SOS

Solana Rowe, otherwise known as R&B artist SZA, has recently released her second studio album. This past June marked the 5 year anniversary of her first LP, Ctrl. In celebration, she dropped the deluxe version with 7 additional songs, stirring up fans and building anticipation for her newest album, SOS. After being out for only twelve days, SOS has been record breaking. It’s SZA’s first album to reach #1 on billboard charts. After a week, it was certified platinum, with over 1 million units sold. Only six days in and SOS was the first album by a black female artist to excel 300 million streams on Spotify in a week. Clearly, the world has shown up for SZA, and there’s no question why. This album is on another level, and I’m going to dive into it today.

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Opening the album with the title track, we hear the confidence in SZA’s voice and lyrics. “SOS” is punchy but it still begins the album perfectly. The song is about being too generous to people who don’t deserve it, and how you can learn from that shame and come back with more power than before. What makes SZA interesting though, is that she can have the confidence to say, “Know you been more than lost/Without me”, yet write songs that are also so vulnerable and self-deprecating, which we’ll get into shortly. “SOS” is an amazing introduction that lines up the themes which will be presented in the duration of the album.

“Kill Bill” easily named itself SZA’s first #1 on Global Spotify, as well as being one of, if not the longest running #1 female solo song on Apple Music. It’s pretty self explanatory in that it references the film duology by Quentin Tarantino. The song can be interpreted either as a classic revenge story, or as an abuser story. “Kill Bill” is a song that explores the idea of getting anyone and anything out of the way just to be with the person you want, whether you’ll end up with them or not. Often, abusers will tell themselves and others that they’re in the right mind, which we hear in the bridge, stating, “I did it all for love/I did it all on no drugs/I did all of this sober/I did it all for us”. These are just delusions in order to excuse the behavior that they’re presenting. On the other hand, it could just be describing the feelings that we go through when we see someone from our past who is happy, when we’re still not over them. We don’t want to accept that someone else is the one making them happy, and there’s a lot of dramatized feelings that come along with this that SZA describes as well.

Track 3, “Seek & Destroy”, is one of my favorites on the record. It’s another song about the hurt that SZA has experienced and will in turn inflict on others. We hear her sing “All the hate I know/Is used to fuel my soul…All the hate I know/Is used to heal my soul”. I interpret this as her fuel being the same as her healing, and that sometimes she has to protect herself by treating others the way that they’ve treated her. She realizes what she’s done but says that there was no option, and she “Had to do it to you”. I like that it doesn’t necessarily sound like a revenge song and it’s very upbeat, so if you weren’t paying attention to the lyrics, it’s still a song that you could just jam to.

The next song, “Low”, shifts energy completely. It’s more hip hop than any of the songs that we’ve heard so far. To me, “Low” is angry, a bit cocky, and very confidential. Rowe is saying that if you can’t keep things private, then she doesn’t want anything to do with you. She prefers to keep to herself and if you can’t respect that, then you’re not worth her time. “Low” is also about shifting from being full of love to being betrayed many times and becoming heartless. Many lines allude to this idea, and that she’s closing herself off to emotions and possible love connections. “Love Language” dips its toes into our feels. It’s a story revolving around someone who is emotionally reserved, opposite from a person who just wants communication. SZA sings, “I’m so on to you, still gone for you/Needing you to talk to me in your love language”, longing to know how to better understand her partner. Lyrics in the second verse make me wonder if this relationship is completely healthy– “Nobody get that work up out me like you do”. Rowe is saying that it irks her so much that she can’t connect properly with this person, so much so that she gets worked up about it. We can’t help but question if these are the emotions that are supposed to be invoked when chasing a relationship.

