thread of SZA

can't believe this still doesn't exist, CTRL is truly fantastic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1y-HY7cYHQ

i really like this performance of Supermodel with strings

Yeah she's incredible. She's right up the ilx poptimist wing's alley so it's odd that there's been no thread. Hopefully it doesn't die out immediately like the sampha thread.

Love Galore, Prom and Drew Barrymore are my favourites but Julia off her second ep is great too

Yeah, this album totally deserves all the high placements its been getting in the end of year lists. Keeps getting better and better for me.

she's an incredible singer. first time I heard her was on consideration with rihanna and the way that melody ("when i look outside my window...") exquisitely seesaws up and down her range with all those blue notes blew my mind and sounded SO GOOD. just delicious. her phrasing, her control, all the ways she suddenly changes things up hit me really, really hard. there are so many amazing tiny moments on this album but my favourite song is supermodel, which initially I liked a lot without really listening properly to the lyrics, and then when I did the whole song turned and all those little vocal touches are just devastating to me now (the way she suddenly drones 'leave me lonely for prettier women' suppressing her pain under that flatness), I can't listen to it without crying idk what's happened to me

Ctrl deserves all the accolades, massive step up from the debut

the general mood of this is what the best bits of Blonde hinted at but didn't really deliver on for me so it's just so great that something else has.

thr highlights for me are Love Galore, Drew Barrymore, Garden, Normal Girl, and 20 Something, which i realise is over 1/3 of the album

this is several orders of magnitude greater than Blonde imo - great record. Pretty Little Birds is my favourite track

Great great album

she's so good

ogmor otm

thrilled that this record caught on with so many people and publications. it really feels like an album in a great way, a journey through moods which build on each other all the way to the end but also where each constituent song in isolation is really well-written

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

i like this album

not adding much to the conversation here but it's good

1st half better than 2nd but it's all good. 1st "r and b" album I've liked in long time. 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)? Feels like there was supposed to be one but it was abandoned at some point.

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

it's so good, absurdly lush with all those woodwinds in the background

Good Days is lovely