As I grow older and wiser, I better understand that music is about connectivity; it’s a raw exhibition of how we feel and what we desire from the universe.
This knowledge has made becoming a SZA devotee as simple as breathing, as her music helps me better review the connections and experiences I make in life.
Photo Courtesy of Rebloggy Website
As a hopeless romantic, I thrive off the sound of love songs. The context of my mind turns into fluid beneath the glow of poetic lyrics and sounds that are raw, engaging and often experimental.
My Rock and Roll History professor once exclaimed that Carole King’s Tapestry album was the spiritual fuel for college women throughout the 1970s. The collection featured songs that provoke emotions of both heartache and abundant love.
The singer-songwriter’s album uses soft and folk rock elements to create a platform for finding peace with feelings, such as isolation from a failed relationship or liberation from claiming independence as a young adult.
As a Central Michigan University sophomore, I need something to make those late nights shared with Ben and Jerry’s ice cream and my overflow of feelings a little more bearable.
In a similar glow to that of King, SZA brings peace to college girls struggling to navigate this world that is still so new and complex. For example, her 2017 album Ctrl is able to address sexual freedom, romantic disappointment and self acceptance in clarity.
In the song “Love Galore,” which captured my heart and devotion immediately after my first listen, is an anthem to a culture of wasted love.
It’s the type of music that is so modernistic that it hurts.
In 2018, it appears that we have been completely encapsulated by a scenario where romance and affection exists better on the screen of a cellular device than in real life. We have swiping marathons on Tinder until our fingers curl up and tire, longing for someone to give us the attention that is apparently lacking in our real lives.
SZA’s music asks what’s the point in pursuing love if it isn’t actually real.
She looks at this technological culture as a platform for extended heartache, where people are frequently rejecting one another from beneath a veil, numbing reality.
This is an issue I’m still learning how to adapt to.
We substitute face-to-face confrontations and interactions with typed up sentences on a social media app, keeping ourselves incapable of truly expressing how we feel.
Although this isn’t love, it is reality. Text messages substitute for handshakes and active conversation, and the practice of “ghosting” replaces goodbyes.
SZA explores the universe of a young woman, with a head full of ambitions and a heart overflowing with love. She doesn’t combat the problems of society, but instead tries to navigate through them and to become more comfortable with the realities surfacing in our world.
Her music is relatable through intimacy of who she is and how she is feeling, even when devastated, frustrated or naive. I am able to meet with these emotions in a space that is made sweet and enchanting by her sound and musical aesthetic.
So as I jam to “Doves in the Wind” and “Broken Clocks” in circles of friends and during long study sessions, I understand the truths that I am often to scared to face.