The emotional rollercoaster continues in “Blind”. It’s a laid back song about not being able to see the good in certain things. SZA sings about returning to an ex just for the attention, and realizing how nothing has changed in their time apart. She says, “All of the things I need living inside of me/I can’t see it”, meaning that though she has needs of her own, she’s voluntarily blind to them so that she can keep making the same mistakes, and continue to claim that that’s what she wants. Track 7 is where we find the first feature on the album. “Used” gets us moving again, though it still holds the same kind of topic. While revolving around the idea that, “I’ve been used to being used like this”, SZA hints at topics such as death and cancel culture. She mentions the passing of family and friends, as well as telling the audience that she “Let[s] death stress [her] too much”. Verse one shares SZA’s frustration that if she doesn’t speak on certain things, she’ll get “chipped” for it. Still, if she does make a statement, she’ll get “chipped” as well. It shows the dichotomy of different groups in that you’re screwed no matter what you do or say in the public eye, so you “Might as well” just do whatever you choose. Still, SZA finds her way back to relational issues, saying that, “I don’t take much, just need your honesty”.

A song that initially caught my attention and is now my current favorite is “Notice Me”. The song is about not necessarily wanting to put a label on a good thing. The more I look into the lyrics, it tempts me to think that “Notice Me” is basically SZA saying that she is okay just being the right hand man. She tells her love interest that “All of this and joy will surround you/Long as you got me”, knowing that whether he’s with her or not, she can offer him what others can’t. Rowe sings, “Bet you don’t even miss your girl”, telling him that though her attempt to be with him exclusively failed, he probably still thinks about her and doesn’t even blink an eye to the other girls he claims to be seeing. She possesses the confidence that all women wish they had in a world of situationships; to know their worth and realize that it’s ultimately going to be their loss.

Though “Gone Girl” is not as ethereal as I expected it to be within the first 5 seconds of the song, it’s far from being bad. It’s a song about a guy losing a girl that he’ll essentially never get back or do better than, similar to the previous track. Verse two dives into the healing process of leaving someone. You’ll start to realize their toxic mannerisms and sometimes just leave without even thinking about it. SZA sings, “Can’t think, it’s too hard to process”. She follows this by saying that when she’s spending time with this person, she reverts back to old behaviors that she may not like, hence why she’s leaving them. She writes, “I decide what demons I digest/Almost tired of repeatin’, I digress”, telling listeners that she has started taking the reins of her emotions and ‘demons’ as she’s trying to heal and become more independent. She wants to be real with her audience so that they know that they’re not alone when dealing with these exact situations.

“Smoking on my Ex Pack” runs less than two minutes, but the style that we hear Rowe embracing deserves much more time than that. The track essentially stands for independence, and moving on or possibly degrading your ex. The hook somewhat mirrors Kendrick Lamar’s opening verse in Baby Keems, “family ties”, where he sings, “Smoking on yo’ top five tonight…/Smoking on your, what’s her name?/Tonight”. Another parallel that I like is in the thirteenth track of SOS, titled “F2F”. The line in “Smoking on my Ex Pack” reads, “You push it, I might pop”, and it flips meaning in “F2F” when she says, “You got no loyalty, you push me ‘til I pop off”. “F2F” is an almost punk rock track about “Lookin’ for comfort” in someone even though you don’t have feelings for them. She’s almost angry and looking for revenge, as the chorus says, “Get a rise out of watching you fall”, towards an ex.

I never thought that Phoebe Bridgers and SZA would collaborate, but they surprisingly work in perfect harmony together. “Ghost in the Machine” is a perfect example of how SZA uses self deprecation to relate to her audience. Her lyrics write, “Can you touch on me and not call me after?/Can you hate on me and mask it with laughter?”. This song has so much more depth than I originally thought. The track opens, “Everything disgusting, conversation is so boring”, and goes on to say that though all people do is gossip, no one actually cares. The chorus blatantly states, “I need humanity/Y’all lack humanity, drowning in vanity/Craving humanity”, crying desperately for real connection and personalities. Throughout the song, SZA is talking about modern technology and how it’s tempered with reality and our perception of how to respect and interact with one another. Phoebe Bridgers then comes in to describe how stardom really isn’t all the glamor that it’s portrayed to be online, and that it’s actually quite lonely and “So fucking boring”. Finally, the title, “Ghost in the Machine” reflects how we are all unknown to our ‘machines’, or phones, and that we often don’t accurately portray ourselves online. Still though, SZA could be talking to an artificial intelligence robot for her comfort, which many of us do, despite preaching hatred towards social media.

