SZA has just released another song, “Shirt,” this October. But with her last album drop SZA brought attention to women equality in the music industry, so what’s next?
SZA is known for grammy-winning songs and has won 21 music awards, according to Wikipedia. Her song “I Hate U” broke the record charts for apple music, making it the most streamed R&B song by a female artist on Apple Music.
Born Solána Rowe, SZA’s popularity started back when she released the album “Ctrl” back in 2017. She has collabed with popular artists like Childish Gambino, Kenrick Lamar, and Rihanna.
Rowe has taken R&B music to a new level by making her content more vulnerable with its listeners. Rowe sings about heartbreak and desires that have shaped her into the artist she is today. From talking about not shaving her legs in “Drew Barrymore ” to wanting to be good enough in “Normal Girl”, Ctrl shows the artist’s vulnerability, with no subject matter left unsaid.
A study was done last year by Pitchfork Media Company, that revealed only a quarter of artists booked for big festivals were female. Rowe performed at a music festival called Lovebox, which is in the U.K back in 2018. After being the only female headliner at the festival, she had a few powerful words about the lack of representation of female artists.
“Feminine energy is dominant, whether you throw it on a line-up or not. Everyone can feel it,” she told British Vogue in an interview.
In an interview done by Glamour SZA spoke out about the treatment of women in the music industry.
“I’m the only girl in my crew, and not just] artists, even on the management side, on the business side there are absolutely no women in TDE (her label, Top Dawg Entertainment),” she told Glamour.
The music industry has failed at gender equality over the past decades. The industry expects women to act a certain way and focus their writing toward a specific agenda, like heartbreak.
Being a woman in any profession comes with a fair share of problems. Most, if not all, businesses have a stereotypical role that they believe women should fit into. And the majority of those roles revolve around positions that don’t involve any significant decision making power.
In the music industry women are expected to write about heartbreak, or their boyfriends, but SZA breaks those standards. New Album coming out December 22.
