Dressed in male drag, Rina Sawayama’s night of drinking alone takes a turn in the video for “Bad Friend.” The track appears on her self-titled debut album Sawayama.
The black-and-white video opens with Sawayama dressed like a sullen businessman sitting at a bar alone. The solo character proceeds to order a drink and somberly looks at his wedding ring, indicating a partner left at home. Suddenly, a much more animated solo male joins Sawayama at the bar, proceeding to get the both of them increasingly more drunk before Sawayama instigates a fistfight. The video ends in a Fight Club-esque fashion with Sawayama exiting some type of daze, hunched over a pool of blood with no trace of their fighting partner.
Over the cinematic string of events, Sawayama’s song reflects on the highs and lows of friendship, specifically at the end of one. “I’m so good at crashing in/Making sparks and shit but then/I’m a bad, I’m a bad, I’m a bad friend,” she sings on the chorus. “So don’t ask me where I’ve been/Been avoiding everything/’Cause I’m a bad, I’m a bad, I’m a bad friend.”
Sawayama was released on Dirty Hit last month. The singer-songwriter also made her debut on Rolling Stone‘s Breakthrough 25 chart, which ranks the artists making the biggest gains in audio streams each month.
