this is the end of the tour, so it is the last day. it's been a really insane, intense run. i'm sure when i go on stage it'll be fine, but, like, wow, ifeel really, really anxious. like, my heart's 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 it'll kick in and it'll be... it'll 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. she's 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 i've come to ask her how she got to this point and what's next. # you're preaching

even though i'm dead. # like the first time i'm in my prime. # how come you don't expect me to get mad when i'm angry? # you've never seen it done...# rina sawayama, welcome to in conversation. thank you so much forjoining us. thank you for having me. it's 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 i'm 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 haven't stopped — and the majority of the work i've 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 wouldn't 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 couldn't speak english, you know? cultures... it couldn't be more different, priorities couldn't 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 x5 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 they'd...they�*d start talking to me, and maybe the first couple of things would be quite standard. "what's your name? " but then, then on, it would just be about japan. it would be about how i looked. "where's your parents from?" and i remember thinking, wow, i've done so much — i feel like i've got an interesting life. i went to cambridge.

i was seeing conversations happening with other people who aren't 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, i'd love to go to japan sometime," and ijust became like... i felt like what people saw of me was this map ofjapan. it wasn't me as a person. and i rememberfeeling so frustrated growing up, because that is... ..that�*s been the story of my life. and, sure, it's positive — everyone loves japan. that's amazing. but truthfully, i didn't grow up injapan and i think a lot of immigrants, orfirst gen immigrants, can really relate to that. it's a very tricky relationship that we have to navigate our whole lives. # call me crazy. # call me selfish. # i'm the baddest. # and i'm worth it...# growing up in a traditional migrant family and studying at cambridge university, it wasn't obvious that she'd 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 didn't come easily. # 0h me, oh my. # give mejust a little bit. # x5, x5. # 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, that's for different kind of people. like, that's 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, they've never met, like, an asian person,

or had a conversation with an asian person, they've 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 it's a state school, it very much focused on... it was like a... it's called a c of e school, church of england school, but it was very much mixed faith, so any faith can go. i wasn't 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 don't 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 don't you work for a bank?" but when i quit all my part—time jobs was when i was about 27, so that's 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 you're 13, or maybe 16, 17 at the oldest, and then you are in development and you're 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, there's always going to be very young artists and exceptional artists, and i don't think there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, but i do think that it's 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 there's... listen, i think there's a lot of things that people outside

of the music industry don't know about the music industry. it's been something i've been really thinking about recently because of the sag—aftra strikes. that's 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 it's the conversation about royalties and ai. that's a huge threat to the music... aiis...? artificial intelligence. so, it's... they're arguing that they can not only use people's words that real humans have written, and then extrapolate that into something else, they can use people's voices and deepfake that into another advert that they haven't signed up for, or without extra pay. and royalties are, i mean, it's basically how actors and writers get paid. the parallels between that and music is very close. what's our future?

like, our contracts currently don't have anything to do with al. and it's 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 it's made me think... it's made me think, wow, i think there needs to be some sort of overhaul, because currently it's 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? he's 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 john. 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 i've 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 i'm not going to read anything about myself. that's including comments. so, my instagram is, you know, handled by other people. i don't go on it, because i love seeing the positives, but there's 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 there's no controlling it. it'sjust the human brain. you just can't not care about what other people say. whether they're 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 they've left that has affected you emotionally in some way. 0n the flip side of that is that a lot of people can act very inhumane online. you know, it's a very — you're getting one moment of their day. so, your second album,

hold the girl, you've 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 i'd never addressed in my life — and i've actually never talked about this in any other interview, this is the first time i'm 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, there's a song called your age in the record.

