, yeah, so what are you up to these days . What do you do in yourspare time . But for me it was like, oh, id love to go to japan sometime, and ijust became like. I felt like what people saw of me was this map ofjapan. It wasnt me as a person. And i rememberfeeling so frustrated growing up, because that is. Thats been the story of my life. And, sure, its positive everyone loves japan. Thats amazing. But truthfully, i didnt grow up injapan and i think a lot of immigrants, orfirst gen immigrants, can really relate to that. Its a very tricky relationship that we have to navigate our whole lives. Call me crazy. Call me selfish. Im the baddest. And im worth it. Growing up in a traditional Migrant Family and studying at Cambridge University, it wasnt obvious that shed pursue a career in music but it was her creative calling. Give mejust a little bit. A little bit. Give mejust a little bit. Yet entry to the pop industry didnt come easily. 0h me, oh my. Give mejust a little bit. Xs, xs. 0h me, oh my. Give mejust a little bit. A little bit. You know, a lot of people know what Cambridge University means. You know, Prime Ministers and global leaders, the people who decide a lot of our society go to those universities, oxford and cambridge. Yes. For you, what was that experience like . My whole life, i never thought of cambridge or oxford. I was like, thats for different kind of people. Like, thats not for people like me. But i did still see the kind of. The elites, the, you know, the kind of future city elites, and the people who were going to go and eventually make decisions on behalf of people like me and it really, really scared me, actually. I remember distinctly feeling quite depressed about it when i was there and thinking, wow. These people who are clearly so privileged, theyve never met, like, an asian person or had a conversation with an asian person, theyve never met a muslim person. They have no idea what anything means in terms of people looking differently to you, and realising that it was a lot of people like that who would go on to make decisions made me really. Brought everything into sharp focus. And when did music become this idea of something to do as a living, and not just kind of hanging out with your friends and having fun . So, the school i went to, even though its a state school, it very much focused on. It was like a. Its called a c of e school, church of england school, but it was very much mixed faith, so any faith can go. I wasnt christian or anything like that. But what you got was this Incredible Church next to the school that was part of the school, so you got to perform all the time. It was really natural to me that i would think about the Music Industry, but i had no idea, no connections, i dont know how to get in. So, ijust worked, like, normaljobs, like, officejobs. I was a Loan Administrator for, like, nearly a year, and i was a nail technician, doing pedicures, and i was working at an ice cream shop, i worked at the apple store. Like, i did a lot of part time work, and then, eventually, i got a manager, started to release songs. Everything i had saved up with my Part Time Job i would put into there. Parents did not support me whatsoever because my mum was like, you went to cambridge, why dont you work for a bank . But when i quit all my Part Time Jobs was when i was about 27, so thats when i became kind of full time musician. See, 27, i think is young. I think so, too. I think 30s is young. 30s is young. But i did see a tweet from you where you said that you had felt pressure to lie about your age. Yeah. Where did you feel that pressure from . Just the standard, erm. The kind of accepted standard of Pop Musicians when i was growing up, especially in the � 90s, 2000s, is that you get signed when youre 13, or maybe 16, 17 at the oldest, and then you are in development and youre a full time artist, and so, at the point that i signed my first Record Contract and when i say a Record Contract, i mean Album Contract i was 29, so i felt old. And it is an industry that fetishises youth. It does. And, luckily, now i think it is changing slowly. And, yeah. I mean, theres always going to be very Young Artists and exceptional artists, and i dont think theres anything wrong with that, necessarily, but i do think that its nice to see a slight shift towards not thinking that people who are in their 30s are too old to be on screen, yeah. Have you felt pressure about not being able to be forthright about other things . Yeah. Well, i think theres. Listen, i think theres a lot of things that people outside of the Music Industry dont know about the Music Industry. Its been something ive been really thinking about recently because of the sag aftra strikes. Thats the actors� strike. The actors� strikes. That� s currently ongoing. Currently ongoing. To talk about working conditions for actors across the scale. Yes and what really struck me was the kind of conversation not only about the working conditions, hours and all that, but its the conversation about royalties and ai. Thats a huge threat to the music. Aiis. . Artificial intelligence. So, its. Theyre arguing that they can not only use peoples words that real humans have written, and then extrapolate that into something else, they can use peoples voices and deepfake that into another advert that they havent signed up for, or without extra pay. And royalties are, i mean, its basically how actors and writers get paid. The parallels between that and music is very close. Whats our future . Like, our contracts currently dont have anything to do with al. And its really made me think a lot about, wow, like, recording artists in particular. Have very little rights as, you know, when you compare it to what actors have. Yeah. And its made me think. Its made me think, wow, i think there needs to be some sort of overhaul, because currently its really very much benefiting music labels and record labels, and not the artists. And one member of your audience is someone people might not have heard of eltonjohn . How did that friendship start . Hes been really vocal about how big of a fan of yours he is. I know. I mean, every time people say that, it is so surreal. He reached out to me because he was a massive fan of stfu, and then the subsequent singles comme des garcons, xs. So, he played me on his radio show, rocket hour, and then we did an interview on facetime this was all during covid and, you know, he was the one new friend i made. Ijoke the one new friend i made in lockdown is elton i made in lockdown is