SOS by SZA

You won’t find the amazing album at #7 on my list on any other Top Albums of 2022 lists, but not because you’ve not heard of it. It’s because it came out on December 9, right when all the prominent music magazines and blogs were already publishing their best-of lists. This album likely won’t appear on any of those lists at the end of 2023, either, because it would be strange to feature an album that came out in 2022 in a Best of 2023 list. It took me a few years of compiling my own Top 31 lists to figure it out: if your album comes out in December, or really even in November, it will be hard or impossible to rank it in any meaningful way. So compilers of lists are left with either making a wild assumption (“I’ve heard this album for a day, it’s definitely better than X number of albums already considered the best this year”), a flat out guess (“Two songs have been released from this album that is supposed to come out in the next week. It will be better than these X albums”), or simply not listing them at all. That’s the only option for any reputable publication.

Or you can do what I do: wait until the year is, you know, complete before ranking the albums from the full year. Or maybe just call your list “The Top 50 albums from the first 11 months of 2022.” Delaying like I do is still not perfect — an artist releases an album on December 30, chances are I’m not going to hear it or be able to include it in my Top 31. I’m not sure what drove the decision to release the long-awaited SZA album on December 9, but I have to believe it was a calculated business decision. So much business is wrapped up in a SZA release, there are lots of players, weighing lots of options, and I suppose making it onto the Best Of lists is not how the money is made. I just checked, and this album has been #1 on the Billboard charts (meaning it has sold more than any other album) for the last five weeks (that’s the last 2 weeks of December, and the first 3 of 2023).

So, clearly people are finding SOS, SZA’s 2nd full-length album, and first since her 2017 debut, Ctrl, despite it not appearing on any end-of-year lists. But at least it’s appearing on my list. I can feel confident in the exceedingly modest number of streams I’ll have been personally responsible for for the megastar. At just over an hour long, this album is jam packed with 23 amazing songs spread across numerous genres, from R&B to hip hop, pop to grunge. Rather than feeling like the work of a single artist, it plays more like a really good Top 40 yet commercial-free radio station, cycling through the hits of the day¹.

SZA, whose full name is Solána Imani Rowe, was born in St. Louis. Despite having only two full length records to her name, she is an international pop sensation who has been making popular music for the last 10+ years. She connected early with the likes of Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar, and while I’m confident her songwriting prowess and phenomenal voice would have propelled her to stardom eventually, having the door opened by those two can‘t hurt. My first taste of SZA came on the Black Panther soundtrack (#21 in 2018). The duet she sings with Lamar, “All My Stars,” is the best song on that album, in no small part because of the powerful chorus led by SZA. I didn’t listen to Ctrl, although I wish I had.

The best comparison I can make for this SZA release is to Frank Ocean’s Blonde (#4 in 2016). Like SOS, Blonde bounces all over the place, has strange digital artifacts thrown in throughout, and is a fantastic hip hop / R&B-based album. If you loved that album like I do, you will love SOS like I do.

Rumors and announcements about the release of SOS came out as early as 2019. A mix of pandemic buying patterns, production shifts, and a massive outpouring of talent from SZA herself no doubt slowed up the release all the way to nearly missing 2022 entirely. A few singles had been released well before the album came out. “Good Days,” was the first to be released, in 2020, a great song whose video features SZA as a dancing mushroom² (I’m not sure what business decisions forced the single that preceded this one, the great “Hit Different,” was not included on the SOS release.) The next single, “I Hate U,” came out in December 2021, just over a year prior to the release of the album, and with a video starring LaKeith Stanfield. The official version of her song “Shirt,” was released as a single just over a month prior to the album release. The video stars SZA alongside LaKeith Stanfield, in a bloody shoot-em-up video, a la Quentin Tarantino. On January 6, SZA released the single for my favorite song on the album, “Nobody Gets Me,” which is eerily reminiscent of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You,” and probably why I like it so much. And finally, SZA released the single for “Kill Bill,” on January 10, 2023. The video is amazing in its ability to recreate key scenes from the pair of movies, recast with SZA in the seminal Uma Thurman role.

My favorite non-single from the album is “Ghost in the Machine,” on which Bacon Review favorite Phoebe Bridgers (#3 in 2020) sings along with SZA. Bridgers and SZA are similar in a couple key aspect: they’re not shy about guest starring on someone else’s song; and they make any song they appear on better. I will (and have) go out of my way to track down “with SZA” or ”…Bridgers” songs, and am continually rewarded for doing so. As long as they keep producing their own songs, I’m all for them spreading the love around.

I’ve written more than enough about this album. If you’re not convinced by now, there’s nothing else I can say that will sway you. Listen to this album, all 67 minutes of it. You’ll see.

^{1. There is exactly one song I cannot stand on the album. I’m such a dedicated fan of the form, I don’t usually single out any one song and say “this is not for me, I’m skipping it.” The song in question is the lone rock pop song, “F2F,” which SZA wrote with Bacon Review favorite Lizzo (#1 in 2019). Check it out for yourself, but you’ve been warned.↩}
^{2. As I write this, we’re two episodes into the great new HBO series The Last of Us, and seeing SZA as a mushroom here gives me entirely different feelings than it would have two weeks ago.↩}

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8. Wet Leg by Wet Leg
9. Chloë and the Next 20th Century by Father John Misty
10. Big Time by Angel Olsen
11. Ants From Up There by Black Country, New Road
12. Waterslide, Diving Board, Ladder To the Sky by Porridge Radio
13. I Walked with You a Ways by Plains
14. The Last Goodbye by Odesza
15. A Light for Attracting Attention by The Smile
16. Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers by Kendrick Lamar
17. Inside Problems by Andrew Bird
18. Laurel Hell by Mitski
19. Full Moon Project by Phosphorescent
20. Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
21. I Love You Jennifer B by Jockstrap
22. Too Much to Ask by Cheekface
23. Dripfield by Goose
24. Dragon New Warm Mountain I Believe In You by Big Thief
25. And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood
26. NOT TiGHT by DOMi & JD BECK
27. Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain
28. Live at KEXP, vol. 10 by Various Artists
29. All You Need Is Time by Daisy the Great
30. Cool It Down by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
31. CAPRISONGS by FKA twigs

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A single song selection pulled from each album.

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