The album was preceded by three singles—"Good Days", "I Hate U", and "Shirt", followed by "Nobody Gets Me", "Kill Bill", and "Snooze" after the album's release. "Kill Bill" became SZA's first song to top the Billboard Hot 100, while all singles except for "Shirt" peaked within the top 10. Upon release, SOS received widespread critical acclaim for its eclectic sound and SZA's vocal delivery; several media publications ranked it as one of the best albums of 2022 and 2023. To promote the album, SZA embarked on a North American and European arena tour, the SOS Tour, from February to October 2023.
The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200—SZA's first to do so—and broke the record for the largest streaming week for an R&B album in the US.[5] The album spent ten non-consecutive weeks atop the chart, making it the longest-running number-one female album of the decade and the first R&B album to spend its first seven weeks atop the chart since Whitney Houston's Whitney (1987).[6] At the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, the album and its tracks received a total of nine nominations, including Album of the Year and Best Progressive R&B Album.[7]
Background
In 2017, SZA released her debut studio album, Ctrl. Primarily an R&B album that deals with themes of heartbreak and self-discovery, Ctrl was widely acclaimed by critics for its vocal performances and eclectic musical style, as well as the relatability, emotional impact, and confessional nature of its songwriting. The album brought SZA to mainstream fame, and critics credit it with establishing her status as a major figure in contemporary pop and R&B music and pushing the boundaries of the R&B genre.[note 1]
SZA alluded to potentially releasing her second album as early as August 2019 during an interview with DJ Kerwin Frost.[15][16] Revealing planned collaborations with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Jack Antonoff, Brockhampton, and Post Malone,[17] she said that the release date was "soon as fuck" and she might "start dropping loosies",[18] though there was no explicit date announced.[19] Four months prior, Punch, CEO of SZA's record label Top Dawg Entertainment, teased that he had begun overseeing ideas for the project.[18][20] During the interview, SZA commented on the creative process behind the album and stated it would be as candid and personal as Ctrl: "This next album is even more of me being less afraid of who am I when I have no choice? When I'm not out trying to curate myself and contain."[21]
In January 2020, SZA posted a status update about the album's completion online.[22][23] When asked by a fan on Twitter whether new music was coming soon, she replied that she and Punch had been discussing a potential release date scheduled for 2020 and she felt anxious about the build-up to that day.[24] The next month, an interview between her and Rolling Stone was published, in which she announced recent collaborations with American record producer Timbaland, as well as Australian singer-songwriter Sia with whom she wrote three songs.[25] The interview also mentioned the status of the album's release date; SZA said "music is coming out for sure", but the caveat was the album itself was unlikely to be released within the year.[26]
After fans grew impatient with the release delays, SZA responded by venting her frustrations on Twitter in August 2020. Alleging that the label was the reason for the postponement, she affirmed one fan's suspicion that she had been having hostile interactions with Top Dawg, and when someone showed her a post from Punch saying that the album would be released soon, SZA replied with "this is all he says to me as well. Welcome to my fucking life."[27][28] In response, fans created the Twitter hashtag #FreeSZA in support of her struggles, and the trend went viral.[29] However, she later retracted her claims by deleting the posts and said "don't nobody need to free me. Lmao I'm not being held hostage n neither is my music!! Sometimes u gotta be patient... sometimes no is a blessing... I trust the ppl around me."[30][31]Vulture and Variety noted that Ctrl also suffered a similar problem with its release date; SZA quarrelled with Top Dawg executives over its two-year delay and threatened to quit music because of it.[32][33]
When SZA collaborated with Cosmopolitan for their February 2021 issue, she talked about the emotions she expected to feel while making the album. She told the magazine, "this album is going to be the shit that made me feel something in my...here and in here", pointing to her heart and gut.[34] From April to May 2022, SZA told media outlets that she had recently finished the album in Hawaii, describing it as her most relatable or "unisex" body of work she had made to date.[35] During the Met Gala and an interview with Complex, SZA claimed that the album was ready for release during summertime in the United States ("this summer, it will be a SZA summer"), but there was no urgent deadline for the release.[36][37]