eltonjohn. You know, i thought how it works with these things is that they reach out, and they amplify you and talk about you for, like, a week, and then theyjust disappear but he has been the most incredible friend, mentor. He really puts his neck out a lot, you know, to support people who are. Who he feels are not being seen enough, and ive got to play at his 0scars party and, obviously, i was onstage with him at glastonbury. Yeah. With elton, you know, what he represents in terms of being this well known queer artist that has been, you know, kind of Paving Pathways for so many of us for so many years. You know, you represent kind of a new generation of that. How do you feel. You know, how do you take the weight of what you represent . I made a concerted effort, actually, around about the second album, that im not going to read anything about myself. Thats including comments. So, my instagram is, you know, handled by other people. I dont go on it, because i love seeing the positives, but theres also negatives, and the more you care about the negatives. Well, the more you care about the positives, you care more about the negatives, as well. And so theres no controlling it. Itsjust the human brain. You just cant not care about what other people say. Whether theyre saying something positive or negative, you start to detach them as real human beings with real lives, with jobs and families and responsibilities you start seeing them as just this comment that theyve left that has affected you emotionally in some way. Yeah. 0n the flip side of that is that a lot of people can act very inhumane online. You know, its a very. Youre getting one moment of their day. So, your second album, hold the girl, youve talked about kind of the process of writing it. Could you tell us a bit more about it . Yeah, it was a very intense album to write. Like a lot of people did in lockdown, i had some realisations of my own, and i was quite. I was really struggling mentally, but with something quite specific that id never addressed in my life and ive actually never talked about this in any other interview, this is the first time im talking about this but, essentially, through doing sex therapy, sex and relationship therapy, i realised that something that i thought was a relationship that i had when i was 17 was, actually, i was groomed. And why it happened then, why that realisation happened in my 30s was because i was finally his age. And. So, therefore, theres a song called your age in the record. Right. Because i looked. You know, theres a school down my road, Secondary School 17, you know, youre in Secondary School. And to ever think that that could be ever acceptable for me to look at a 17 year old and think that, oh, yeah, thats. That� s fine, or that, you know, that i could try and go for them. It. I remember distinctly how uncomfortable that made me, but i didnt put the two and two together. And it was through this very intense form of therapy which i feel so lucky to be able to have had access to that i was able to come to terms with it. And it completely broke my whole world apart, cos at the time, after, you know, it came to light that that was what was happening in my school basically, it was a School Teacher i was so badly slut shamed that i developed so much shame around my sexuality and lost completely my sense of self. I detached from my skin, like, inside. I dont know, like, how to describe it, but ijust felt so afraid of things and id have anxiety attacks, and all of that. That dissociation with your body. Exactly. That numbness. And i. You know, in doing the therapy, it was about, you know, revisiting that inner child the 17 year old who went through that and holding her close and telling her it was not her fault. And that was a very, very emotional process, as you can imagine, and it actually then led to the song hold the girl, and its, you know, its about realising that you go through a lot of things when youre young, some things are more messed up than others, some people have more trauma than others, but youre often. More often than not, yourejust a child, you have no agency in that situation. 17, to me, is a child. Youre in school. You have no autonomy most of the time. And especially if youre in a school setting, you know, if a School Teacher is, you know, coming on to you, thats an abuse of power but i didnt realise that until i was his age. And so, writing that album was one of the hardest things, but, also, when i finished it, it was one of the most incredible experiences. And now it makes me so happy when i see, you know, especially, like, women or femmes in the audience connecting to it. Because i havent talked about this in specifics ivejust said, you know, its about a period in my life when i was younger, and. But i know the truth, and when i look out to the audience and i see femmes or women connecting to it, im like, maybe you know, maybe you know what im talking about. Maybe youre feeling it right now. Rina says its important for her to have a close team around her, one that shes carefully built. You keep a Close Community of people around you. Ive met a lot of the people who you work with. Is that, like, a deliberate choice to keep that unit around you, you know, really diverse and really close . Yeah. You know, in different parts of what i do, i think its really important, because a lot of different parts of it has beenjust straight white men for a long time. The Music Industry. Even if, you know, you look at the heads of Music Industry, still it is straight white men. So, you know, i try and work with people who could also be my friend. And, also, i work with people who i want to see more of in the industry. Do you feel freedom to speak openly . Because youve set the kind of dynamics of how you will speak openly about certain things, like micro aggressions and sexism and ageism youve set a culture where youre going to be honest about a lot of things in the Music Industry. Yeah. I have always wanted to lead with the truth. Always. I think that truth and educating the public and, you know, breaking open. Like, making it transparent is really important to me. The people that you reference in your songs, like whitney and britney, and those artists that weve seen in front of us and weve seen that career play out, where they didnt feel autonomy about their career, has that inspired you in some way . Yeah. Sadly, my heroes are the bad examples. You know, the examples where its gone not so good. Its destroyed their career or their lives. And. But i can see how that can happen. 