Ctrl Alt Resistance : SZA and the Expression of Female Vulnerability

Credit: SZA/Instagram (@sza)

Solana Imani Rowe, better known by her stage name SZA, is a singer-songwriter whose influence is increasingly relevant in contemporary media and music. Her two major album releases consist of Ctrl (2017) and SOS (2022), and in her career she has won the best album of 2022 (Rolling Stone) and charted for 38 weeks at No.1 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.

Blending R&B, neo-soul, and hip-hop influences, SZA crafts music that feels diaristic yet relatable. Her work offers vulnerable, sensitive insight that young women can be heard and seen through, past the lens of perfection that society imposes on them.

Credit: Getty Images for The Recording Academy

While Ctrl explores young womanhood and navigates taboo themes such as jealousy and insecurity, SOS embraces these feelings, directing the self and ego onto a path of peace in uncertainty. SZA’s discography is heavily influenced by her Islamic upbringing, incorporated not only in her name but also in her lyrics.

This is complimented by her spiritual beliefs and biblical imagery that she often references; the listener can often hear an underlying desire for transcendence in her music, a separation from societal, manufactured norms which bound her to involuntary insecurities. Together, the two albums mirror the emotional evolution of many of her listeners; from the anxiety of self-comparison to the warmth of self-acceptance.

Credit: SZA/Spotify. All rights reserved.

Ctrl is an album that centralises instability, lack of control, and isolation in young women. Emotionally raw and sonically erratic, the album resembles a diary cracked open, where R&B melodies meet late-night entries. Supermodel, the opening track of Ctrl, is a track that sets the scene for her description of the typical relation between young women and their control on the world. As her mother’s voice warns in the album’s opening seconds, ‘If I lost control… things would be fatal.’ SZA sets up control as both protection and prison. She introduces the concept of control as pertinent and quintessential to the female experience, voicing the common fear that young women need perfection, and the extremes they will go to to achieve it.

Drew Barrymore and Normal Girl are equally well received singles on the album that expand on the feminine performance of perfection. Lyrics like, “She's perfect and I hate it / I'm sorry I'm not more ladylike,” “Wish I was the type of girl that you take over to mama,” and, “The type of girl […] he'd be proud of,” powerfully illustrate a socially alienated, estranged woman’s inner thoughts and feelings.

From makeup to fashion sense, body shape to mannerisms, patriarchal concepts like “ladylikeness” impose countless expectations on women. The sense of hurt and rejection that is communicated in her lyrics continue to resonate with young women navigating those same pressures in 2025.

In SOS, SZA sounds freer — no longer trying to fix herself, but learning to exist in imperfection. The songwriter shares what she has learned from her early twenties, and voices a change in her desires. Her lyrics no longer relay a pressured, overwhelmed ambience, but rather seek a release from the chains of her former self that bound her to her old ways. Questions like “How do I deal with rejection?” from Far are answered by lyrics in songs like Blind, where she sings about her inability to see love and acceptance she needs, which is inside her.

Her messages communicate that you may never fit into pre-packaged ideals, which can instead be seen as

liberation. Trying to conform only erases the individuality that makes you human, and the only way to satisfy the endless craving for validation, is by looking inwards to yourself.

Credit: Daniel Sannwald/Instagram (@danielsannwald).

In an age-old culture that demands perfection from women, even more so with the blurred boundaries between virtual and physical reality that online media creates, Ctrl and SOS are more relevant than ever. The albums give a voice to young women who opt to resist these impossible patriarchal standards.

Her music teaches this new generation how to not let self doubt cloud their perceived value but rather embrace the so-called flaws and imperfections that make us individually human. Messiness, insecurities and confusion are part of a process that SZA normalises in the process of navigating a peaceful, accepting lifestyle. Ctrl and SOS reassure listeners that the future can be unplanned, unprepared and uncertain, but still beautiful and promising.