The release date continued to be delayed, and SZA once more argued that Top Dawg and RCA were responsible for it;[38] the album would, contractually, be her last to be released through the labels.[39] In October, she said that she had written around 100 songs for the album and added that the album could be released "any day now".[40] During a Billboard cover story published in November, SZA revealed the title of her second studio album was SOS, scheduled for release sometime next month. She expressed her frustration with complying with music industry standards on promoting music, saying she had been stressed with meeting her deadlines.[41] On December 3, 2022, she appeared on Saturday Night Live and announced it would be released on December 9. Two days later, she posted the track list on Twitter.[42]
Mainstream media had often characterized SZA as an R&B artist throughout her career. She refused to be pigeonholed to such a label,[43] and she had been rejecting the R&B categorization as far as her early years of releasing music.[44] When she released her debut label single, "Teen Spirit", to SoundCloud in 2014, she tagged the song with the categories "Glitter Trap" and "Not R&B".[45] Although she did not aim to abandon or reduce her R&B soundscape for her second studio album, she wanted to prove her versatility, primarily as a statement against racially prejudiced ideas that discredit the works and cultural value of Black artists by segregating them from White artists and implying they can make only R&B music.[46][47] In a 2022 Consequence cover story, SZA expressed her love for making Black music in general, arguing that such music "doesn't have to just be R&B". She said: "We started rock 'n' roll. Why can't we just be expansive and not reductive?"[48]
Work on SOS had begun by 2019, but a majority of the songs were written and recorded in 2022 due to bursts of productivity from time pressure. Carter Lang, one of the producers, commented, "that's when [we] started feeling like, hey, 'We gotta do this shit like, it's been some years.' We bottled up that energy and everything was just sort of a preparation for that moment."[49]
Rodney Jerkins was one of the main producers for SOS. SZA approached him out of her admiration for his decades-long history of production work, which included songs with Brandy and Amerie. He spoke of her: "her pen game is arguably one of the best pen games in the game right now. It's almost like she's a rapper tied up in a vocalist."
Having worked with SZA since 2014, ThankGod4Cody returned to co-produce and co-write seven tracks on SOS.[52] His contributions began as early as the start of the album's making.[53] Compared to his work on Ctrl, for which he helped produce four songs, his approach to SOS was less defined and more experimental.[53][54] Whereas he sought to create uptempo tracks on Ctrl to contrast the album's more alternative songs, he was "throwing paint at the wall" and seeing which musical ideas worked well for SOS.[53] The experimental sounds are present in tracks like the single "I Hate U" (2021), which Shelby Stewart of Okayplayer wrote felt "light with sublime progressions that sway with SZA's mood".[54] The song arose from a keyboard loop from Rob Bisel, one of the album's main producers and engineers. After creating its structure and adding drums, SZA spent less than one hour to compose the melody and write the lyrics.[53] For "Gone Girl", ThankGod4Cody took the electric piano from a demo by two of his co-producers and combined it with drums and a gospel choir.[53][55] Adding the instruments took four days.[53] He called "Gone Girl" his personal favorite from the album, citing the amount of time and effort he gave the song in comparison to the others.[52][53]
In Complex, she described the album's sound: "I have no idea what it sounds like to anybody else. I really don't know. It's so bizarre. It's weird that I can't put my finger on it. It's a little bit of everything." She added that some parts of the song had an "aggressive" sound whereas others were soft or balladic.[64] During the Rolling Stone interview, she and Punch spoke in length about the album's composition. The inspiration in question was eclectic, drawing from jazz, alternative rock, "traditional" R&B, country, and hip hop. About the wide range of genres incorporated into the album, SZA said she did not care if her production choices made the album sound incohesive, because to her, "if you sound like you, your shit's going to be cohesive. Period." Punch commented: "It's a new chapter. She's not scared to try certain things now."[26]
The explanation behind the album title is threefold. SOS is a nod to the Morse code distress signal SOS, which is used in maritime navigation and is popularly interpreted as either "save our ship" or "save our souls".[65] The other two reasons are rooted in SZA's names. Her stage name is derived from the letters of the Supreme Alphabet, according to which the letter "S" stands for Self and Savior. In real life, her friends call her by the nickname Sous, a shortening of her first name, Solána.[66][67]
SZA reported on the decision to associate the cover and album with Princess Diana's photo:[70]
Originally I was supposed to be on top of, like, a shipping barge[.] But in the references that I pulled for that, I pulled the Diana reference because I just loved how isolated she felt and that was what I wanted to convey the most. And then at the last minute, we, like, didn't get clearance to get the shipping barges that we wanted and we were like, 'We're gonna build the diving board instead. We're still gonna try it.' We didn't nix the boat altogether and we tried it and it turned out cool and I wasn't sure it was going to be really cool until, like, right now.
