Why SZA’s evolution into a popstar has earned her recognition as artist of the year

SZA is not your cookie-cutter pop star. She’s deemed an alternative R&B musician but rejects the label. She hates being in the public eye. Her music is brazenly self-deprecating and seemingly embraces self-loathing. Her first album’s most popular song “The Weekend” focuses on being the side piece of a man’s primary relationship. And yet despite all the conventional reasons her stardom shouldn’t work, she’s this year’s most successful female artist. The Webbys even named her their artist of the year.

Her long-awaited sophomore album “SOS” dropped at the tail end of last year, making it nearly six years since her smash debut album “Ctrl” released in 2017. While fans begged for a new album from SZA, calling her the new Frank Ocean or Rihanna – neither of whom have dropped new music since 2016 – SZA surprised fans with the lengthy 23-song album “SOS” last December.

Since the release of “SOS,” SZA has dominated music charts, at one point having the No. 1 album in the country before she was beaten by controversial country musician Morgan Wallen. The R&B artist, whose real name is Solána Rowe, received a plethora of nominations at the Grammys, including the coveted and esteemed album of year award.

Nobody could have predicted the success “SOS” has brought SZA, even if her first album has never left the Billboard charts since its release. “Ctrl” put her on the map, but “SOS” has shown that she’s here to stay and that she can unexpectedly blow through other chart-topping and successful pop artists with rabid fanbases like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Drake. SZA went from an underground cult artist to a pop star through her artistry existing outside of the box that the industry puts Black female artists in. Her genre-bending chameleon-like music works for everyone — the charts prove that. Also, it helps that her growing fanbase of all ages on social media like TikTok helped push her along the way.

In the time between the release of her first and second album, fans online couldn’t get enough of SZA, and the explosion of TikTok’s popularity only escalated her already hungry-for-music fanbase. Many of the artist’s songs like “Shirt,” “I Hate U,” “Blind,” and “Good Days,” had viral moments before they were even fully released by SZA. The song “I Hate U” currently has more than 700,000 videos attached to it. “Shirt” was teased in 2020 and went viral due to a TikTok dance challenge. These teasing crumbs of music kept her young online fanbase going, longing for the release of “SOS.” When “SOS” was finally released it skyrocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts to nobody’s surprise. The surprise was that it stayed there for eight weeks. Overall it was on the charts for 10 weeks, making it the longest-running No. 1 female artist album of the decade.

Not only did the album stay seated at the No. 1 spot for two months this year but her singles “Kill Bill” and “Snooze” also fought for a seat on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The catchy Quentin Tarantino-twinged revenge fantasy about killing her ex-boyfriend hit No. 1. and was on the charts for 50 weeks. But importantly, its catchy chorus infiltrated the online spaces. It was all over TikTok with different trends attached to its popularity on the charts and streaming music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music.

She gleefully sings as she ponders:

I might kill my ex, not the best idea
His new girlfriend’s next; how’d I get here?
I might kill my ex, I still love him though
Rather be in jail than alone.

Another song popular with her fans and social media is “Snooze.” The more traditional R&B-focused love song just recently reached No. 2 on the charts. The artist’s runs cascade when she sings:

I can’t lose when I’m with you
How can I snooze and miss the moment?
You just too important
Nobody do body like you do
I can’t lose when I’m with you
I can’t just snooze and miss the moment
You just too important
Nobody do body like you do, you do.

While online circles are a portion of her success, SZA’s real appeal lies in her almost contradictory artistry. In “SOS” alone, she experiments outside the traditional R&B label that she feels pigeonholes herself and other Black artists. She is labeled an R&B artist but the criticism at large is that it’s the de facto genre for anyone who is a Black woman making music.

SZA told the Wall Street Journal that her influences for “SOS” were Blink-182 and Radiohead. “I don’t want to push the R&B audience away,” she said. “I also don’t want to not be allowed to be who I am in a full spectrum.”

And her sophomore album does exactly that. It breaks free of the shackles of R&B and pushes into a place that is challenging and complex — all the while allowing her to experiment with R&B. Songs like “Ghost in the Machine” featuring perpetual sad girl Phoebe Bridgers is probably the most seamless collaboration on the album. The song is an obvious ode to SZA’s alternative rock and indie alternative influences. “Ghost in the Machine” is a dark, bass-heavy almost-ballad about SZA’s anxiety and the commodification of her celebrity.

She depressingly sings:

Can you distract me from all the disaster?
Can you touch on me and not call me after?
Can you hate on me and mask it with laughter?
Can you lead me to the ark? What’s the password?

I need humanity
You’re like humanity
Drownin’ in vanity
Cravin’ humanity
You’re like humanity
I need humanity, I need.

Moreover, SZA challenges music’s rigid genre classifications in the classic, late-aughts-inspired pop-punk jam “F2F.” Reminiscent of a young Avril Lavigne or Alanis Morissette, SZA is angry and doesn’t care to hide it — a luxury Black women aren’t typically afforded without being painted as an aggressor. But in “F2F,” her spitefulness and self-hatred are almost too relatable you forget her lyrics are so toxic.

She sings:

Get a rise out of watching you fall
Get a kick out of missing your call
I hate me enough for the two of us
Hate that I can’t let go of you enough, this why
I f*** him ’cause I miss you
I f*** him ’cause I really miss you
I f*** him ’cause I miss you.

It’s in SZA’s versatility that she has found such heights of success and acclaim. It’s worth acknowledging that many Black female artists do not receive endless opportunities to reach such mainstream levels of popularity, and but her work translates just to about everyone. SZA isn’t making palatable music. Her music is so vulnerable and distinctly hers as she calls herself a loser in “Special.” She wishes she was special because she gave it all “away to a loser.” It’s almost like we as listeners are taking a sneaky look at her top-secret personal journal or the inner workings of her messy mind.

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But the artist’s relatability is showcased through her willingness to go to the most vulnerable parts of the human experience – whether it is about heartbreak (“Seek & Destroy,”) wanting to be loved (“Nobody Gets Me,”) rejection (“Too Late,”) or just pure human vanity (“Conceited”). It all translates regardless of your experience. Her artistry is universal even though she started as a behind-the-scenes artist writing for musicians like Beyoncé, Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar. SZA came out of the shadows and cemented herself as artist of the year, and no one can take that away from her.