SOS is the second studio album by American singer-songwriter SZA. It was released on December 9, 2022, by Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) and RCA Records. The album features guest appearances from Don Toliver, Phoebe Bridgers, Travis Scott, and the late Ol' Dirty Bastard. SZA worked with a variety of record producers and songwriters such as Babyface, Jeff Bhasker, Rob Bisel, Benny Blanco, Darkchild, DJ Dahi, Ant Clemons, and Lizzo. It serves as the follow-up to SZA's debut album Ctrl (2017).
Six singles were released between 2020 and 2023 to promote SOS, five of which were top-ten hits on the US Billboard Hot 100. The fifth, "Kill Bill" (2023), was SZA's first song to top the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Global 200 charts; the sixth, "Snooze" (2023), was the only song remain on the Billboard Hot 100 chart throughout the entire year of 2023. The album spent thirteen nonconsecutive weeks atop the Billboard 200, doing so in three separate years, and set several consumption records in the US. It was the first album by a woman to spend 100 weeks in the Billboard 200's top 10, and in 2025, it became the longest-running US top-10 by a Black artist. To promote the album, SZA embarked on the international SOS Tour, from February 2023 to May 2024.
Upon release, the album received widespread critical acclaim for its eclectic sound and SZA's vocal delivery. Several media publications ranked it as one of the best albums of 2022 and 2023. At the 66th Annual Grammy Awards, SOS and its tracks received a total of nine nominations, including Album of the Year, and won Best Progressive R&B Album. Additionally, the album has been featured on both Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (2023) and Apple Music's 100 Best Albums. SOS was re-released on December 20, 2024, as Lana, with 15 additional tracks that include a guest appearance from Kendrick Lamar. In November 2025, SOS became the most-nominated album at the Grammy Awards (14), as well as the album with the most nominated individual tracks (9).
Background In 2017, SZA released her debut studio album, Ctrl. Primarily an R&B album that deals with themes of heartbreak and self-discovery, Ctrl was widely acclaimed by critics for its vocal performances and eclectic musical style, as well as the relatability, emotional impact, and confessional nature of its songwriting. The album brought SZA to mainstream fame, and critics credit it with establishing her status as a major figure in contemporary pop and R&B music and pushing the boundaries of the R&B genre.
SZA alluded to potentially releasing her second album as early as August 2019 during an interview with DJ Kerwin Frost. Revealing planned collaborations with the likes of Justin Timberlake, Jack Antonoff, Brockhampton, and Post Malone, she said that the release date was "soon as fuck" and she might "start dropping loosies", though there was no explicit date announced. Four months prior, Punch, CEO of SZA's record label Top Dawg Entertainment, teased that he had begun overseeing ideas for the project. During the interview, SZA commented on the creative process behind the album and stated it would be as candid and personal as Ctrl: "This next album is even more of me being less afraid of who am I when I have no choice? When I'm not out trying to curate myself and contain."
In January 2020, SZA posted a status update about the album's completion online. When asked by a fan on Twitter whether new music was coming soon, she replied that she and Punch had been discussing a potential release date scheduled for 2020 and she felt anxious about the build-up to that day. The next month, an interview between her and Rolling Stone was published, in which she announced recent collaborations with American record producer Timbaland, as well as Australian singer-songwriter Sia with whom she wrote three songs. The interview also mentioned the status of the album's release date; SZA said "music is coming out for sure", but the caveat was the album itself was unlikely to be released within the year.
After fans grew impatient with the release delays, SZA responded by venting her frustrations on Twitter in August 2020. Alleging that the label was the reason for the postponement, she affirmed one fan's suspicion that she had been having hostile interactions with Top Dawg, and when someone showed her a post from Punch saying that the album would be released soon, SZA replied with "this is all he says to me as well. Welcome to my fucking life." In response, fans created the Twitter hashtag #FreeSZA in support of her struggles, and the trend went viral. However, she later retracted her claims by deleting the posts and said "don't nobody need to free me. Lmao I'm not being held hostage n neither is my music!! Sometimes u gotta be patient... sometimes no is a blessing... I trust the ppl around me." Vulture and Variety noted that Ctrl also suffered a similar problem with its release date; SZA quarrelled with Top Dawg executives over its two-year delay and threatened to quit music because of it.
When SZA collaborated with Cosmopolitan for their February 2021 issue, she talked about the emotions she expected to feel while making the album. She told the magazine, "this album is going to be the shit that made me feel something in my...here and in here", pointing to her heart and gut. From April to May 2022, SZA told media outlets that she had recently finished the album in Hawaii, describing it as her most relatable or "unisex" body of work she had made to date. During the Met Gala and an interview with Complex, SZA claimed that the album was ready for release during summertime in the United States ("this summer, it will be a SZA summer"), but there was no urgent deadline for the release.