because i looked — you know, there's a school down my road, secondary school and 17, you know, you're 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, that's — 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 didn't 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 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 don't know, like, how to describe it — but ijust felt so afraid of things and i'd 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 it's, you know, it's about realising that you go through a lot of things when you're young. some things are more messed up than others, some people have more trauma than others. but you're often — more often than not, you'rejust a child, you have no agency in that situation. 17, to me, is a child. you're in school. you have no autonomy most of the time. and especially if you're

in a school setting, you know, if a school teacher is, you know, coming on to you, that's an abuse of power — but i didn't 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 haven't talked about this in specifics. i'vejust said, you know, it's 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, i'm like, "maybe you know. "maybe you know what i'm talking about. "maybe you're feeling it right now." rina says it's important for her to have a close team around her, one that she's carefully built. you keep a close community of people around you. i've 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 it's 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 you've set the kind of dynamics of how you will speak openly about certain things, like micro—aggressions and sexism and ageism. like, you've set a culture where you're 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 we've seen in front of us and we've seen that career play out where they didn't 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 it's gone not so good. it's destroyed their career or their lives. and — but i can see how that can happen. 0bviously, on my level, it's so much smaller, but i see the culture of it, i see this protection that people place around artists that actually doesn't protect the artist at all. itjust hides things from them, and, yeah.

and it's sad that it's this way but i do feel that there is some truth to what i'm 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, that's one of my kind of key things. do you feel completely free right now? yeah. yeah, very much. # i won't 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 therejust be parts where it's just, "i'm 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 don't want any more traumas to come out. "i don't want it any more.

"i don't want to talk about it any more. "i don't want to talk about myself." i hope so. i hope that i don't have to write autobiographically all the time. my story is not the most important story to tell. there's a lot of stories to be told, you know? yeah, i mean, i'm very excited about the third record because i've 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 — i've learnt so much so, i'm excited, yeah. i don't know what i'm going to write about yet but i would love a day where i can just write a song that's just about love or sex or, you know... i'm getting there. thank you so much. thank you. # hey there, little girl. # don't you wanna see the world? # don't 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 she's ready now...

hello. it's going to stay quite warm for the foreseeable future. the weather, though, a bit of a mixed bag. we had plenty of damp weather on saturday and we're also forecasting rain, at least for a time, on sunday but bright weather, i think, for the majority of us. now, here's the satellite picture. a conveyor belt of clouds stretching from the south—west, spreading across the uk. that's the weather front. to the south of it, we've got that warm and quite humid airstreaming in. that means a lot of mist and murk around some south—western and western coasts through the early hours. and you can see where the rain is around parts of wales, into north—western england and across parts of northern england, too. but a lot of dry weather as well, though quite overcast. temperatures at 7:00 in the morning, 17 in the south, about 15 there in newcastle, so a really mild start to the day. now, here's the forecast

for the morning. you can see where it's raining from wales through northern england. a lot of sunshine for scotland and northern ireland. a beautiful morning and afternoon with highs possibly even up to 20 degrees around the scottish borders and also newcastle, 23 or 2a degrees across east anglia and the south—east, so temperatures are going to be more like august, really. now into monday, the weather front�*s still here. it's trailing way out into the atlantic. it keeps spreading over us. so, again, a chance of some rain, i think in the form of quite heavy showers and even a crack of thunder is possible. there'll be a few showers around western parts of scotland but i think a little bit fresher here with these atlantic winds. 15 in glasgow, still 22, 23, maybe 2a degrees celsius in london and the south—east. now, here's tuesday's weather map and you can see quite a few isobars there. that means a feral breeze blowing off the atlantic. it's going to be more or less a westerly. but high pressure is fairly close by. that high pressure will be building across the uk. so, here's tuesday, then. a few showers across many western and northern areas.

i think it'll feel a little bit fresher around these western coasts — i6, 17 celsius. we may nudge to about 20 or so in london, but i think it's the teens for most of us on tuesday. and here's a snapshot of the week and you can see that the best of the weather across the south of the country but overall, actually, not too bad with a few showers here and there.

that has affected you emotionally in some way.

live from washington. this is bbc news the senate votes on a measure to avoid a government shutdown. in pakistan, an investigation has begun into twin deadly blasts. plus, the future of slovakia put to voters.

what it could mean for aid to ukraine. hello, i'm sumi somaskanda. a breakthrough in the us congress as right now the senate is voting to advance a stopgap spending bill to avert a government shutdown due in just hours. let's see if we can bring a live pictures of the senate floor. senate lawmakers are taking up a house bill called a "continuing resolution" that would keep the government open for 45 days, while lawmakers hash out more spending legislation. but, this stopgap bill that buys time for negotiators doesn't include more military aid to ukraine for its fight against russia. it has been a point of contention particularfor democratic lawmakers but at the moment the senate is now on the path to passing this bill. it

would then have to go to the