thread of SZA

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

i feel like this is quietly becoming a generation-defining song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p3zZoraK9g

(the vid, like the one for "hit different," teases another forthcoming song that sounds potentially great)

https://t.co/Wg1IvioVR6 dumping random thoughts

— SZA (@sza) August 22, 2021

three new tracks! but really what is going on with her & TDE if she's resorting to leaking stuff like this

seriously

at this point i hope she can just manage to get released from her contract or something, like her relationship with TDE has been terrible since before CTRL even & seems to only be worse now

all these songs are great smh

the way she released these is interesting in light of kendrick's announcement her twitter bio has "gone fish'n #TDE" as the location lol

i don't think kendrick has ever publicly had issues with them though, i figured he probably just wants to move to somewhere bigger now with his contract up, being a gigantic star & all, while sza was complaining about them preventing her from releasing music years before ctrl came out & has continued to blame them for her taking so long to put anything new out

new track are indeed great, "joni" is too short though

there’s clearly something going on at tde, most of its artists haven’t released new albums in many years

but yeah, i could see kendrick’s announcement as more of an indication that he wants to be in charge and not subject to top dawg’s whims

Joni is great, definitely want a full length version

full length version of "joni" is apparently planned for the album, with a guest

nice

Very pleased and very surprised by this. I'll take it as a hopeful sign for humanity.

It’s deserved, and great to see it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/08/magazine/sza.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Long Danyel Smith interview feature on SZA

Love that opening paragraph. Will read the rest--thanks.

#1

https://www.stereogum.com/2221515/sza-kill-bill-finally-hits-number-1/news/

I've been waiting to say that SOS blows Ctrl out of the water, for me anyway. SOS feels more intimate and confessional, more vulnerable maybe, and that goes well with its pliable, sprawling nature. No song on Ctrl makes me want to listen to it over and over, but there's plenty of them on SOS and Kill Bill is not even in the front of them. It's a bit a respect VS love reaction, bordering on obsession really.

idk bout ya'll but the highlights on sos have lost none of their initial power. like i knew this album was good 10 months ago, but even now, "far" is still in my heavy rotation and it's not even one of the singles!

and the success of "snooze" just makes me happy. that was one of my first listen loves on the album -and part of that flawless opening sequence- and just a song that i can't get enough of. completely addicted and not even bothered.

finally, repping once again for "shirt." that fucken song plays chess with my brain. fuck off with your bizarro world soul ii soul beats and creepy insights into my psyche. i'm not weird, you are. (plays "shirt" for the seventh time in a row)

i'm ready to call the album better than ctrl and a modern classic.

yeah i'm glad "snooze" has become so big. i so often grow tired of the songs that 'the industry' treats as sleepers by the time they reach their peak of exposure but atp it's safe to say nothing will fade my fondness for it

otm

critic and substacker Brad Luen nitpicking SZA's SOS. Ba humbug

SZA: SOS
Billboard’s third-most successful album of the year after Wallen and Swift, so I’ve got six billion streams against me when I say it’s a huge step down from CTRL. Megahit “Kill Bill”, catchy and very dumb, is atypical only in that radio played it so many times that the catchiness won out. Her previously fetching vocal idiosyncrasies turn annoying when subjected to the letter-munching of late 2022 non-country production. A now-old story: best when she raps, which isn’t often enough. Grade: B (“Smoking on My Ex Pack”, “Kill Bill”)

Nope.

surely we can hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to thread revives…

The radio success of "Snooze" and "Kill Bill" has been one of the most surprising developments of the last couple years.

Maybe I asked on the thread already but I can't remember the answer, assuming anyone answered. Back some time around the release of her first record I saw her in a tiny club here (she was good). Then she went kind of quiet, iirc, and the next thing I know she's selling out arenas with hot ticket prices and her album is dominating whatever charts people follow. What did I miss in between? How did she go from rising star to superstar that my kids and their peers and their younger siblings all know and love? It seemed really sudden, at least from the vantage of someone that only passively knows about what's popular.

by first record, do you mean ctrl, or z, because ctrl was a triple-platinum, massively critically acclaimed hit album and z came out nearly a decade ago, at this point

i assume you mean ctrl. i remember when i first became aware of her she still seemed slightly under the radar for most -- i planned to go to her concert at a theater later in the year but didn't buy a ticket then. checked again after a few months (she had started getting traction on radio) and a second date had been added and they were both sold out. the album had tremendous legs so when sos launched she was well positioned to blow up even more, hence the upgrade to arenas etc.

Yeah, I meant "ctrl," sorry. It was the Concord Music Hall here in December 2017, about 1000 or so capacity. The next time she played Chicago was February 2023 at a very sold out United Center.

surely we can hold ourselves to a higher standard when it comes to thread revives…

― slob wizard (J0rdan S.), Sunday, November 26, 2023 7:32 PM (yesterday)

idk learning there's an IU stats prof cosplaying as Christgau on substack is kind of what ilm is for

lol I know him from a couple other message boards. Nice guy.

the xgau shtick is not for me, but in all sincerity, it's always nice to be reminded that people contain multitudes

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?!)