The release date continued to be delayed, and SZA once more argued that Top Dawg and RCA were responsible for it; the album would, contractually, be her last to be released through the labels. In October, she said that she had written around 100 songs for the album and added that the album could be released "any day now". During a Billboard cover story published in November, SZA revealed the title of her second studio album was SOS, scheduled for release sometime next month. She expressed her frustration with complying with music industry standards on promoting music, saying she had been stressed with meeting her deadlines. On December 3, 2022, she appeared on Saturday Night Live and announced it would be released on December 9. Two days later, she posted the track list on Twitter.
Writing and production
Mainstream media had often characterized SZA as an R&B artist throughout her career. She refused to be pigeonholed to such a label, and she had been rejecting the R&B categorization as far as her early years of releasing music. When she released her debut label single, "Teen Spirit", to SoundCloud in 2014, she tagged the song with the categories "Glitter Trap" and "Not R&B". Although she did not aim to abandon or reduce her R&B soundscape for her second studio album, she wanted to prove her versatility, primarily as a statement against racially prejudiced ideas that discredit the works and cultural value of Black artists by segregating them from White artists and implying they can make only R&B music. In a 2022 Consequence cover story, SZA expressed her love for making Black music in general, arguing that such music "doesn't have to just be R&B". She said: "We started rock 'n' roll. Why can't we just be expansive and not reductive?"
Work on SOS had begun by 2019, but a majority of the songs were written and recorded in 2022 due to bursts of productivity from time pressure. Carter Lang, one of the producers, commented, "that's when [we] started feeling like, hey, 'We gotta do this shit like, it's been some years.' We bottled up that energy and everything was just sort of a preparation for that moment."
During the build-up to the album's release, SZA created a list of possible collaborators and reached out to them through private messages. The roster ranged from Billie Eilish, Harry Styles, and Olivia Rodrigo; to Doja Cat, Drake, and Kendrick Lamar. Of the several artists she contacted for the album, only three people sent their verses: Don Toliver, Phoebe Bridgers, and Travis Scott.
SZA worked with a number of songwriters and record producers including Babyface, Jeff Bhasker, Rob Bisel, Benny Blanco, Darkchild, DJ Dahi, Ant Clemons, and Lizzo. Rodney Jerkins was one of the main producers for SOS. SZA approached him out of her admiration for his decades-long history of production work, which included songs with Brandy and Amerie. He spoke of her: "her pen game is arguably one of the best pen games in the game right now. It's almost like she's a rapper tied up in a vocalist."
Having worked with SZA since 2014, ThankGod4Cody returned to co-produce and co-write seven tracks on SOS. His contributions began as early as the start of the album's making. Compared to his work on Ctrl, for which he helped produce four songs, his approach to SOS was less defined and more experimental. Whereas he sought to create uptempo tracks on Ctrl to contrast the album's more alternative songs, he was "throwing paint at the wall" and seeing which musical ideas worked well for SOS. The experimental sounds are present in tracks like the single "I Hate U" (2021), which Shelby Stewart of Okayplayer wrote felt "light with sublime progressions that sway with SZA's mood". The song arose from a keyboard loop from Rob Bisel, one of the album's main producers and engineers. After creating its structure and adding drums, SZA spent less than one hour to compose the melody and write the lyrics. For "Gone Girl", ThankGod4Cody took the electric piano from a demo by two of his co-producers and combined it with drums and a gospel choir. Adding the instruments took four days. He called "Gone Girl" his personal favorite from the album, citing the amount of time and effort he gave the song in comparison to the others.
Composition SOS is a multi-genre album, and many of the songs are combinations of R&B, hip-hop, and pop. It also incorporates influences of folk, indie rock, and electronica music. The album samples sound references from soul, gospel, jazz and melodic rap. SZA told Billboard that the sound of the album is "a varied palette", drawing on surf rock and grunge in parts alongside "her beloved lo-fi beats". It runs for 1 hour and 7 minutes (1:07), and according to TheGrio, it follows the tendency started by Chris Brown's 2017 album Heartbreak on a Full Moon of lengthier albums in the music streaming era.
In Complex, she described the album's sound: "I have no idea what it sounds like to anybody else. I really don't know. It's so bizarre. It's weird that I can't put my finger on it. It's a little bit of everything." She added that some parts of the song had an "aggressive" sound whereas others were soft or balladic. During the Rolling Stone interview, she and Punch spoke in length about the album's composition. The inspiration in question was eclectic, drawing from jazz, alternative rock, "traditional" R&B, country, and hip-hop. About the wide range of genres incorporated into the album, SZA said she did not care if her production choices made the album sound incohesive, because to her, "if you sound like you, your shit's going to be cohesive. Period." Punch commented: "It's a new chapter. She's not scared to try certain things now."
Title and artwork
The explanation behind the album title is threefold. SOS is a nod to the Morse code distress signal SOS, which is used in maritime navigation and is popularly interpreted as either "save our ship" or "save our souls". The other two reasons are rooted in SZA's names. Her stage name is derived from the letters of the Supreme Alphabet, according to which the letter "S" stands for Self and Savior. In real life, her friends call her by the nickname Sous, a shortening of her first name, Solána.