More than 5 years after her game-changing debut album, SZA is lastly releasing her long-awaited follow-up. SZA served because the musical visitor on the Dec. 3 episode of “Saturday Night Live,” hosted by Keke Palmer, and whereas performing her set, the discharge date for her sophomore album appeared on the display behind her. After performing her newest single, “Shirt,” she introduced her new album will arrive on Friday, Dec. 9.
While a lot of the set listing stays a secret, SZA additionally debuted a brand new single from the album on “SNL.” After performing “Shirt,” she launched right into a haunting ballad known as “Blind,” a tune that highlights how laborious it’s to let go of a relationship — even when it is a unhealthy one.
Last month, in her Billboard cowl story revealed on Nov. 16, the R&B singer confirmed that “S.O.S.” would launch in December. Though she did not specify a day on the time, SZA advised the outlet she was “presently careworn” over her private deadline.
“I may actually burst into tears and run by way of this wall at any second. I’m successfully falling aside,” she confessed of assembly followers’ expectations. “But it is not like, the album strain . . . It’s simply, life is f*cking laborious. To be anticipated to do something at a excessive degree whereas life is life-ing is f*cking loopy. This is not meant for an individual; it is meant for a machine.”
SZA continues to observe her musical instinct for this subsequent part of her profession, which seemingly started in December 2020 after she launched her “Good Days” monitor — which was, on the time, her first solo single in two years. One 12 months later, she adopted that up with “I Hate U” earlier than she dropped the cinematic visible for her single “Shirt,” starring LaKeith Stanfield, on Oct. 28. Shortly after her “SNL” look, the singer confirmed the discharge date for “S.O.S.” whereas additionally sharing a teaser for the studio model of “Blind” on Instagram.
Full particulars about SZA’s forthcoming album are nonetheless scarce, however Billboard’s Heran Mamo previewed it and famous that it options SZA’s “beloved lo-fi beats,” “a grunge report,” and “an acoustic guitar-driven ballad.” If 2017’s “Ctrl” — which remains to be sitting on the Billboard 200 chart — is not sufficient proof of what SZA could ship once more, Mamo says it is her “most daring physique of labor but,” whereas RCA Records chairman/CEO Peter Edge is already calling her undertaking “one of the vital essential albums of the 12 months.”