thread of SZA

I also sort of associate this album with the show Insecure which is also awesome

i'm glad so many others on here have been enjoying her/her album -- mentions of her songs on other threads seemed to attract scant attention for whatever reason. i also have nothing to add but i am very excited to see what she does next! (also i need her to release a music video for "the weekend" sometime this decade. supposedly it exists.)

yeah i love this album, I listened to it a lot over the past month. I didn't realize she was even well known enough to be on SNL; those were excellent performances.

i haven't yet listened to her pre-ctrl music (the first i heard from her was "love galore") but i think i should give it a go soon

this album is pretty good yeah

Normal girl is undeniable, my fav

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByucbuSe958

amazing what a highly successful r&b singer has to do these days to aim for (what will likely be marginal-at-best) play at mainstream top 40 even after singing with adam levine. not bad for what it is though.

Yeah « Normal Girl » is great.
This has to be a hit !

« Prom » is great too.

20 something is so good

"prom" is so wonderful but it also ends so suddenly

Does supermodel sample fennesz?

is that the track it was reminding me of, wow mayor..

It doesn't but that would've been an incredible move. the indie blogs would've lost their shit over that

am i alone in thinking that "anything" is the standout (among standouts)? i love that song

― Karl Malone, Thursday, December 14, 2017 12:25 PM (four days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you are not alone

which Fennesz?

Is there supposed to be a 90s theme to it (references to Forest Gump, Drew Barrymore, Martin sitcom, the vintage monitors on the album cover)?

forgot about the "you are watching MAD TV" bit too!

i totally slept on this album. good thing is i get to fall in love with it now , it's really great !

this is the fennesz guitar sound that Im reminded of in supermodel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQpTgd-41xk

https://www.google.com/amp/s/consequenceofsound.net/2018/05/sza-says-her-voice-is-permanently-injured/amp/

Oh that turned out to be a weird link with the google url.

But yeah she played in NYC last night after resting her voice for a few stops on this tour.

Fuck

That really sucks but it seems a little premature to say your voice is permanently damaged? Before trying rest and rehab?

IDK much about SZA's background as a singer but untrained singers (hell, even trained ones) can fuck up their vocal chords up pretty badly by singing outside their normal range or belting it out too loudly for too long. It's why Adele kept cancelling gigs a while back.

This makes me so sad

She did not do the Friday June 1 show with Kendrick Lamar in a DC exurb outdoor shed because of voice issues I read.

Yeah jordan probably too early to tell if it's permanent. Time will tell I guess.

maybe premature but I also understand that as a (relatively) new artist hearing this kind of news probably scares the shit out of you, especially if you are at all anxious (and SZA is on the record as having gone through a lot of anxiety particularly recently)

anyway I really like her and her record and hope her voice is not in fact permanently damaged

i don't think she's performing tonight either. :(

Hoping she can rest her voice and then go to a voice coach who can help her for the future

Sounds like she’s doing ok: https://variety.com/2018/music/news/sza-vocal-injury-chris-brown-bet-experience-1202855879/

Happy to hear that

Midnight EST. pic.twitter.com/CFGmf4vT55

— SZA (@sza) September 4, 2020

!!!

i guess publicly complaining about her label has gotten things moving for her again

!!!!!!!

"hit different" is on Spotify etc now. it's lovely.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJlMkMtK7-8

it's pretty good but surprisingly twisty for a lead single

oh wow the second song (snippet?) tacked onto the video edit is amazing

oh that's a big part of why i said it was twisty, makes more sense if it's not actually part of "hit different"

second track is reportedly called "good days"

I like “Hit Different” a lot, and that preview track sounds sublime. Great to hear her voice again.

more excited about that second track than "hit different" but it's all quite good so far

loooove both the new track and the snippet — there’s also this video on her IG that’s a snippet of a different new track:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CEtCWRYnj4C/?igshid=aijkitc0lnp0

ahhhhhh that sounds so good

I’ve seriously been listening to “Hit Different” on repeat for over 48 hours now — it’s so good to have her back sounding so good and so confident

"featuring ty dolla sign" are some of my least favorite words in the english language :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh64haEP9g8

here's the full "good days" at last, it's very good, but lol that jacob collier is on backing vocals

much better than "hit different"

tame impala ballad vibes (not a bad thing!)

new song is incredible

Harold Bloom never got to write The Perfidy of Influence.

hi did i miss mentions of ' saturn '? did you know that sun ra was from saturn?

(i know, i know. but i'll take what i can get. isn't she great?!)

'saturn' is completely gorgeous

feel like it's more 'rings of saturn' by sebald than sun ra's saturn. the thing jordan was saying a while ago about her, that she's too real to chase the standard pop career and that he sees her kind of like crashing out, pops into my head when i hear this. it's in a major key though, and the reverie about floating off to saturn in the chorus is powerfully something, like it feels like it means a lot of things. she's my favorite pop artist working right now i think.

