SZA performed on Saturday at the Toyota Center in Houston and I was there.
This was the second leg of SZA’s SOS tour. SOS is SZA’s second studio album and was released in Dec. of last year. So far, the tour has been very successful. By the end of the first leg, it had made nearly $35 million.
Even before SZA even came on stage, the environment was super vibrant. The crowd was dancing and singing along to every song the DJ played. The fans were diverse, and everyone was excited to be there.
When SZA came out on stage, she was sitting on the edge of a diving board like on the album cover of SOS. The rest of the performance followed the nautical theme with her singing from several types of boats and with ocean-themed visual effects. She sang all the fan favorites from SOS, along with a few songs from Ctrl and collaborations with other artists. She was on stage for just under two hours.
The songs receiving the largest fan reactions were The Weekend, Low, Snooze, and Kill Bill. My favorite was Broken Clocks, which I know by heart.
One mistake I made was spending too much time and attention recording the performance. At times, I found myself looking through my phone camera rather than directly at the stage. I wish I had put my phone away and just embraced the present.
At the end of the concert, SZA came back out to the stage to thank everyone for coming and invited a few people backstage.
“This is not really my show, this is y’all’s show,” she exclaimed while personally picking people from the crowd to meet her. She made everyone feel special.
Walking out of the arena was very bittersweet. I was disappointed it was over but extremely grateful and glad to have experienced SZA performing in person. I hope I’ll have the opportunity to see SZA in concert again.
