Saturday Night Live music: SZA performs ‘The Weekend,’ ‘Love Galore’
How many average SNL viewers were really all that aware of her going into this weekend? We can’t imagine it being all that many of them given that she’s just starting to break into the mainstream. She’s fresh off of receiving a wide range of Grammy nominations and this performance tonight was her showing everyone in Studio 8H just what she could do. (She also jokingly had some fans in the audience in Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill, who claimed that they were there to see her rather than their friend James Franco.)
SZA’s first song on the show tonight was the soulful and lovely track “The Weekend,” accompanied by a gospel choir and also a lovely small orchestra. We hadn’t heard the song before the episode tonight but it sounded very much like a beautiful album track — and we wish we heard the rest around it. It’s also the sort of song that is going to get better every time you hear it. Without getting too hyperbolic, these are the sort of performances we love to see on SNL. Often when big-name artists come on the show with an established hit you already know how it’s going to sound. Here there’s an element of surprise and we imagine that there’ll be plenty of downloads coming her way out of this.
Also, if you couldn’t tell, we like SNL performances that feature as much orchestra music as possible.
Second song – SZA brought out the same orchestra and choir in order to perform “Love Galore.” This was a little more of an anthemic performance from her with the chorus echoing a familiar refrain. We’d say that “The Weekend” was our favorite of the two just because the enunciation and pacing of the song made it a little hard to understand all of the lyrics — still, this doesn’t change how impressive it is that SZA goes into her own world when she is performing.
What did you think about SZA on Saturday Night Live tonight? Be sure to share in the attached comments below!
Remember that in the event you want to read our full review of tonight’s SNL episode, you can do so by heading over here. Also, be sure to like CarterMatt on Facebook for more news on every show we cover. (Photo: NBC.)