SZA was the latest musical guest for this week’s instalment of Saturday Night Live, treating viewers to a performance of her latest single ‘Shirt’, as well as debuting a new song.
The Keke Palmer-hosted episode aired last night (December 3), with SZA kicking off the show’s musical proceedings with her latest cut. The R&B singer was flanked by dancers for the performance, as she sang against an animated blue background.
Towards the end of the song, the words “S.O.S December 9th” appeared on the screen behind her, revealing the release date of her long-awaited second album. She also gave fans another taste of what to expect from the record, debuting a new cut ‘Blind’. Watch snippets of both below.
sza performing shirt live on snl pic.twitter.com/bzCIjgNFA8
— freddie (@jentIecult) December 4, 2022
SZA performs ‘Blind’ on SNL pic.twitter.com/HIYLwQsf8n
— CTRL FACTOR (@CtrlFactor) December 4, 2022
It comes just days after the singer shared the official album artwork for ‘S.O.S’, which sees her sitting on a springboard over the ocean in a St. Louis Blues hockey jersey emblazoned with the record’s title.
She’s been teasing her sophomore album for a while now, telling TMZ back in October that she’d written “five years of material” for it, estimating that equated to 100 songs.
In another chat with Complex, she described the record as “a little bit of everything”, saying: “It’s a little aggressive. Some parts are incredibly soft. Some of them are ballads. I don’t know. It’s all over the place. It’s just where my heart is.”
‘S.O.S’ will be SZA’s first full-length release since her 2017 record ‘Ctrl’, which NME awarded four stars in a review. “‘Ctrl’’s strength is how it doesn’t strive to be one thing over the other,” wrote NME’s Jamie Milton.
“It effortlessly winds between narratives and genres like it’s child’s play. This isn’t a star in the making, it’s a fully-fledged talent who’s practically showing off.”
She released a deluxe version of the record earlier this year to celebrate its five-year anniversary, which included a number of previously unreleased tracks, including ‘2AM’, ‘Miles’, ‘Percolator’, ‘Tread Carefully’, ‘Awkward’ and ‘Jodie’.