October 26, 2018

Rina Sawayama’s Single Is Your Cuffing Season Anthem

Time to find that person you’ll be cuddling with all winter long.

Rina Sawayama/Twitter

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Another week in the long haul of 2018 is over. While you clean, or lie in bed thinking about how nice it’d be if all those chores were already done, we got a nice little upbeat pick for you for this week’s Friday Find.

This week: “Cherry” by Rina Sawayama (Different Recordings, 2018)

Why we’re into it: As the days get darker and the weather gets colder—at least for those of us who live where seasons exist—it’s especially nice to defy it all and indulge in a summery, romantic sound. After all, it’s cuffing season, and we all need a good tune to be the soundtrack for the whole process of coupling up. And what could possibly be better than an early ‘aughts inspired, queer, pop ode to love?

As if pulled straight from 2003’s Top 40, Rina Sawayama’s newest single, “Cherry” is the perfect one for this fall weekend. Inspired by a glance, this track captures that indelible moment of making significant (emphasis on significant) eye contact with someone in public. Not just a quick exchange, mind you, I’m talking about that glance. The one where suddenly fantasies overwhelm you about falling in love, the dog you’ll adopt together, and the home you’ll eventually buy, (or maybe that’s just me).

Yet Sawayama’s strength here is not how she captures that fleeting moment and builds it into a three-minute story—although that’s insanely impressive and another reason for this week’s pick—it’s the way she repeatedly builds up an intensity, only to just let it go with the same ease of early Britney and Mariah. 

Not only is the sound reminiscent of the early pop icons, the feeling it evokes is also what the early ‘aughts’s best music inspired: you wanted to dance around the room, best friend on the phone, making plans, and talking all about your crush. “Down the subway/you looked my way,” she muses, “With your girl gaze/with your girl gaze.”

This isn’t just a great pop song, it’s a great gay pop song. With a video to match, Sawayama’s sound is unique in the pop of today. Falling in line with the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen, Marina and the Diamonds, and Sky Ferreira, Sawayama crafts a mature and multi-dimensional love story, but attacks it with the childish infatuation that makes crushes so fascinating, consuming, and, alas, ephemeral.

Indulge in a little fantasy this weekend, maybe ask that crush what they’re up to, and see if you too, will be cuffin’ up this winter.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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