"Saturn" seems underdiscussed here. One of my singles of the year. Maybe it's so good that there's not much to say about it.

it's been in constant rotation since it dropped. i like it even more now than when i initially posted. easily among the very best of the year. fitting that the only thing she drops this year would've been a highlight on sos too.

lana (deluxe) is out now. 15 additional songs (incl. saturn)

idk why this isn't just a new alb instead of a "deluxe" version of an album that came out 2 years ago, but there ya go

i think because they sound like SOS leftovers, which is probably what they are. i think the more pertinent question is why it took 2 years for it to come out

if she put this out as a new album everyone's reaction would be "this is a less great version of SOS" which is almost like... so self-evident as to be intrinsic. the first half is patchy but once it gets to "chill baby" it's a pretty worthy SOS sequel, she finds that specific pocket and stays in it. "diamond boy" is amazing tho

the throw some d's-sampling kendrick collab prob should've stayed in the vault

from what she's said about this i think it's a mix of sos outtakes + new recordings. it's probably for the best that it's not being presented as a proper album because it'd be a bit underwhelming as that

agree with the general sentiment: feels kinda stopgap, but it's still her, so it's good. "love me 4 me" is my pick; woulda sounded great as another phoebe bridgers collab. she needs to stop this winter season release schedule. your music belongs in summer where everyone's paying attention, solána. a very solid 3 mics.

i’ve just been starting this with “chill baby” bcuz from then on it’s pretty unimpeachable. a more accurate good version of this album would take out “30 for 30” “BMF” and “scorcese baby daddy” bcuz everything else works for me

This is good. Agree that it makes more sense as a cast-offs album (one of my favorite genres tbh). Tempted to use one of my remaining tracks nominations for "Kitchen."

The hell with it, this LP is going on my 2025 list.

it's a great album

i was able to purchase the s.o.s. 2 cd with the lana material attached, and it says ©2025 on the cover so raymond otm.

just the s.o.s. disc contains:
"kill bill"
"good days"
"i hate u"
"snooze"

and then the other disc has "saturn" + both have a ton of deep cuts. what's your favorite? i still say "shirt" is her so far definitive song. pure dominance, this album is a modern classic.

Finished my supply-teaching year with the wildest kindergarten class I've had in a while (last words from the office manager after I picked up the attendance: "Good luck"). The music teacher took over at noon and settled them down with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YQfmIIg7-0

Don't know anything about SZA beyond recognizing the name, but thought it sounded really good.

yep another total smasher being willfully ignored by this place. good on you for posting clem.

I didn't even realize it was a new song, Austin--I thought it was something from a few years ago. Going to look into her some more.

yep another total smasher being willfully ignored by this place. good on you for posting clem.

― austinato (Austin), Saturday, May 2, 2026

well, sure, because some of us placed SOS atop our lists in 2022.

I also like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoSoSmthMb4

Not vibing too much on the chorus from Save the Day, but the mellow duo with Doechii is the right kind.

yeah that's nice. not sure about 'save the day' tbh. i think sza is pretty much my favorite pop artist right now. 'saturn' is just greatness. i really love 'bmf' too.

nevermind i love 'saves the day' who am i kidding. her gift for melodies is unreal.

Bought Ctrl...With that pop song above from a kid's film as my entry point, I was thrown a bit by the Kendrick Lamar duet ("Doves in the Wind"). I like it fine, and I used to vote for and write about the most wildly profane hip-hop every year for Pazz & Jop. That was seven or eight years ago, though. I'm out of practice.

i got on board with SOS. "save the day" is definitely an outlier in her sound. she is firmly an r&b artist with a lot of hip hop in her sound. giving rap flows acrobatic melodic flows. there is some lush stuff on sos that moves a little further out into emo territory, eg "gone girl". if you just like "saves the day" you might not find anything else in her discography to like, but there is a throughline with the melodic sensibility imo.

i should say "fragile singer-songwriter" not "emo" because i don't mean the genre.

SOS was my favorite album of 2022.

cool, same same. what was your favorite excuse to edit a post? oh, to have such privileges and resumes. you do so well against people with disabilities.

reminder to the community here that i was threadbanned simply for quoting a relevant youtube creator's most recent essay. this community actively shuts down dialogue and one-side edits dialogue after the fact to change the narrative. the motives for these targeted actions are anyone's guess. nobody here thought "shirt" was any good, either. how collectively wrong can they get? have a good day.

ask yourself this: did he archive it? the next question will most likely be: what else does he have? well, for sure i don't have anything to hide or defend. always posting with love, never disrespect. can you say the same?

I don't have the power to edit posts.

austin you know you can see which posts have been edited in the admin log right

[Removed Illegal Link]

oh that was supposed to be a link to the admin log, which is public and accessible from 'boards'