“I feel a big responsibility to always be honest about the stories I tell, because I think it's really important that we have these very happy stories about how amazing it is to be queer,” Rina Sawayama tells Apple Music in celebration of Pride Month. “I always think that the feeling has to exist all year round, because especially in the last year, people have been literally suffering the antithesis of a Pride festival—locked in the house, potentially with people who do not accept them for who they are.” In her At Home With interview with Zane Lowe, the Japanese British singer-songwriter opened up about how writing “Cherry” helped her to come out as pansexual, not wanting to be boxed in as an artist, and collaborating with Elton John on their duet “Chosen Family.” Sawayama also curated an exclusive Apple Music playlist featuring the likes of P!nk, Madonna, Bruno Mars, and Avril Lavigne, whom she’s been idolizing since she was in middle school. “She's the reason a lot of girls thought that it was okay to listen to music with guitars,” she says. “I had a school uniform on, so I'd always wear a white tank top, baggy pants, and the school tie. It was like she was one of the boys.”