SOS: SZA’s new album will save our souls

For the first time since the release of her hit 2017 album Ctrl, contemporary R&B artist SZA has finally given the people what we have wanted and needed for so long—a new album. While this album takes great strides in SZA’s genre experimentation, there are moments aplenty where long-time SZA fans can catch her quintessential vulnerable lyricism, her effortlessly smooth rhythms, and her addictive sound.

When I first heard this album, I experienced a lot of strong reactions that I will reflect upon before entering a more general evaluation of SOS. The opening track “SOS” immediately struck a chord with me—the grandiose, jazzy first few moments of the song set an expansive tone for the rest of the album that was delivered flawlessly; I was sucked in instantly. This track was followed by “Kill Bill,” a song where she connects her own desire to kill her ex and his new girlfriend, with a title referencing the iconic Kill Bill film series—a franchise with feminine vengeance as its centerpiece. A strikingly relatable song executed with a killer musical tone (pun intended), “Kill Bill” is one of my personal favorites on the album and has more plays than most of the album’s other songs on Spotify.

The tracks that follow “SOS” and “Kill Bill” similarly match the traditional SZA package of engaging lyrics and musicality to match; of the tracks leading up to “Ghost in the Machine (feat. Phoebe Bridgers),” my favorites were “Blind” and “Smoking on my Ex Pack,” a song that expands into more poppy and upbeat rhythms that SZA typically puts out. “Ghost in the Machine,” however, is the biggest bone that I have to pick with the album.

Let me start off by saying that I am a long-time Phoebe Bridgers listener; Strangers in the Alps was, at one time, one of my favorite albums, and I would be lying if I said that Punisher had anything less than a life-changing impact on the way that I view love and relationships. All of that being said, I found myself incredibly frustrated with this SZA/Bridgers crossover, mostly because it sounded more like a SZA song awkwardly spliced together with a Phoebe Bridgers song rather than a cohesive collaboration. While I loved the opening musicality of this song, which offers some of the haunting tones of Bridgers’s music while working in tandem with SZA’s typical R&B vibe, the song then transitions to a SZA verse and a Bridgers verse, both of which sound like songs that each artist would sing entirely separately from the other. This collaboration felt forced to me in a way that indicated the feature was more for publicity rather than the genuine betterment of SZA’s sound. While the song has grown on me as I continue listening to the album, it remains my least favorite track on SOS.

This slight disappointment aside, the remainder of SOS offers banger after banger. “Special” has become my most listened to song on the album, mostly due to its beautifully vulnerable lyricism and accessibility to any listener. “Open Arms (feat. Travis Scott)” and the closing track, “Forgiveless (feat. Ol’ Dirty Bastard)” recover the collaborative elements of SOS as a whole, and close the album with that classic SZA sound.

Overall, SOS is not one to miss, regardless of whether you have been listening to SZA for years or are just tuning in now.