The wintertime always exposes the worst of me. I may be a winter baby but each time the season comes around, I am pushed through a wide variety of emotions: hope, despair, stress, confusion, apathy, the list goes on. One thing about me? I am versatile. But the feeling that sums up my scope is scorched. I often am bitter and resentful of the weather and life in general. Yet, I also find myself dreaming and planning for what the future can be and reflecting on how I can change and improve my circumstances. Two projects that I feel encompass that journey are the sibling projects “SOS” and “LANA”, by soon-to-be Jersey legend SZA.

“SOS” is a project I almost thought would never be released. I discovered SZA through her debut album “Ctrl” which catapulted her into the mainstream, cementing her as a force keeping R&B in the main conversations of music. The hype for her sophomore release was strong and relentless but when “SOS” was finally released on December 9, 2022, it was jarring from what fans like myself would expect to follow up “Ctrl”. “SOS” is SZA reveling in the pain and resentment of bad failing relationships of her past with the end goal of retribution. Here, SZA embraces her insecurities and worse behaviors illustrated in songs like “Kill Bill” where she contemplates and goes through with killing her ex and his new girlfriend as “she would rather be in hell than alone.” “Low”, a song featured on her sophomore project “SOS”, sees SZA talking about keeping a hookup lowkey and frankly in and out as she cannot be bothered to be in a relationship. 

My personal favorite for both its rock composition and sheer is “F2F” where she is hooking up with someone else to get over a past man. She is deliciously vicious in both lyrics and vocals, which have built strength over the years that she has been in the game. But “SOS” has another side to it, with vulnerable and sweet moments of love and anguish. Songs like “Love Language”, “Nobody Gets Me” and the instant classic “Snooze” are precious gems of the combination of vulnerability and creating a good song. The album ebbs and flows between these sides like the ocean on her album cover. Overall, “SOS” is SZA at her most abrasively raw and tumultuous, breaking through the sophomore slump while having breakdowns.

If “SOS” is the tsunami, “LANA” is the aftermath of it all with hope on the horizon. Released on December 20, 2024, we hear SZA at her calmest and fairest with herself, recognizing she must change and give up bad habits if she wants to grow. When interviewed by British Vogue for this album, she said, “I’m not identifying with my brokenness …Yeah, I experienced cruelty. I have to put it down at some point. Piece by piece, my music is shifting because of that, the lighter I get.” “LANA” resembles a dreamy late R&B with string elements, mainly guitar. It sounds like I want to imagine being in a giant piece of lush green plains similar to the cover which is a bug woman. It could have served as its standalone project but attaching it to “SOS” makes greater sense to me as a sign of progress from SZA after all that has happened. 

Starting with “No More Hiding”, SZA wants a clean slate, singing “ No more hiding/ I wanna be real me, ugly.” She comprehends that she needs to free herself from all the trauma to move forward. These tracks show SZA being kinder to herself, recognizing her lover is more to blame than her. Yet still, the project captures the push and pull of change and still recognizes we all have a long way to go. My favorite track from this collection is “Kitchen” , which is over a groovy beat sampling The Isley Brothers’ song called “Voyage to Atlantis” and it shows SZA contemplating between choosing love and herself with the lyrics “You know we got a real history/That′s no reason I can’t choose me (ooh)/You make it hard for me to choose me.” “LANA” feels like SZA is at her most current and transparent with who she is and wants to be, and details how though addressing pain is important to healing, becoming stuck in the trauma will sink you under.

Both these albums have become and will continue to be my winter staples. I am irate, frustrated, and overall devastated during these chilly months. Yet through living it all, I take time to work through those heavy feelings and push myself to grow from them. By the time spring comes, I feel a weight lifted off of me, ready to move on to what’s next. These sibling projects capture that journey of growth and the conflicting emotions that come with it.