good day

SZA Releases a New Version of an Old Album for Ctrl’s 5th Anniversary

Solana, middle fingers up, speak your truth! Photo: Erika Goldring/WireImage

SZA stans, you’re out of the trenches … sort of. After five years of fans begging SZA to drop something (anything!), she returned with a new version of an old album. On June 9, the anniversary of her debut album Ctrl, she released Ctrl (Deluxe). The R&B singer floated the idea of “unreleased songs from 2017 to celebrate 5” on Twitter earlier this week, and actually released seven new tracks, including an alternative version of “Love Galore,” slapped together with the 14 original songs on the album (think classics “Drew Barrymore,” “The Weekend,” and “Broken Clocks”). Many of the songs on the album have been long teased, leaked, or snippet-ed — especially “Jodie” and “Tread Carefully,” phew — with even SZA calling her unfulfilled big music dump of 2020 a “collaborative effort,” asking fans to drop the links to the songs that they want included in the drop. Ctrl (Deluxe) is her first official release since last December’s “I Hate U,” featuring Summer Walker. Maybe if we all organize and collectively stream Ctrl (Deluxe) hard enough, it’ll be just the push we need to get a brand-new studio album on the docket. Or, the most promising route: We can stick it out for another five years and get Ctrl (Deluxe) (Deluxe).

SZA Drops New Old Music on the Anniversary of Ctrl