A retrospective look at SZA's third album one year later with a foreword from the present
By Bee Roldan
Still from PSA music video/ SOS teaser trailer
Foreword
Here we are, a year after SOS, SZA’s junior effort. At the time it was one of the most anxiously-awaited projects and in a way a year later the hype has not died down. She’s spent the past month collecting countless awards, and seems poised to take a couple in this season’s Grammys.
Now I reflect on the stream of consciousness I wrote about one of my favorite artists of all time, the night that SOS came out. I relistened to the entire album to see how the album has changed; how I've changed. Whether we’ve grown together or grown apart.
Honestly, with the exception of a couple of songs, SOS did not dominate my 2023. With a more distanced perspective I can see the culmination of a career where her editing and self-curation has been hindered and equally goaded by an industry and a label that prioritizes her streams over her artistic integrity. I stand behind my main argument that night: SOS is meant to satiate the appetites of many. It just rarely feels like it does the same for her. For SZA.
But what did I get wrong or miss out on? I might have been wrong about my theory about her self-leaking, in fact it came straight from the singer herself when she confronted the issue in an interview in Variety a couple weeks ago. Also, “Forgiveless,” one of the greatest mergings of Old and New hip hop in recent years. I’m so late for realizing it’s legendary and instantly anthemic quality, built off of a brilliant collaboration between Ol’ Dirty Bastard and SZA. “Nobody Gets Me,” definitely pissed me off initially and now I can see its made-for-screaming-in-the-car quality. It’s heartrending. For singles on Valentines day level shit. It’s also the song that made me revel in the truly olympic gymnast level versatility of her voice, this is a capital B Ballad, yet she reinvents it within the raw edges of her style with the same theatricality of the older generation of R&B singers.
The artist is always receiving shit for her self-deprecation, or what I believe to be her intensely introspective gaze. But I find that in my listening I didn’t appreciate the written work in the album. While sonically, it feels immature and overly-poppy, the album has bars and lyrical gems, an introspective quality comes about the most if you pay attention. See: the fantastic AI-referencing prose of “Ghost in the Machine,” the searing middle of “Special,” or the metamorphosis from a rant to a victory lap to a ballad in “Smoking on my Ex Pack.”
What was I right about? It just feels like that same gladiator gliding around boasting about “getting my lick back” (“Forgiveless”) is barely around for most of the album, and not as if her less-prideful or self-deprecating music is undesired; it's just that even when she’s pathetic it sounds half-baked. The composition belies the powerful emotion in so many of these songs; the cringiness comes out in a production that no longer makes these moments endearing, instead just that, cringey. That second half I criticized a year ago is still weak now as she often relied on single-layered beats and boring acoustic instruments in a way that does not make her voice sound naked or raw but instead immature. They’re songs for reels or TikTok, not the ones she used to build to stand the test of time.
My Original Review, December 2022
When it feels like artists are growing more and more accessible, straining for exposure in a sea of duplicates of duplicates, those who limit our access to them are a precious resource. SZA for a while was the indie darling of R&B, and not sonically (black female artists have long been “alt” before this was a thing, see: Brandy, Dawn Richard, Kelela, Solange), but format wise. She was the first lady of TDE on Soundcloud with weird EPs and half-mastered leaked tracks- by the way in such abundance I always thought she did it herself. The “released” EPs seemed so off-kilter and diy before you can even comment on the unbounded lyrical content and distorted electronic beats, her voice warbled around like a girl twisting around a maze. I always wondered if she would ever have a big "break. "
And then, “Drew Barrymore.” It stuck like taffy on the roof of your mouth, except this time the taffy changed your whole life, made you feel seen and sounded like a million bucks. I had gotten on the SZA wagon when I first heard “Child’s Play,” led there by Spotify shuffle. From then on the rest of Z flowed naturally into my ears. This older SZA is Old Testament, a girl reckoning with romance using metaphors of barbies (“Child’s Play”) or feelings so deep in the voyage of her adolescence she begs for an encounter with her god, “Adonai, Ya Allah” ("Omega"). On various occasions she speaks of thorny crowns and crucifixion, of martyrdom in the context of being betrayed and not having reliable allies. If it read cringey it was because the prevailing reviewer of the time, P@tchfork, often found this sort of thing overly-endearing. But if you got in at the Old Testament, or even when God snapped his fingers (old tracks from as far back as 2012), you were at the age, and therefore brilliantly youthful intelligence, to understand she was saying pure and real shit. Even if you did not relate to her religiosity you understood the overbrimming of one’s pain. You got it. This has always been the SZA we knew.
So during the New Testament she was fully materialized for those of us devoted. Her word was not instantly disseminated. But TikTok and word of mouth made sure CTRL spread like wildfire over the past 5 years. It’s her opus, that’s for sure.
