🎵 Weekly Music Newsletter: This is SZA’s Last Album Ever

SZA’s final album. Lana Del Rey previews her next LP. New Paramore. Little Simz surprise drops album. New Metro Boomin project.

If you’ve been wondering why we’ve been writing less frequently, it’s because (1) music releases tend to slow down towards the end of the year, and (2) we really needed a break. That being said, we’ll be back once more before the end of the year to share our favorite new music from 2022, and then we’ll return to our normal coverage in January, we promise.

If you’re looking for some content to hold you over in the meantime, If These Walls Could Sing, a documentary about Abbey Roads Studios, premieres this Friday, December 16; Mariah Carey’s two-hour Christmas special, Merry Christmas to All, will air on December 20; and the Whitney Houston biopic, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, will hit theaters on December 23.

Click here for a Spotify playlist with the songs mentioned in this article.

BIGGEST Songs of the Week 📈

It’s felt like an eternity since SZA dropped her seminal debut, Ctrl, an R&B tour de force that propelled her to the upper echelon of popstars. Ctrl opened the floodgates for a new wave of R&B categorized by alternative and trap experimentation. The five-time Grammy-nominated, triple-platinum record has not once left the Billboard 200 in the 287 weeks since its release.

It’s been two full years since SZA first previewed her follow-up album, SOS, with the lead single Good Days, but the wait is finally over; SOS has arrived. The album’s cover art depicts the singer perched on a diving board over the ocean, a recreation of a 1997 photo of Princess Diana taken days before her death. SZA stated she wanted to convey the feeling of “isolation” that Diana’s photo had.

Last month, SZA sat down with Billboard to discuss this feeling, as well as her inability to handle fame. “I could literally burst into tears and run through this wall at any moment. I am effectively falling apart,” she confessed. This gave credence to SZA’s past claims that this album would be her last. Though SZA is notoriously unreliable, SOS’ 23-song track list gives us little reason to doubt her. The ridiculous length signals an artist who’s leaving it all on the…