React: Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl (Bonus Edition)

Solid bonus tracks to an already excellent album.

Rina Sawayama was one of the discoveries I made this year. I’ve been spinning Hold The Girl for the bulk of this year. It’s a very good rock/pop/electronic album, in that order.

While I’m not ready to revisit the album just yet, I do want to react to the two bonus tracks on the album, which came out this past Friday.

So let’s dive into the bonus tracks for Hold The Girl by Rina Sawayama.

Imagining (feat. Amaarae)

This, of course, is a familiar track since Imagining was part of the main album. But just like how Ice Spice came on board for Karma, Amaarae is coming on for Imagining.

I must admit, I’ve never heard of Amaarae as an artist, but I can already tell this is going to be good. Amaarae’s voice is a bit higher pitched, but it still fits the song very well.

I’m typically a fan of when an artist modifies a track for a featured artist (again, Ice Spice and Karma, despite popular opinion, I actually quite like how that version sounds).

I’m split 50/50 on this one. On one hand, I really like how unique it sounds. But on the other hand, the song is almost unrecognizable with the beat in the middle. And that’s coming from someone who loves breakdowns (and the Karma remix, obviously).

But also, this song is already so unique in its composition that it fits right in. I think if I had never heard Imagining before, I’d have a very different opinion. The ending of the track is very cool, in the way that it almost audibly vomits everything out. That’s quite the imagery and is not there in the original version of this song.

It really is like Ice Spice coming on for Karma. It's basically the same song we've all come to love, with a twist in the second verse. And just like that song, some people will love it, some will hate it.

Flavour Of The Mouth

Not even eight seconds into the song. Yet, I can already tell this song is giving off spy movie vibes. The bass is very cool, with a bit of a more bouncy, high-pitched bass line. The kick drum fills out the rest of the low-end. The clap/snare is very small, taking up a small bit of the center channel.

The distorted synth (or maybe it’s a distorted electric guitar, I’m not quite sure) coming out of the left channel is very cool. It helps keep the vibe.

Wow. That bass line gets super thick when in the chorus. The drum pattern in this song gives off strong hip-hop vibes.

I love the line at the end of the song. "Come sample me, O-M-G, I’m not like vanilla bitches." It doesn’t have any correlation to the rest of the song, but I love songs that reference themselves.

Conclusion

While I’ll always advocate for and love features on songs, I am glad we have a version of Imagining with just Rina, and one featuring Amaarae. Both versions have their time, place, and mood.

As for Flavour of The Month, it’s an excellent song that I’m glad didn’t make the original track listing. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great track that shows a very different side of Rina.

More than anything, the bonus tracks make me want to revisit Hold The Girl as a complete album in the future. It's such a great album, and I think it’s holding up pretty well.

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Note: This reaction was done after listening to Rina Sawayama - Hold The Girl (Bonus Edition) on Apple Music with Lossless Audio enabled at 24-bit, 44.1 kHz with Dolby Atmos disabled.