AO Arena, Manchester
On an astonishing nautical-themed stage set, the US singer moves elastically between intimate and epic scales, with songs of great candour and versatility
On the approach to any arena, you can normally get a good sense of the headliner by looking at the people outside. Not so much SZA. The hordes that await the opening night of the American singer’s UK SOS tour are overwhelmingly female, but their subcultural uniform is an incongruous mix: cargo pants and cowboy boots, headscarves and high-contrast mesh, designer slogan T-shirts and grungy babydoll slips. It’s a glorious sight, showing that music really does bring people together.
Seemingly, this is exactly the way that SZA wants it. If Drake, the Weeknd and Kanye West defined the 2010s with their dark, sad-boy reinventions of gangsta rap, then SZA offered up a feminine side of the narrative, espousing her sass but still succumbing to hunger for social approval and ill-advised intimacy. The first female signee to Top Dawg Entertainment (Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Isaiah Rashad), her debut album Ctrl was a seismic breakthrough – nominated for four Grammys, its bad-bitch anthems still confessed to an insecurity that lay beneath. 2022’s follow-up SOS had the same lyrical brief but an even greater sonic palette, establishing SZA as someone who shares listeners’ ever-diversifying tastes, tapping into anything and everything that moves her.