SZA (33) closed 2022 with a blast of an album. Her broad artistic view and sometimes painfully personal lyrics make the American the up-and-coming star of 2023. Just a little while and she will conquer the world.
It is a telling cover of one of the best-selling records of recent weeks. On her album SOS the American singer SZA (33) floats above a wavy ocean, on the tip of a diving board. She seems to be staring relaxed at infinity: a sea of possibilities.
We now know that the world is indeed at SZA’s feet. Her album was released in December and became the fastest-selling pop record in the United States in its first weeks, and even the most successful R&B album in history in terms of those opening figures: SOS has been at the top spot of the Billboard chart for two weeks, above Taylor Swifts Midnights. But the cover image also says something regarding the main character in the photo. SZA peers into her own past from her diving board.
Born in 1989 in St. Louis, Missouri, Solána Imani Rowe studied marine biology at the University of Delaware before being drawn into music. Her look over the turbulent water can therefore also be of the melancholy kind.
The secrets of the sea will remain hidden from her for now, as SZA is regarding to become one of the biggest pop stars in the US. How will that end? The success cannot have surprised her in recent weeks.
Rap a rock
SZA’s debut album Ctrl from five years ago was already a groundbreaking record, which was praised worldwide for its candid lyrics and the clever way in which SZA managed to weave her words through many musical styles, from pure r&b and soul to hip-hop; thanks in part to collaborations with Kendrick Lamar and Travis Scott, the biggest rappers of the moment.
Her songwriting talent was already discovered before she came out with her first album. In 2011, when she had just left university early, SZA ran into a number of musicians from the hip-hop company Top Dawg Entertainment, which at the time represented Kendrick Lamar, among others. She kept in touch, started writing music herself and sent some initial work to Top Dawg boss Terrence Henderson. She was impressed, had SZA record a few tracks and offered the singer a contract. SZA became Top Dawg’s first female artist, even before she had produced an album.
After that it went fast. While she was working on her debut, around 2016, the singer was already asked to write for American artists such as Rihanna and Beyoncé. And SZA also made collaborations with others following her album Ctrl until the artist she is now, and who comes out even better on her just appeared SOS.
Because SZA also sought contact with pop musicians from far beyond r&b and hip-hop, the genres she might have stumbled into by accident, but which were perhaps too restrictive for her taste. She recorded the single ‘What Lovers Do’ with rock band Maroon 5. She also collaborated with British producer Mark Ronson and entered the studio with Australian band Tame Impala for the track ‘Back Together’.
Bloody self-mockery
On her new record she pushes the boundaries further and surprises the singer with cheerful, indie-like pop songs like ‘Ghost in the Machine’, with singer Phoebe Bridgers. And even with a cheerful punk pop song like ‘F2F’, which is carried by a ripping guitar chorus.
Yet another remarkable song is ‘Seek & Destroy’. Not a Metallica cover, but a heartbreaking song regarding destruction and war – in the inner world of the singer. ‘The art of war, goddamnit, I’m drained. Now that I’ve ruined everything, I cannot complain. Now that I’ve ruined everything, I’m so fucking free.’
‘Kill Bill’ is a homage to Quentin Tarantino’s film of the same name, but also a strong divorce song. In it, SZA fantasizes regarding the murder of her ex – fortunately with self-mockery: ‘I might kill my ex. Not the best idea. His new girlfriend’s next. I still love him, though. Rather be in jail than alone.’
And it is precisely those free style ideas that make SZA such an interesting star on the rise. The important American music site Pitchfork has already compared the lilting, almost jazzy way in which SZA manages to set her ‘inner monologue’ to music with the great Joni Mitchell. The online magazine Consequence called Ctrl a ‘confident, ambitious, expansive and genre-transcending journey into the depths of heartbreak, in all its manifestations’.
SZA herself already looked abroad before her music career. She recently revealed that the greatest artist of all time for her was Icelandic singer Björk, whom she discovered on an iPod found at school. “On her song ‘Jóga’ from the album Homogenic I cried and danced and all at once.”
SZA also translated her admiration for the singer into her own music: in her song ‘Forgiveness’, the last track of her record, a recognizable vocal sample floats from the dreamy song ‘Hidden Place’ from Björk’s album In the evening from 2001.
Big boys
SZA is also in two worlds in her personal life. She grew up in a religious family and is a practicing Muslim herself. After the attacks of September 11, 2001, she was bullied at school, she told the music magazine Rolling Stoneand she decided to stop wearing her headscarf.
In the same interview, she said she would actually like to wear a hijab once more, but that look combined with her sometimes quite explicit lyrics on stage might give the wrong impression. “I don’t want to seem disrespectful.”
SZA closed the 2022 music year with a record that was released too late for the year-end lists, but would certainly have fit in there.
And to think that her new hit hasn’t even been officially released yet. SZA sang the song ‘Big Boys’ as a sketch in the programme Saturday Night Live. The clip has already been viewed millions of times on YouTube and on TikTok the text regarding the desire for big men has gone viral.
In the coming year, SZA will go on an extensive tour through the United States and Canada. A European sequel to that concert series has not yet been announced, but it cannot be long in coming.
The story behind the diving board cover from ‘SOS’
Came the album cover from SOS you already familiar? That’s no coincidence. SZA admitted that the artwork was inspired by an iconic photo of Princess Diana. The American singer reconstructed a notorious paparazzo snapshot, in which Lady Di peers lonely into the distance over the deep blue water. The Princess of Wales sits in a bathing suit on the edge of a diving board on the very expensive Jonikal yacht owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed, father of her boyfriend Dodi.
The photo in question was taken in Portofino, Italy. A week later, at the end of August, Diana will die like a hunted game in a Parisian tunnel. On the run from yet another paparazzi.
In the diving board photo, Diana looks godforsaken, drowning in silent grief. The photo was previously copied in detail in a biopic with Naomi Watts. But on SOS, SZA deliberately focuses on differences. Instead of a turquoise bathing suit, like Diana, the American opts for a custom-made sweater with the letters ‘SZA’ on the back and ‘SOS’ on the sleeve. She also wears a pair of Timberland boots.
Just as important is how body language plays a crucial role in both images. SZA may be just as isolated from the outside world, but at most she looks alone. Diana is visibly lonely. Is there more optimism and hope contained in the image of SOS? Fans were divided upon its release.
The photo reconstruction of an iconic royalty, who would die horribly a week later, some find morbid or eerie. Others call it a poignant tribute.
“Originally I was going to be on a cargo ship,” SZA recently explained. “But I actually liked the Diana reference better. Because I loved how you might immediately see that she felt isolated. I wanted to convey that feeling. Maybe because I myself don’t know if the pursuit of superstardom is sustainable for me. I sometimes think that this kind of life is just not meant for a human, but for a machine.” (GVA)