Promotion
SZA sporadically released music over a two-plus year period as she continued to work on the album and push back on release dates. Releasing music videos for these singles, the second half of the video teasers for her next single would play at the end.[71] Every single from SOS, but "Shirt", reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100—"Good Days", "I Hate U", "Nobody Gets Me", the chart-topping "Kill Bill", and "Snooze".[72] At the end of a teaser video titled "PSA" released on her 33rd birthday, a message written in Morse code can be seen, which after being translated spells out "S.O.S.".[73] In an interview with Billboard released on November 16, 2022, SZA confirmed the theories about the album title and release date in December 2022.[71] She further admitted to feeling "stressed" about meeting the release deadline.[62][74]
SZA promoted the album on the December 3, 2022, episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live as a musical guest.[75] She performed live the single "Shirt" and the at-the-time unreleased track "Blind", which she previously teased. On December 5, she posted a snippet of a song titled "Nobody Gets Me".[76] A few hours later, she posted the tracklist of the album on her Twitter.[77] "Kill Bill" and "Nobody Gets Me" were promoted to US contemporary hit radio on January 10, 2023.[78]
On December 13, 2022, SZA took to social media to announce merchandise for SOS, which included the St. Louis Blues jersey she wore in the cover art. At the same time, she revealed she would be touring North America in early 2023 in support of the album.[79][80][81] The first leg of the SOS Tour consisted of shows across 17 cities in Canada and the United States,[82] and Omar Apollo was announced to be the opening act.[83] The first show was on February 21, 2023, at the Schottestein Center in Columbus, Ohio; and the last is on March 23, 2023, at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, California.[84][85] Tickets went on sale via SZA's website on December 16, 2022, at 12 pm Pacific Standard Time,[86] with pre-sales hosted by Ticketmaster one day beforehand.[87] Three weeks after the second Inglewood show, SZA announced 35 more shows for the SOS Tour due to high demand. It included a new leg in Western Europe,[88] with 15 dates in seven countries. Pre-sales were on April 12, 2023, starting 10 am local time, and an on-sale occurred two days later.[89] British singer Raye is set to perform as the opening for the European dates.[90] After touring Europe, SZA returns to North America[91] for 21 concerts in the United States and another concert in Canada. Pre-sales were on April 13 at 10 am local time, and tickets went on sale on April 14 at 12 pm local time.[92]
SOS has received widespread critical acclaim upon its release.[101] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 based on reviews from critics, the album received a score of 90 out of 100, based on 20 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[96]
Critics agreed that SOS surpassed expectations that arose from its years-long wait.[102] Julianne Escobedo Shepherd of Pitchfork named the album "Best New Music", stressing how it "solidifies her position as a generational talent, an artist who translates her innermost feelings into indelible moments".[99]Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote that the results of the album "are hugely eclectic", finding it "simultaneously impressive and a little exhausting". Petridis found that the songs "shine harder individually than taken in toto, where the sheer profusion causes them to merge into one, blended by a mood of stoned melancholy", with a final product of a "unwieldy" album, where SZA sounds as "a fabulous vocalist, powerful but unshowy, capable of shifting seamlessly into melodic rap".[98]
NME's writer Rhian Daly reported that "under SZA's command it feels cohesive, organic and like every skip into a new genre is completely justified for each track", pointing out that SOS is "a phenomenal record that barely puts a foot wrong and raises the bar even higher than she set it before".[11] Cady Siregar by Consequence defined the album "an assured, ambitious, expansive, and genre-defying journey into the very depths of heartbreak and the many shades it comes in". The journalist emphasized that in Ctrl there is no predefined musical genre, because "the theme lies in her vocal prowess, the daringness of her vision, and her lyrical frankness".[14]
