informs the audience that she was “so nervous to be here”. You can understand why. Of all the headlining artists at this year’s Glastonbury, the announcement of SZA seemed to cause the most consternation. It wasn’t the kind of dreary what-about-indie-rock complaining that used to attend the unveiling of any hip-hop or R&B headliner, more that if social media was to be believed, a significant proportion of Glastonbury-goers had simply never heard of her.
That probably says more about the atomised nature of algorithm-catered pop culture in 2024 – a world in which it’s far easier to stay in your particular musical bubble than it once was – than it does about SZA’s popularity. Her last album SOS wasn’t just a critical success, it sold 3m copies in the US and became the longest-running No 1 album by a female artist in the 2020s: in the UK, her last tour packed out a succession of arenas, including two nights at the O2.
Their devotion is entirely understandable. As R&B divas go, she’s impressively eclectic and strikingly eccentric. Her sound hops divertingly around: heavy guitars underpin F2F, Love Galore carries a distinct trace of G-funk in its DNA, Nobody Gets Me is an acoustic ballad with a chorus that keeps threatening to break into Natalie Imbruglia’s Torn. The live version of her collaboration with Doja Cat, Kiss Me More, comes interpolated with snatches of Prince’s Kiss.
Her show is also remarkably visually arresting. The ocean-themed aesthetic of her last tour has been replaced by a stalactite-laden underground grotto. Her performance is packed with short interstitial films featuring insects, and – at one alarming point – a creature with a compound eyes, antennae and a big bum.
The connection between the swords and the title of her biggest hit, Kill Bill, aside, what any of this is supposed to signify remains fairly enigmatic, but it would be extremely hard to feel bored while watching someone twerking in fairy wings halfway up a tree and there’s something hugely entertaining about the contrast between the mystical setting and the earthiness of her lyrics: “I only fucked him ‘cause I miss you”, “it’s shitty of you to make me feel just like this”.
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