Call Off Work: SZA Dropped New Music
"Good day in my mind”…and ears.
This is not a drill: New music from SZA is here. Well, not exactly new music, but new enough songs to quench fans’ thirst for more material. To commemorate the fifth anniversary of her critically acclaimed 2017 album CTRL on June 9, the singer released a deluxe edition of the album with unreleased tracks and a few songs she’d previously uploaded to SoundCloud over the years. Plus, she slipped in an alternative version of her butterfly-induced hit “Love Galore” featuring Travis Scott. So you’re saying there’s two versions of the single to obsessively stream? Yeah, I’m sold.
This deluxe drop might be a bit of a shock given the initial album came out years ago; however, if you’ve been following SZA’s tweets over the last couple days, then the release of these new-old songs shouldn’t be too surprising.
On Monday, June 6, the “I Hate U” crooner teased the idea of dropping a couple tracks she had archived since 2017 to celebrate CTRL’s birthday. In a brief tweet, she said, “Unreleased songs from 2017 to celebrate 5 .. me thinks .” Just the idea of new SZA songs sent me shamelessly scrambling to refresh the singer’s Apple Music profile. (Yes, I’m an Apple Music user, and I won’t apologize.)
The six new additions to CTRL are “2AM,” “Miles,” “Percolator,” “Tread Carefully,” “Awkward,” and “Jodie.” These soulful songs add to an already immaculate body of work and really round out the album. Each track hones in on SZA’s rhythmic and heartfelt songwriting, especially “2AM.” The “Kiss Me More” singer reworked PARTYNEXTDOOR’s 2016 hit “Come And See Me” featuring Drake by singing from a female perspective on the track.
CTRL, which is SZA’s most recent album, put her talent on the map, though she’d already built an underground base with her 2014 alt-R&B masterpiece Z. It’s mind-blowing to think it’s been eight years since listeners were chalking up theories about her single “Babylon” and its moody video.
A deluxe version for CTRL has been on the horizon for a while. In 2018, SZA teased extending the album when replying to a fan on Twitter, per Pitchfork. She said at the time that there were “about 6 bonus tracks so far” with “room to add.” Soon after, an RCA representative confirmed that the deluxe surprise was on the way, according to Hypebae.
Fans, like me, had to wait nearly five years to hear what else she’d been cooking up in 2017. But let’s be real: If it’s new material from SZA, I have the time to wait.
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