Cream Premiere: Becca Richardson Struggles to Be Visible in ‘Japanese Eyes’

Feeling a connection and commonality with others — feeling like you belong — is a fundamental need that can be difficult to fulfill. That’s especially true when you’re trying to navigate multiple layers of culture. 

Nashville musician Becca Richardson (who you’ll have seen playing her own shows and events like the first Ain’t Afraid benefit in memory of Jessi Zazu) takes a close look at this difficult territory in “Japanese Eyes.” The song, by turns dreamy and snarling, is from Richardson’s forthcoming EP Belly. We’re very pleased to premiere the music video, which features Richardson in a variety of social situations — a party, cuddling on a couch — where she appears to be invisible to others. In an email to the Cream, she explains that this comes from personal experience.

“I’m a Black Japanese girl from the middle of nowhere Ohio, I grew up in a conservative, white town, and for the first part of my life that’s all I knew,” Richardson writes. “So I identified with that. Jump to 18 years old, I move to California and suddenly there are lots of people who look like me and I should feel like I ‘fit in,’ but somehow I still don’t.

"I took a Japanese language class my first year of college and I was terrible at it. I would watch these white kids in my class speak with amazing Japanese accents and I couldn’t do it. I barely passed. I thought: ‘Damn, my grandmother would be so disappointed.’ It was either my appearance didn’t fit, or my mind didn’t fit. In the video, my director J.R. Wyatt and I wanted to capture that feeling of isolation and invisibility, and the internal rage it can spark.”

Keep an eye on Richardson’s website and Facebook page for updates on Belly and upcoming performances. “Japanese Eyes” is available on all your favorite streaming platforms.