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

!!!!!!!

Last week both of my kids separately asked me if I'd heard this yet, and yesterday a buddy called me asking for advice about buying tickets for *his* daughter to see SZA, so clearly there's a lot of SZA in the air. People want their SZA! I gotta get on this album, haven't really thought about her since I saw her play a small place in ... 2017? And even then she seemed ascendant.

“Kill Bill” is amazing.

finally listened to half of this last night, concur, Kill Bill amazing, rest of the record really great, weird they held this back so long and difficult to parse out what the truth was about the delay from anything anyone has said.

some of the album was only finished just before release, but i think the main reasons it took so long were her lacking confidence in her material & her label refusing to release things even when she wanted to

didn’t she have serious problems with her vocal cords at some point?

looking it up that was in 2018 after she toured ctrl, so idk how much that contributed to delays

she has spoken a lot about how being a famous musician gives her an extreme amount of anxiety. she has also spoken about hating the process of releasing music according to a schedule, having to plan out singles with a label and all that instead of just putting songs out when she wants. the guys who run TDE have talked about feeling like they needed to take control of the release process from her. both sides have spoken about not seeing eye to eye on a lot of things. i think it’s pretty easy to connect the dots and understand why her music came out in fits and starts before an album just suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

they also sat on Kendrick's stuff for ages, no? I'm not sure exactly what that label is thinking.

i’m not sure if her and kendrick have similar issues in that regard. i think kendrick albums just take a long time to make. but he’s also leaving TDE after this album so perhaps it’s not the easiest place to be an artist

to me sza seems to be in the lineage of the whole generation of neo soul artists who eventually came to release music at their own pace — often on timelines that frustrated their fans. if you read this recent story it feels like it wouldn’t be that shocking if she disappeared from the public eye for a long time a la lauryn hill, d’angelo etc

https://consequence.net/cover/sza-cover-story-sos/

ctrl also had a long gestation (though not as long) with similar issues - she repeatedly complained that tde was delaying things, but also got really anxious and lost confidence in what she'd recorded amongst all the delays and couldn't decide what she wanted the album to be so eventually they just took her hard drive and decided on the tracklist without consulting her.

it just doesn't really seem like they're a good fit for each other - her process seems really dysfunctional overall but if anything tde seems to exacerbate a lot of that by trying to do everything properly

kendrick seems like he's always had a pretty firm vision of what he wants to do so i don't think he'd have been likely to have run into the same issues with tde. he's also surely just outgrown them

Well deserved.

https://pitchfork.com/news/sza-scores-first-no-1-album-with-sos/

Love the run from Used to Gone Girl that includes the lovely and effortless Babyface track Snooze. Thought it was interesting that Rob Bisel, the dominant producer/musical collaborator, didn't have a wikipedia page. Seems to mostly been an engineer/mixer before this record: https://www.robbisel.com/

this is lovely

~10 times through, my early favourite is "Low". I'll be coming back to this album a lot.

into this alb overall but dont love the jay versace beat

the first jay versace beat is meh but "smoking on my ex pack" is pretty high-tier as far as chipmunk soul throwbacks go

had to leave this alone for a bit. back to it this morning and still nothing but smashes.

It’s definitely stronger the more you play it.

fuck this is too good

'gone girl' is gorgeous. 'f2f' kinda loses me but the next two are perfect after it. does feel kinda long overall but everything is good-to-great.

I too think I lose interest two-thirds through but have no idea where to cut and why I should lol

Every song on this album is the best. "Forgiveless" hasn't gotten enough love here. That Bjork sample is very Clams Casino-esque.

https://pitchfork.com/news/szas-sos-spends-most-weeks-at-no-1-among-albums-by-women-in-7-years/

SZA’s sophomore album SOS has earned its ninth nonconsecutive week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, earning 93,000 equivalent album units in the United States this past week. That’s the most weeks atop the list for an album by a woman in nearly seven years, reports Billboard. The last record by a female artist to do so, Adele’s 25, clocked in with 10 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1, the most recent of which was March 12, 2016.

Over the past 10 years, only three albums by women have spent at least nine weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200: SOS, Adele’s 25, and Taylor Swift’s 1989. In addition to that milestone, SOS also has the most weeks at No. 1 for an R&B album by any act since Usher’s Confessions, which ruled the charts with nine nonconsecutive weeks back in 2004.

Quite the accomplishment for an album that doesn't feel like it's trying to appeal to the masses the way these others records did. I don't know if it's a micro-genre record or anything, but it's no 25. There is some serious vulnerability and specificity in the lyrics of this record; seems like each time I listen I walk away with a new appreciation for something she was willing to try or put out there.

No success by an artist I admire in recent years has surprised and gratified me like SOS'. It's safe to say no one expected it.

yeah it's quite a phenomenon

My 13-year-old niece hummed "Kill Bill" the other day.

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?!)