“If there is another universe,” SZA begs at the start of one of her biggest hits, the single ‘Saturn, which was published last year, “please make some sound. Give me a sign.”
Because, man, this can’t be everything? She’s here, she sings. She hates it to be stuck at this place where everything is always the same; In the ‘hell’ of paralyzing thoughts in her head and an endless repetition of pain.
The singer-songwriter sang ‘Saturn’ last year during the festive presentation of the Grammy Awards, where she received three prizes for her second album, SOS. That live version was also officially released, in addition to an A Capella version, one in speed and the instrumental track.
It summarizes the position of SZA – pronounced Sizza – in the music industry. In the spotlight on the biggest stages, where her success is celebrated and her and her team is skillfully published, while in her work she is also openly struggling with the discomfort of her fame and the attention and pressure that this entails: how the hell did I end up here?
This weekend she will be on the largest concert stage in our country with Kendrick Lamar, the Johan Cruijff Arena. It is according to music industrial magazine Billboard The most profitable tour with two headliners in pop history.
For years it was intended that SZA would become one of the big pop stars of her generation. All signals were green, she just had to do it. Before she really broke through as an artist, she had written songs for Rihanna and Nicki Minaj (with Beyoncé), did an internship at Pharrell Williams, and signed with the successful top DAWG Entertainment, the record label that Pulitzerrijs-Winner Kendrick of his generation of his generation.
And SZA also solved her promise. She became after the release of her strong debut album Ctrl Nominated for five Grammies in 2017. Her second album released at the end of 2023 SOS Was on 1 in the American album list for 10 weeks. She was the first black woman to be in the list for so long since Whitney Houston’s Blockbuster success The Bodyguard About 40 years earlier.
A ‘Deluxe’ version of SOS Which lasts almost twice as long as the original. But that album only came after a long, long search. She told La Times How she bounced from one music industry to another; Endless with creative guru Rick Rubin, Australian songwriter Sia and superstster producer Timbaland was in the studio, and in the spring of 2022 “had more than 100 songs” of which she wanted to release exactly zero. “I was pretending to be an artist,” she said.
Black music doesn’t just have to be R&B. We started rock ‘n’ roll, why can’t we think a little wider than limited?
In the run -up to her second album, which was announced several times and was shifted to the future again, SZA openly complained that her record label would stop her new music. She later came back to that criticism, after her fans launched a ‘#Freesza’ campaign online, and she publicly announced that nobody hosted her or her music; That sometimes it can also be a blessing for an artist to hear ‘no’ – and that she completely trusted the people around her.
The Guardian called SZA A year ago in a glowing five-star review of her performance at Glastonbury “The greatest contemporary R&B star.” There are quite a few stars that would be taken off with such a shiny sounding honorary title, but SZA is from a generation that hesitates and weighs in public and weighs and that also sharply questions the dominant perception. That the white gaze in which a black singer-songwriter who draws from genres from jazz and country to rock and alternative pop is always reduced to the box reserved for artists with her skin color. “I’m so tired of being limited to an R&B artist,” said Sza Consequence. “I think it’s super disrespectful:” Oh you’re black, then this is what you have to be “(…) It is very lazy to put me in the ‘R&B’ box. I like to make black music-point. Black music does not only have to be R&B. We have started rock-‘nroll, why can’t we think a little wider than limited?”
The music of SZA is often catchy, intimate and melancholic, and indeed versatile: with influences from rock, soul, dance, hip hop and more. Her catchy and powerful singing voice as the most important element in moody and atmospheric productions where one moment is howling a guitar and then again a synthesizer. In her work she is candid about topics such as love and sex, loneliness and uncertainty, and mental health and identity.
Revenge fantasies
She reflects self -confident, humorous, sometimes introverted and then infectious again on those topics with pointed texts that you get hooked on or chew on – about, say, triangular relationships (“You are 9 to 5, I am the weekend.”); Revenge fantasies (“I may kill my ex; I’ll love him but I’d rather be in prison than alone.”) And criticism of who she is, or what she looks like.
SZA also seeks artistic freedom in her singing style. She can get rid of it and sing glidly, and combines that with rhythmically smooth flows and a dramatic approach, a strong attitude and narrative emphasis. One of the producers on SOSmusic industry meter Rodney ‘Darkchild’ Jerkins, called her approach as a vocalist and singer-songwriter ‘almost that of a rapper’.
The obvious discomfort that SZA feels at the superstar status that she has worked with full focus and attention in recent years and that she is in her work in her work and in interviews.
SZA is centering full of guts and artistic convictions the turbulent unrest and emotions in herself, and the continuous tension she feels between desire and uncertainty, self -image and identity, and professional ambition and individual peace of mind. The really big performers even succeed in football stadiums to give visitors the idea that despite the scale, they will only perform for them. That is what SZA does so gloriously in her music – it is constantly as if she talks to us immediately, so natural and confidential.