Rina Sawayama brought her anthemic new single “This Hell” to The Tonight Show Thursday, showcasing the club-ready track with a highly choreographed line dance routine. The song is slated to appear on the pop singer’s sophomore LP, Hold the Girl, out later this year.
Backed by a live band and a video screen filled with flames, the performance channelled late-Nineties country camp, replete with cowboy hats, a stage decorated with hay bales and a cheeky nod to country trailblazer Shania Twain. (Sawayama previously called “This Hell” a “euphoric and tongue-in-cheek country-pop song” explaining she is drawn to country music’s “brilliant storytelling and authentic expression of the writer’s reality.”)
“It’s an important song for me given the human rights that are being taken away from minorities at a rapid rate in the name of traditional religious beliefs, more specifically I was thinking about the rights being taken away from the LGBTQ community when I wrote this song,” the 31-year-old said in a statement. “When the world tells us we don’t deserve love and protection, we have no choice but to give love and protection to each other. This Hell is better with you.”
Sawayama will embark on a brief tour of the U.K. in support of Hold the Girl this fall, with additional appearances scheduled at a handful of festivals — including Primavera Sound in Spain and Japan’s Summer Sonic festivals in Tokyo and Osaka — throughout the summer.
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