• Portuguese Translation
• Serbian Translation
• Spanish Translation*

This song I wrote about my mum who’s a single mum, you know how intense that relationship is. They feel like your sister, a brother, or even your child sometimes. I felt throughout my life my mum and I have caught each other when we’re falling. That’s what the songs about.

– Rina Sawayama in Glasgow on The Dynasty Tour

I wrote Catch Me In The Air across 2020-2021, at a time when a lot of people around me were having children or thinking of having children.

It made me think of the pressures that parents go through when raising a child. I put myself in my mum‘s shoes. I’m nearly her age when she had me. My parents were separated and so mum and I lived together with a lodger in a flat In London. We shared a bedroom until I was 15 because we could not afford to not rent the spare room out. Mum and I came from totally different cultures (Japanese and London) and so we fought A LOT. I felt like she didn’t understand me and I didn’t understand her at all. I would runaway to go to gigs in foreign countries on my own and I felt like she emotionally ran away from me sometimes (I can see why, I was a nightmare !) We would have screaming fights from 7 am and I would be embarrassed and frustrated by everything she did. There were several years in my 20s where we didn’t talk at all. I spent a lot of time being angry because I felt misunderstood and the burden of being an only child from separated parents.

The first verse of CMITA is from a parents perspective, second verse from the child’s. I love being at an age where I can see from both perspectives. I can’t imagine having to raise a child basically on your own in a country where you don’t speak the language, to make a living to try and give the best for your child. My mum would sleep at 10pm and then wake up at 2Am to start working again. She did this for years, and she would always make me breakfast and pack me off with a cute Japanese lunch. I could NEVER! I often wonder if we would have had a easier relationship growing up if she didn’t have to work so hard. It also makes me wonder how many parents want to be their best supportive self for their kids but simply can’t because they are exhausted.

Anyway I’m so proud of this song and where our relationship is at. The bridge/middle 8 and outro of the song is how I feel about our relationship now.

– Rina Sawayama, Instagram