0bviously, on my level its so much smaller, but i see the culture of it. I see this protection that people place around artists that actually doesnt protect the artist at all. Itjust hides things from them, and, yeah. And its sad that its this way, but i do feel that there is some truth to what im trying to explore, which is this. Clear understanding and transparency over who owns what. You know, what. You know what your rights are, i think, thats one of my kind of key things. Do you feel completely free right now . Yeah. Yeah, very much. I wont leave you on your own. Teach me the words i used to know. For you, will your music always be autobiographical, or do you see it. . Your art, notjust music, you know, aspects of your creativity will you always put parts of yourself in it, or will there just be parts where its just, im just going to put some paint on a canvas, and you can do what you want with it . 0h, honestly, after releasing hold the girl, i was like, i have no more, i have no more. I dont want any more traumas to come out. I dont want it any more. I dont want to talk about it any more. I dont want to talk about myself. I hope so. I hope that i dont have to write autobiographically all the time. My story is not the most important story to tell. Theres a lot of stories to be told, you know . Yeah, i mean, im very excited about the third record, because ive learned so much from the first, so much from the second, and notjust musically, butjust in terms of the creation of it writing, producing and mixing. Ive learnt so much. So, im excited, yeah. I dont know what im going to write about yet, but i would love a day where i can just write a song thats just about love or sex or, you know. Im getting there. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hey there, little girl dont you wanna see the world . Dont be scared. Hey there, little world are you ready for this girl . Do you dare . Only took nine months and a lot of love. Carried all our dreams and shes ready now. Hello there. It looks like this will end up being one of the two warmest septembers on record, according to the met office. And as ill show you in a moment, some of that warmth looks set to continue into october, but thats not the whole story. Looks quite unsettled, too, with the jet stream driving further Weather Systems in our direction, these various areas of cloud. This one here is saturdays weather maker. It is going to bring some cloud, it is going to bring some outbreaks of heavy rain. But the day starts under the influence of this ridge of High Pressure. So through the morning, yes, some spells of sunshine. But as this Weather System approaches, well see more in the way of high cloud, turning that Sunshine Hazy and then thicker cloud will bring rain across Northern Ireland, parts of north and west wales, north west england, southern and central parts of scotland. As we go through the afternoon, turning quite windy through the irish sea as well. Temperatures north to south, 12 20 degrees. Now, we will continue to see outbreaks of rain as we head through Saturday Night and into the first part of sunday morning. But by this stage, we will be drawing some very warm and humid air up from the south. These are the starting temperatures for sunday, 12 17 degrees. That is, of course, the start of october, a very mild start to the new month. This Weather System still bringing cloud and some showery rain across parts of england and wales. In fact, we could see the odd heavy burst at times. Now, depending on how much sunshine we see down towards the south east corner, it could turn really very warm indeed, with highs of around 2a degrees. Even further north, 20 there for liverpool, 18 for aberdeen. So broadly speaking, sunday is going to be a warm day for the time of year. Through sunday night and into monday, it looks like this Weather Front will tend to move its way back northwards again. It will take some outbreaks of rain with it. Certainly a lot of cloud drifting its way northwards. Best chance of sunshine, i think for Northern Ireland and scotland, albeit with a scattering of hefty showers. Still warm, particularly down towards the south with highs of around 23 degrees. Now, moving out of monday into tuesday, its quite a complex weather chart, but various weather features moving across the uk will bring showers or longer spells of rain. Slight change in the wind direction, more of a west or north westerly wind. So it will feel a little bit fresher, i think, on tuesday. Temperatures of 13 for stornoway, 17 for cardiff, maybe 19 degrees there in london. By wednesday, theres a bit of uncertainty by this stage, but it looks like well see cloud and rain pushing in from the north west with our next frontal system. The winds picking up as well. And temperatures north to south, 12 to 20 degrees. As we head towards the end of the week and into the following weekend, well, we see High Pressure trying to build from the south. The big uncertainty is about how long this area of High Pressure will hang about. It looks like the jet stream will start to bring unsettled weather back in from the west. But this dip in the jet stream here may also have the effect of feeding some really rather warm air northwards across our shores once again. So let me show you the forecast for the end of next week and into the following weekend, because as you can see, there are hints that its actually going to turn warmer again. We get deeper into october, but still that potential for temperatures into the middle 20 celsius further north and west, a greater chance of seeing cloud and outbreaks of rain at times. Bye for now. Live from london. This is bbc news. More than 100,000 Ethnic Armenians have now fled Nagorno Karabakh since azerbaijans offensive on the region began earlier this month. The threat of a Us Government shutdown inches closer after members of Congress Fail to reach an agreement on spending. Police in the uk have named 15 year old Jessica Baker and coach driver Stephen Shrimpton as the two People Killed in a bus crash in the wirral yesterday. 27 years after the death of tupac shakur, police in nevada charge a former gang leader for the murder of the american rapper. Hello. Iam i am celia hatton. Armenias government says more than 100,000 Ethnic Armenians have now fled Nagorno Karabakh. Thats after azerbaijan took control of the disputed enclave after a lightning Military Campaign earlier this month. Nagorno karabakh was controlled by Armenian Separatists for decades,