Love meets it’s brutal end in SZA’s newest video, Love Galore. The newest single fresh off of her latest album, Ctrl. Through the dreamy images of a love affair laced in butterflies, I feel her joy along with the pain. I anticipate the inevitable bittersweet demise of this relationship which she slyly symbolizes at the end of the video in an oddly reminiscent character of a deranged Kathy Bates via Stephen King’s Misery (1990). She simply can’t let go and neither can a lot of us. We are only human. Something about this song and video illuminates this universal yearning for affection that she so eloquently demands throughout each verse. Not one to shy away from putting her insecurities on display, each song puts forth a peace offering to an ex that has done her wrong. This offer doesn’t last long.

She weaves between lust, love, and hate throughout the album. Asking her lover for forgiveness for her emotional messiness, while also owning it and declaring it as part of the deal if he wants her back. The album serves to show that emotional messiness is always part of the deal when it comes to love, putting forth what feels like a very personal message: to love oneself enough to not need anyone else. This is personified by recordings of various love advice from other women as interludes. On tracks such as Pretty Little Birds, beautifully produced by Isaiah Rashad, SZA paints a picture of an ethereal and soft approach to relationships.  This counteracts songs such as The Weekend, which portrays a more aggressive approach to getting what you need (physically), something that doesn’t always require love. 

The juxtaposition of vulnerability and aggressiveness within the album are exactly what make SZA unique but also universal in her art. It’s an important expansion of representation of women getting what they want, whether it be love or just sex, with no shame. Which is how it should have always been.