Reviewing the album for AllMusic, Andy Kellman compared it favourably to SZA's previous album; "Hour-plus length and stylistic variety likewise signal that SOS could be the overreaching kind of highly anticipated follow-up. Still, it's an advancement from Ctrl in every respect apart from cohesion."[97] Writing for Rolling Stone, Will Dukes also commented on the album's runtime; "SOS is very long – 23 tracks, well over an hour. It suggests someone continually adding to and augmenting a project, or perhaps throwing everything they've got at it, fuelled by the feeling that they might not do this again. The results are hugely eclectic."[100]
Accolades
By the time SOS was released, many publications had already released their respective year-end best-of album lists. Nonetheless, some publications who released later lists included SOS.[103]
In the US, SOS achieved several accomplishments and broke a series of records on the overall Billboard 200 chart and its component charts. Fueled by a five-year wait for its release, it debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 318,000 equivalent album units sold[123] and stayed at the top for ten weeks. By doing so, SOS became the chart's longest running number-one album by a woman in the 2020s, the first album by a woman to top the chart for at least ten weeks since Adele's 25 (2015–2016), the first R&B/hip-hop to do so since Drake's Views (2016), and the first R&B album by a woman to do so since Mariah Carey's self-titled debut in 1991.[124] Its first-week figures included 404.58 million on-demand official streams, which broke the record for the biggest streaming week ever for an R&B album and gave SOS the second-largest streaming week for an album by a woman.[125] It was the top certified album in the US in 2023, being certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.[126]
Elsewhere, SOS entered within the top 5 of 10 countries: it debuted atop charts in Canada, Netherlands, and New Zealand; at number 2 in Australia (in which it peaked at number one in its seventh week), the UK, and Ireland; at number 3 in Norway and Denmark; and number 4 in Sweden and Switzerland.[127]SOS's singles have also seen significant success on American radio, with "Kill Bill", "I Hate U", and "Snooze" all topping the Rhythmic airplay chart, and the former becoming her first solo number one on the Pop Airplay chart and the longest running number-one on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart by a female artist.[128][129][130]
"Ghost in the Machine" and "Far" feature additional vocals by Sadhguru.
"Low" features additional vocals by Travis Scott.
Sample credits
"SOS" contains an interpolation of "Listen", performed by Beyoncé, and written by Beyoncé Knowles, Scott Cutler, Henry Krieger and Anne Preven; and a sample of "Until I Found the Lord (My Soul Couldn't Rest)", performed by the Gabriel Hardeman Delegation, and written by Gabriel Hardeman.
Vulture: "Raw, candid writing isn't new for SZA; it's what made the previous album, Ctrl, such a breakout and one of the high marks of the confessional R&B; of the past decade."[8]
The Recording Academy: "The release of her critically acclaimed debut album Ctrl in 2017 solidified the artist not only as an R&B mainstay, but soundtracked the heartbreaks and growing pains of millions of young people. With her eloquent vocals and layered storytelling abilities, listeners felt every word like it was their own."[9]
The Line of Best Fit: "her debut Ctrl has ascended to classic status, going down as one of the decade's best and cementing SZA's voice at the forefront of contemporary R&B, and of pop."[10]
NME: Ctrl "ushered in a new era for R&B, one where the genre's boundaries shifted, bringing new levels of inventiveness into a classic sound and fusing it with indie, alternative, trap and more[...] SZA herself spent the aftermath of Ctrl trying to grapple with her new stardom and the huge impact that had on her life."[11]
The Daily Telegraph: "Ctrl, the triple-platinum, four-time Grammy nominated debut that propelled SZA to popstar status"[12]
The New Yorker: "Ctrl opened a portal—one that represented not just a major leap for the artist but a breakthrough for the genre itself. Her alternative slow jams pushed her voice to the fore and laid bare all the quirks of her dating life, establishing her as a distinguished millennial anecdotalist in the process."[13]
Consequence: In Ctrl, "SZA's personal style of lyricism has always read like an endless diary entry, and the transcendent nature of her genre-shifting abilities helped revolutionize modern R&B and pop."[14]
^Bernstein, Jonathan; Blistein, Jon; et al. (January 8, 2020). "70 Most Anticipated Albums of 2020". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on March 24, 2020. Retrieved December 28, 2022.
^Jacob, Lola (December 15, 2022). "The Best Albums of 2022". Coup De Main Magazine. Archived from the original on December 15, 2022. Retrieved December 15, 2022.
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