On December 13, 2022, Solána Imani Rowe, more commonly known as SZA, announced her first all arena tour on Instagram. The show opened with opener Omar Apolonio Velasco, professionally known as Omar Apollo, and closed with SZA. The North American tour started in Columbus, Ohio on February 21 and concluded in Los Angeles, California on March 22.
On February 24, I attended the concert in Detroit at Little Caesars Arena. The doors opened around 7:00 pm, which gave fans about an hour to buy food and merchandise for SZA and Apollo. The concert started at 8:00. While in line for merchandise, a worker for the arena came around and asked if anyone would like a picture of the times of when the artists would come out on stage.
Apollo sang 11 of his songs, which included: “Useless,” “Killing Me,” “Tamagotchi,” “Endlessly,” “Kamikaze,” “3 Boys,” “Want U Around,” “Petrified,” “Evergreen,” “Invincible” and “Go Away.”
I don’t listen closely to Apollo’s music, but enjoyed the performance. His stage presence was entertaining. He didn’t stand still at his microphone and sing. He walked around, interacted with the crowd, and put his all into performing.
Before SZA walked onto stage, the lights turned off and the whole arena shook as the crowd erupted in screams and cheers. The show was about to begin.
SZA started her concert with the third song on SOS called “Seek & Destroy.” Her setlist contained eight songs from her album, Ctrl, released in 2017, 21 songs from her newest album, SOS, released in 2022, along with singles “All The Stars,” with Kendrick Lamar, and “Kiss Me More,” with Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, professionally known as Doja Cat. SZA also added a cover of “Bag Lady,” by Erykah Badu but only sang about half of the song.
The first song she played from Ctrl was the third song in the concert setlist, “Love Galore,” featuring Travis Scott. “Love Galore” is one of my favorite songs on Ctrl, so I was extremely excited when I heard the first few chords and immediately recognized the song.
“Love Galore” is about the emotions someone feels as they are being played by a potential significant other. The upbeat tune and the blend of Scott and SZA’s voices makes this song catchy and truly a fan favorite.
A song I was immensely excited for was “All The Stars,” one of SZA’s many songs with Kendrick Lamar. I was dreaming of SZA bringing out Lamar, but unfortunately, she did not. The song was still extremely beautiful.
As fans in the arena all sang Lamar’s part together, SZA stood on stage with her arms out, swaying to the song, listening to everyone sing his part word for word.
Another song I was exceedingly eager to hear was “Special.” This song is an extremely emotional song about the little things SZA wishes were different about her, along with how she used to be special and unique, and that she gave her special away to a “loser.”
Unfortunately, SZA didn’t perform all of the songs in full making me, and fans alike, feel upset and disappointed waiting and anticipating for our favorite song, which was disappointing because I was excited to hear the emotion in her voice as she sang the lyrics that pull on the listener’s heart strings.
Occasionally, between these heartfelt songs, SZA changed her outfits in the small time frame, to come out from behind the screen with an even better outfit than the last. In total, she changed her outfit six times. My favorite outfit was the one she opened with while sitting on the ledge singing her introduction which was her white jersey with an “S” on the front and black pants to match with it.
On March 4, 2023, SZA went onto her eighth show in New York, New York at Madison Square Garden. To much surprise, she brought on Phoebe Bridgers and Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, professionally known as Cardi B. SZA and Cardi B played Cardi B’s song, “I Do,” and Bridgers and SZA performed their song on the album, “Ghost in the Machine,” leading her to add the song to the setlist for the next shows.
“Ghost in the Machine” is in my top three songs for the album, and it’s annoying to me that SZA added the song after I saw her in concert. Even though I didn’t see her perform “Ghost in the Machine,” I still had a good time and if I could, I would go to the concert over and over again.
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