Celebrating SZA, Our Creative Muse
Kind & Funny’s Self-Expression Club is our reminder to practice Creativity, Authenticity, and Vulnerability, and to celebrate the people who inspire us to do it.
When the Kind & Funny team needs to do creative work, it usually means we’re putting on SZA’s album SOS. In 2024, SZA was Kel’s 2nd-most-listened-to artist behind Kacey Musgraves, and Spotify’s AI DJ has already commented on 2025’s total SZA hours so far. We have it on vinyl for whole-house listening, and on Kelly’s noise (/Jed)-cancelling headphones for her heads-down work.
Why do we turn to Sunday’s Super Bowl Halftime siren as our muse of self-expression? Because she is awesome. Why is she awesome? Here are a few reasons …
Creativity
First of all, SOS is a no-skips masterpiece, the top album of 2023 from both Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, so it’s flat-out great listening, but I think it’s specifically good in a few interesting ways:
SZA’s voice and lyrics are so powerfully expressive that they serve as a clear anchor point as she hops around musical styles.
Hopping around those styles keeps the album engaging and interesting, while the anchor point results in a cohesive, all-encompassing vibe.
This makes the album feel both consistent and ambitious. Sometimes we put it on and drop into its world, sometimes we put it on and it infiltrates ours, and sometimes it’s both, and I think this is an ineffable quality that only some truly great albums possess.
Those sites I referenced before pick up on this and write music-journalist-things in their year-end accolades like:
Pitchfork: “SZA’s freewheeling spirit shines on SOS because of how easily her vocals flit, dip, and traverse through disparate genres and forms of songwriting. She proves that not only can she do whatever the fuck she wants, but she can do it better than most of her contemporaries.”
Rolling Stone: “On SOS, SZA seamlessly contorts disparate genres around her raw emotion and gifted verbiage with the sense of control she pined for on her first record.”
I’m so impressed by SZA’s command over her voice (both literally and from a songwriting perspective) that I want to keep talking about it.
Authenticity
Counterintuitively, I feel like sometimes I can better grasp SZA’s individual power when she is on a track alongside Kendrick Lamar, with whom she’ll perform this weekend at halftime of the Super Bowl.
Kendrick’s voice is every voice everywhere all at once, jumping at breakneck speed from hyper literate lyricism to emphatic onomatopoeia to all-caps MUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD. It’s made GNX my most-listened-to-2025 album, and the current title-holder for best skateboarding record. There’s a lot going on, which I think this video does a good job of conveying:
How do you sing next to that? I think you do it exactly the way SZA does it, with the confidence to do your own thing the way you do it because you are also at the top of your game and in your own universe:
Hearing her sing on tracks like “luther” and “All The Stars” reminds me of watching Mary J. Blige command the stage alongside Jay-Z live for 2008’s “Heart of the City” tour (not the best clip but you’ll get the idea ):
And also of seeing Liev Schreiber and Scarlett Johansson act onstage together in Arthur Miller’s play A View from the Bridge on the epic first date Kel took me on in New York City. This was in 2011, and Liev was magnetic as the explosive longshoreman Eddie Carbone, but Scarlett, in her broadway debut no less, was magnetic in her own way, creating such an interesting dynamic and eventually winning a Tony award for her effort.
Unfortunately I can’t find a great clip of them acting together, but here’s Liev talking about what I felt:
At Kind & Funny Kel & I are always trying to “shine in partnership,” and I think to do that you’ve got to be pretty confident that you know how to shine on your own. I think SZA is such a powerful collaborator because she doesn’t seem to change who she is to do it, and I’m pumped to see her shine on one of the world’s biggest stages this weekend.
Vulnerability
Kelly draws a lot of inspiration from women who bravely share about living with ADHD, and so first I have to thank SZA for the ways she has done that.
I also want to highlight SZA’s role acting in the wildly enjoyable new movie One of Them Days. I loved the movie, especially the way that the characters attack their conflict with friendship, art, and entrepreneurship (I won’t spoil it, I think you should see it):
SZA and co-star Keke Palmer carry the film with their collective charisma and onscreen connection in a way that makes them a welcome addition to the buddy comedy canon. SZA says this is because of Keke’s skill and experience and coaching, but Keke says that’s not entirely true in this Entertainment Weekly interview:
“She's so naturally talented. I was like, 'Are you in drama school?' Because she could naturally get into it. She's a free person. That freeness that she brings to her music was also what she brought creatively to this, and I think that's why it turned out so good.”
To me, that sounds exactly correct. That article also contains some excellent advice from SZA about how we can pursue that freeness in all that we do:
“The way that I got to look at myself from another lens that had nothing really to do with my personal expression — but still had everything to do with my personal expression — that was cool.”
Thank you SZA for helping us be more of ourselves in everything we do by trying to be more of yourself in everything that you do.
Who is one of your self-expression heroes? What have you learned from them? Do you or does your business need some help with self-expression? jed@kindandfunny.com.