‘God bless these 20-somethings’: Looking back on SZA’s Ctrl in young adulthood

Suhana Limbu, Associate Culture Editor

It’s 2018, and my thirteen-year-old self is screaming along to the lyrics of SZA’s album, Ctrl. I was especially devoted to her hit single, ‘Drew Barrymore’. Hairbrush in hand, still dressed in my school uniform—though my missing blazer must’ve been thrown on the staircase banister—I borrowed SZA’s woman-ness to sing as a young girl, ‘Is it warm enough for you inside me, me, me, me?’. 

Now, I had actually thought that the lyrics were, ‘Is it woman enough for you inside me?’, and didn’t realise the line’s sexual innuendo. Instead, thirteen-year-old me was convinced that the then twenty-seven-year-old SZA understood my frustrated entrapment from womanhood—a magical, distant transformation in time that would surely fill in the gaps of my teenage insecurities. I felt beyond betrayed that this wasn’t the case. My insecurities were my own. 

Ctrl was first released on June 9, 2017. The album boldly subverted the R&B genre, with songs like ‘Broken Clocks’ blending Trap and Pop elements into its R&B soul. Throughout the album, the lyrics are raw and personal, as if you’ve opened a young woman’s well-loved diary with a cracked spine and sprawled handwriting. I remember being most enamoured by the album cover—SZA, in a casual white tank, thrown-on jacket, and socks, is surrounded by an entanglement of discarded retro computers and a flourishing garden. Her beauty is striking. Her eyes stare into you with certainty. It’s truly one of my favourite album covers.

It’s been eight years since Ctrl’s release, and it found its way back to me in 2025, specifically because I turned twenty. By revisiting, I realised that my younger self’s understanding of the album was completely wrong. In an interview shortly after the album’s release, SZA explains the creation of the album’s title, saying, ‘It’s a life concept… I need to be in control. I’ve never been in control… I also love relinquishing control and just accepting that this moment is not mine’. Younger me was certain that SZA had it all figured out but, as she reveals in the interview, the album is about the liminal spaced between desiring and surrendering to control—control over men, over friends, over insecurities, and certainly, over the emergence into womanhood. 

While the album didn’t reach the same commercial success as her 2022 album, SOS, Ctrl garnered a cult following as not only a coming-of-age album, but also an honest exploration of the Black woman experience. Born in 1989 in Missouri, as Solána Imani Rowe, SZA has opened up about her experiences of bullying and isolation while living in a predominantly white neighbourhood. The resulting need to fit in or assimilate plays a key part in Ctrl, which certainly spoke to my own experiences growing up in white majority schools and suburbs. 

These themes stuck with me as I listened to the album’s last track, ‘20 Something’, finally, at twenty. The song embodies the fears of inevitable change that I also had when finally breaking into the second decade. The song is simple. A repeating loop of guitar chords as SZA opens with the haunting, incredibly honest lines: 

The song is dreamy, and lulls the confessions of both heartbroken wounds and self-assured, feminine confidence, permeated throughout the album, into a final slumber. The song’s ending moments include a voicemail from the singer’s mother (a recurring theme throughout the album):

It’s hard to navigate whether SZA’s mother thinks control should be relinquished or harboured. I certainly think this is kept ambiguous for listeners to individually interpret and, in doing so, discover the answer by drawing on their own experiences. Whether it’s from reflecting on when they were twenty-something or a thirteen-year-old extracting from their frustrations, SZA’s Ctrl is universally familiar, and its depth is wondrously infinite.

Image credits: Abhishek Koli on Unsplash