The old queen regent's crown is now ablaze with SOS. SZA, a genre-defying powerhouse of the soul-stirring R&B and alt-influenced emotional vulnerability, has just broken yet another music barrier to finding a place in the history-making archives of Billboard. With SOS, the game-changing album SZA has officially dethroned 2011's 21 by Adele as the longest-charting album by a female artist in the Top 10 on the Billboard 200 chart.
When Adele released 21, it sounded like the sun. Its record of 84 weeks in the Billboard Top 10 seemed like an insurmountable peak until SOS roared through as a wave of emotional honesty and unfettered ambition. The date notches the 85th week SOS has arrived in the chart's upper level, running consecutively, a successful moment that marks up the history books with the name of SZA in bold.
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Released in 2022, SOS entered No. 1 and reigned for an astonishing 12 weeks, charged back in January with an exclusive Lana treatment. But that bonus content also gave fans more of what they might not have known they needed, keeping the heart of the album beating loud through playlist speakers and arenas the world over.
SOS is hardly a regular pop project but is attached to one blueprint. It is a diary wrapped in silk, a mishmash of R&B, hip-hop, rock, and spoken word, all blended in a genre-fluid experience. Tracks like the vengeful yet vulnerable "Kill Bill" and the mysterious "Supermodel" have solidified her" voice in "the current R&B "conversation" and projected her into the future.
She was already growing an empire from behind the scenes. Let's look at this chart; it isn't. She co-wrote "Consideration" 's Rihanna's Anti and added to Beyoncé's cuts, solidifying that her pen and voice are equally mighty whether connecting with Kenrick, Rihanna, Drake, or duetting Beyoncé's Cat, and Justin Bieber, her ease in jumping genres is as universal as it is visionary.
She first supported Coldplay in 2014; nearly a decade later, she's co-headlining Glastonbury alongside them. It's not a full-circle moment but a career flex.
While SOS is still playing, she is up with the Top 10's record holder for the most weeks at No.1 (My Fair Lady with a bankable 173 weeks and Morgan Wallen's Dangerous at 158); SZA is proving victorious. She's the first female artist to spend this long in the Top 10 ever, and she's done it with soul, swagger, and a sound all its own.
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