There’s that moment she ended the first iteration of that masterpiece with a guitar and a lyric: “Prayin' the 20 somethings don't kill me, kill me.” And her response to her mother shortly after: “That was beautiful mommy, that was perfect” (“20 Something”). Both lines managed to perfectly sum up a work that would for better or worse define her career up to now. The good news (not trying to make a pun I swear) is with SOS, there is relief in that finding the architecture of her oldest work (both released and unreleased), or things put out in the darkness (leaked tracks like I Hate You and Shirt) she emerges: the phenomena of an artist unconcerned with pigeonholing.
In a song like "Gone Girl," she shows her proclivity for knowing what will stand the test of time, grabbing the tempo of jazzy pop being noxiously exploited in Kpop and taking little keyboard keys from Pink Pantheress and Steve Lacy (her children in some regards, and burgeoning contemporaries as well). But also, those synths in the back? The lyrics: a love for the cinematic and archetypal (see track titles: “Jodie,” “Joni,” “Kill Bill,” “Drew Barrymore”)? All harkening from forever ago. This was her thing, always. The chicken or the egg of the Modern Era: did we feel pain so deeply until we had the conduit of Drew in Poison Ivy? Did we consider revenge so earnestly till we knew it was possible through Uma in Kill Bill? And nowadays, are we capable of being so original as to be a side-piece or to fuck the shitty situationship’s “homeboy” (“Supermodel”), or could we ever be so capable of transcendence to leave it all behind if she hadn’t proposed it in “Ice Moon”: “I lay formless Hands tied in my sheets”?
SOS has a strength in that it is largely genre-less, and yet for its first 12 track run, it still flows brilliantly. She retains the same acclaimed capability of weaving her trauma into our own collective experience; this earnestness existing because she’s earned our trust thus far. Then she tells him “I fuck him cuz I miss you,” in “F2F” and it’s a little awkward. But she would be remiss not to try out the prog-rock Willow sparked back up these past two years. A lesser artist would ruin everything with this but it’s just a wrongly placed track. But before this misstep she has the surprise of the century duet with Phoebe Bridgers (“Ghost in the Machine”). It becomes very obvious 15 seconds in that Bridgers walked down a darker, red-riding hood pathway because the possibility for soul-baring of the ages had already been carved out by SZA on CTRL before her Stranger in the Alps debut. That their voices are so salient and gorgeously whisking around each other, forming each other like gorgeous blue and red ghosts in the night, is another marvelous treat.
Contrary to what her terrible fans say, SZA knows it’s her fucking voice, and she understands so well who is worthy of going up with one of the most versatile and agile vocal instruments out right now. I think that’s exactly the same thing that makes the ending run of SOS confusing. My friend Kat pointed out that it feels like there should be more duets. Perhaps, the artists SZA spoke about this past week are these missing puzzle pieces; collaborators who missed important deadlines. It’s like there should be a rapper or singer sharing the stage with her on “Conceited” and “Too Late,” moments where she’s solo twerk-singing but without a partner on incredibly radio-friendly tracks. “Too Late” specifically, was almost so earnest that I got exhausted of it. The guitar and the fast tempo of the song are cute to her fans, but it just seems like a hollow and lonely track and not in a way that contributed to its depth.
Ultimately, by the end of listening to SOS I was in a sort of paralysis. I also need to return to my original point: in the era of fast releases and those rare few who pace themselves SZA is technically neither. She spent three EPS over the course of three years back to back grinding for the attention and support of one Label. Finally, CTRL gave her the foundation to take a fucking break. And we mythologized this five year period but for such a giving and methodical artist it is ultimately kind of unfair. We want more and more and more from artists, and for a while SZA didn’t do much (see: the Pandemic, rare live performances, Shirt Witch Hunt, Good Days teasing). She didn’t “feed” us for a while, or so the claims go. And comparatively? She didn’t. But now here’s the present for the present. Who is Solona Rowe As an Artist Now? Someone capable of making such brilliant and comforting songs as “Kill Bill,” “I Hate You” (the little brilliant standout of the final portion, which I milked the fuck out of on Soundcloud and rolled my eyes when you guys got it on spotify and didn’t like it), “Low”, and “Ghost In the Machine.” The same, if not more experimental and careful curator of the sounds of the present to give us something to satiate us.
SOS is a work of large significance, not just in scope of genre and sheer run time, but in the relationship of artist and fan. Here is a work she was more than capable of just keeping to herself: a large and beautiful aquarium-like stream of dreams and nightmares, vengeances and cinematic fight scenes. If it feels weighty and overly-large, or sometimes discombobulated, I pick this over the quiet and secretive methods of release she had to undertake for so many years. Let it sit with you, because jesus fucking christ, it’s 23 songs and at least everyone will find SOMETHING they like in it. And be careful. One of these days, she could leave us with the very first lyrics of “Supermodel” posted up on her website, “I’m Writing this letter to let you know I’m really leaving and no I’m not keeping your shit.”
On a scale of Good to Transcendental? I say Excellent.
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