Up until now, we’ve mostly heard Rowe talking about how she is moving on and finding her voice after some form of heartbreak. “Nobody Gets Me” contradicts these feelings. It’s quite the opposite, being a slower song about not wanting to give up on a relationship, singing, “I don’t wanna lose/What’s left of you”. SZA sings about how hard it is to lose someone you were once attached to, and how you don’t want to see them with anyone else. You want to hold on to the sad remains until the memories fade completely. We can imagine that Rowe is singing about her failed engagement, as she says that he proposed right as she was leaving to tour, and it ended due to her absence in the relationship. The breakup had a hard impact on her, as she is now singing that, “I pretend when I’m with a man it’s you”.

“Conceited” is exactly the way it sounds. Solana Rowe is proud of herself and has decided that she has “Got no reason to depend on you”. SZA makes another Kendrick Lamar reference singing, “Love it when they counting me out”. This clearly reflects Lamar’s song “Count Me Out”, off of his 2022 release Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Both songs have the theme of finding validation in yourself rather than others. On the contrary, “Special” is a ballad about wishing you were someone else. She references her song “Normal Girl” from 2017’s Ctrl, claiming that she “Was an ordinary girl”. The song talks about the struggle of wanting to be admired by someone so badly that you change all of the individual and unique parts of yourself just to fit their mold. SZA is struggling with recovering from this, writing that, “I used to be special/But you made me hate me/Regret that I changed me”. The story could be about a guy cheating on her and she now envies the girl who had him for that time. Either way, he is a loser, and SZA’s eyes have now been opened to that.

“Too Late” is a track that’s perfect for just vibing. In depth, the song questions if a past relationship has no time left, or if it’s worth it to revisit the feelings that you once held dear. However, when I listen to this song, it’s just a fun track that I can listen to without thinking too hard into it. On the next track, “Far”, we find SZA still dealing with her newfound journey of self care. The song emphasizes how she is “Done being used, done playing stupid/Done faking cool/I don’t want none of that shit”. The chorus states that because she let people change her, she’s far from who she used to be. She also uses ‘far’ in the sense of isolation, singing, “I’m far, far ‘cause I can’t trust nobody”. Though there are different ways to depict the song, it still represents growth on Rowe’s part.

“Open Arms” is where we find possibly the best (in my opinion) feature of the album, with Travis Scott. It’s a very interesting song that explores being there for someone wholeheartedly, even when sometimes you hate yourself for it. SZA sings, “Who needs self-esteem anyway?/I hate myself to make you stay”. Scott will later say, “No matter what come between us, I decided/I’m forever ridin’”, in which he’s telling the girl that they could get into the nastiest arguments and he wouldn’t leave, hoping that she won’t either. However, in the outro, SZA sings that “I gotta let you go”, and we can see that she’s the one in the relationship who’s holding herself down, even though the guy doesn’t want her to leave because she’s the only one who truly knows and sees him.

I didn’t mention every song on this album, but I encourage you to check it out! This record is a complicated work of art and I honestly expected nothing less from SZA. Throughout the album we hear the same recurring topics– getting over someone, struggling with those feelings, and being proud of yourself for facing the emotional mountain. SZA hits on these repeatedly, but all in different ways. She incorporates a variety of styles and you can really hear it in her versatile vocal performances. I think that what makes SZA so relatable is that her lyrics stem from self deprecation, and they always have. She really has the same emotional processes as anyone else, and doesn’t act like she’s higher than anyone else.

(My current favorites on the album are “Notice Me”, “Ghost in the Machine”, “Open Arms”, and “Seek & Destroy”. If anyone cares).

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Thank you for reading! I hope that you enjoyed this but if you didn’t, that’s okay too. Make sure to check out the rest of my Spotify to see what kind of music I love, and where this blog will go.

Stream SOS by SZA!

LOVE YOU ALL SEE YOU NEXT TIME XOXO

Soph <3

December 20th, 2022. By Sophia Cook.