SZA on Grammy Wins, New Album ‘Lana’ and Album of the Year Snub: “I’m Grateful I Won Three”

SZA is feverishly scrolling through her phone.

She missed the afterparty celebrating her Grammy wins on Sunday, and her die-hard fans are on social media wondering if she revealed clues about her new album at the affair.

“I was trying to scroll the pictures of my party to see if I missed an album hint somewhere,” she says, “and I found it.” 

The anticipation for new SZA music is wild, and the response to her epic SOS album has been grandiose. It won the performer three Grammy Awards on Sunday, including best progressive R&B album and best R&B song, the latter of which she ran to the stage to accept quickly after giving a jaw-dropping performance of her hit songs “Snooze” and “Kill Bill” during the ceremony.

A day later, she spoke with The Hollywood Reporter about the wins, losing album of the year, chatting with Taylor Swift, her upcoming album Lana and partnering with MasterCard to help raise awareness about forest restoration.

You won three Grammys last night. How does it feel now that it’s a couple hours after the show?

It doesn’t feel like anything yet because I’m still in last night. I’m not really in today yet. But I’m just so grateful and relieved that it’s (Feb) 5. I survived (Feb.) 4. I didn’t crash and burn on national television, and I’m so grateful. Had I not won a lick, won a single thing, I would’ve been so grateful to just have survived the night. So to have one of my closest friends (Lizzo) present me an award and then also get to take home a couple more is wild. It’s like a fever dream, basically.

It was so funny when they announced your name for best R&B song and we’re all waiting there like, “I hope she doesn’t miss the moment.”

I didn’t know how long people had been waiting, but I swear they didn’t tell me anything, I guess because they can’t, but they just told me I needed to get to my seat and I was like, “I’m not about to rush to my seat.” And then this lady just started yelling and she was just like, “Run to your seat!”

So I ran and then I thought I was running into my seat, and then someone just led me down a different corridor and I was onstage and they left me. I was like, “Oh, OK.” Then I was onstage looking lost and he was like, “Go that way.” And I realized it was Lizzo and I heard “Snooze” and I was disoriented. I had a whole plan for how poised I would be and all the things that I would say, the “thank yous” that I would get out, and all that went out the window because I was running and almost missed the award.

In your speech you looked down and said, “Hi, Taylor”…

I saw her bobbing and I was like, “What?” It was in the midst of how unreal it all felt. You know?

Did y’all get a chance to talk at some point during the show?

Yeah, we did. We talked a bunch actually. She’s funny as hell.

A lot of people felt like you should have won album of the year. Do you have thoughts on that?

I don’t actually. I’m grateful I won three. I could have left with nothing and I didn’t, and I’m grateful. My parents got to see it and I didn’t bomb on live television, and that was so scary. And I faced some really big fears and I’m just happy that it all went well, genuinely. And I’m happy for everybody.

What can you tell us about your new Lana album?

You know, this round, I actually don’t want to say anything. Just because I feel like I do myself a disservice because you can shift the energy of the album. You got to let it form itself. Because I’m not really forming anything. I’m just kind of here while energy is forming and I’m just trying to allow it to do what it needs to do, and my voice just follows whatever the frequency is. So I feel like I want to allow it to finish shaping itself and form itself before I speak on it and possibly change the trajectory of what it could be. But I would say I’m in a beautiful space creatively and I feel just very new.

SOS has been out for over a year and the response has still been so strong, both critically and commercially. What’s it been like to see this album that you worked on for five years have this big moment in pop culture?:

It’s definitely surreal. It’s very much like, and I don’t even know if surreal is the word? But I don’t think I really have a word for the feeling. I haven’t even processed it, really. It’s been out of context for so long. I don’t know. I’m not even out of the woods of feeling like I just dropped it yesterday. But I’ve been on tour for a year, and then as soon as I came off tour there was all this other stuff and then it was Grammy prep, then it’s all these other things so it’s like nothing ever stopped. So I haven’t taken stock yet, but I am so grateful, genuinely, just to be here. I don’t have any words.

“Snooze” is the only song to spend every week on the Billboard Hot 100 charts last year, and this week it’s No. 10. Babies and grown men have been passionately singing the song — did you think the track would resonate in that way?

That’s silly. And I’m so grateful for that. I did not see it coming. I don’t know. I guess it just seemed like such a chill song and I didn’t bank anything on it. And it’s so funny. I guess that’s how the universe works. You say you’re supposed to want something and then completely let it go. So I just wrote it for fun and I really loved it while I made it, and then I didn’t think about it a second after. And I’m so tickled by the fact that it performed so well. 

The opening track of SOS — “SOS” — is so chilling and fiery. What was going through your head when you were writing and recording it?

I freestyled that. I didn’t write anything. I was in Hawaii and I was having a really angsty time in my life and I felt like there was a lot of playing on my name and just playing on my energy in general, a lack of respect.

I don’t post a lot or people don’t really know much about me outside of what is through, I guess an interview, etc. I’m not a super, hyper social person, so I think there’s a lot of misconceptions, there’s a lot of random disrespect, I think about my relationships. I’m thinking about men that had me wronged. It was just a very much, I don’t know, I almost felt like… it was weird. It was like my subconscious, all the angst that I kind of shoved down and suppressed kind of popped up. I was surprised at myself, funny enough. But those beats make me feel that way. Any beat that has a sample in it in that way makes me feel that way. It just demands attention.

You’ve been implementing more choreography in your performances — what’s that been like?

It’s really scary and it’s really hard. It’s definitely something that — it’s just ambitious. It’s like a bucket list thing. It’s not even something that I feel like defines me as an artist, per se. It’s just something that I feel like I really have to face the fear of trying to be that type of artist. I want to incorporate every single thing that I can. If I can hang from a random zip line like Pink, I will before it’s all said and done, just because I want to know what it feels like to really face that fear and try to lock in.

So it’s been beautiful to try to incorporate things that I haven’t done since my childhood, like dancing and moving at the same time, which is very strange. Dancing and singing at the same time is so strange, and having it actually not sound bad is also very strange. It’s hard.

You partnered with Mastercard for a Grammys performance of “Saturn” and to also help raise awareness and participation in forest restoration. Why is this important to you?

A long time ago I started Sustainability Gang, doing a bunch of personal, one-off conservation efforts and really getting into all different types of conservation. Then I did Save Soil with Sadhguru, which was also a conservation effort and really trying to engage people into understanding how important soil quality is and how that affects our whole lives and our food quality and our future, and that obviously leads into oxygen production. I did another coalition by planting trees with a tea company, where we planted a bunch of trees in urban areas because it really affects your mental [state], how much green you see in a day, etc. So when MasterCard approached me with reforestation, I was just grateful to be able to add on to anything that made such perfect sense.

I feel like I’ve been learning so much about logging and even how reforestation has to be done in a certain way, and how you really can’t beat nature’s natural ability to grade itself, to put itself in the right. If you planted trees in the wrong formation, you run a risk of lack of biodiversity and high forest fires, and nature naturally creates its own diversity, but there’s so much that we have to learn to be reincorporated into the natural system after we decimate it.

So, for Mastercard to be so dedicated to reforestation, I think that was such a gift for me to even join and piggyback on that. It’s just naturally a part of, I think, my next trajectory after music. I think my passion is agriculture and moving into planting and farming and more environmental causes, because music has been beautiful, but I’ve been saying for the past year publicly that I really feel like entomology and farming is my future, and plants and conservation, I feel like that is just where my heart bleeds. 

I love to camp and I love plants and I’ve been a Girl Scout my whole life. As an adult, getting into all of this just made so much sense. It just personally attaches to who I am.

Congratulations on all the success and I hope you go a vacation soon.

Thank you. Oh, no, no. Now I have the work bug. It’s too much to accomplish. I got to run while my feet are moving.