taking back ctrl and revisiting sza's lessons on vulnerability

when I first heard sza's ctrl, i was 20, a serial monogamist and head over heels for my first and seemingly only college boyfriend. i gorged myself on romantic comedies and cried on valentine's day annually for the next few years, much like i do now, but i did so without a large understanding of why i felt so alone even though i was in a committed relationship. i thought that would love save me? why wasn't love saving me? isn't that what it's supposed to do? i believed that if someone loved me, there couldn't be anything possibly wrong with me, right?

wrong.

in its stripped down and raw form, ctrl is an album that touches on the falsehoods that love breeds and the sorts of things that I was taught to believe to believe about love from a young age.

so, on a surface level, society teaches us that:

1. that if we love someone hard enough, they will love us back.
2. that we should seek out love from those who give us attention.
3. that love will somehow save us from ourselves and fix everything that's wrong with us.

again, all of this is wrong, but they're ideas that are constantly reinforced by the things around us like movies and music. even our friends and family reinforce these kinds of ideals in the ways they interact with us. my relationship with my partner was constantly downsized because of the things he did or did not do for me that were socially acceptable. we didn't make a big about valentine's day. we don't speak every single moment of everyday. we didn't even have sex. while my partner and i are fine with all of this, everyone else around me had something to say about it and it made me feel conflicted.

however, in listening to sza trying to balance love and life in an unabashedly open way throughout ctrl, I felt like for the first time in my life, I had found someone who understood what I was going through. I felt like I had someone on my side, which is an unfamiliar feeling as a Black woman in america. The power of ctrl comes from its openness and acknowledgment of how contradictory it is to be a woman, especially when you're a Black woman. there is so much power in being able to express your own insecurities and short-comings, but there's even more power in acknowledging that sometimes reveling in them is all that you have. "drew barrymore" acts as a love letter to the kinds of people like me who take comfort in being seen as less than what you're worth because its easier than being alone.

"i get so lonely, i forget what I'm worth / we get so lonely, we pretend that this works / i'm so ashamed of myself think i need therapy"

these are some of the most powerful lines of the song simply because, again, there is something powerful in acknowledging when you're wrong, even if you're somewhat perpetuating that by way of some sort of self-sabotaging behavior. whether it means going back to your toxic ex, or simply messing around with a guy who is already in a relationship or even just longing for attention from someone who really just doesn't seem to see you outside of your body and sexuality. as a Black woman, my body is coded in a sexual language that is so unknown to me, i can't quite tell how others read it. moreover, it is so complex because often, we're also just not gifted the space to even begin to learn how to understand it for ourselves. we're just meant to sit back and revel in the gaze, even though it is far from enjoyable and more uncomfortable than anything. However, sza and so many artists try to feed us sugar coated tunes that absolve themselves from the uncomfortability of their own short-comings, but sza leans into them and, again, the falsehoods that breed them. however, ctrl also demonstrates is that not only is this a process, but that it's a messy, sexual and daunting process.

when ctrl first dropped, a lot of people wrote it off as the musings of a bitter side-chick. namely, when you look at songs like "the weekend", it can be hard not to think that. just about everyone knew the lines "you that 9-5, i'm the weekend." however, if you take the songs surrounding them into context, you see the larger picture of a strong woman trying to come into a world that keeps telling her who she should be.

the homely riffs of the album's intro "supermodel" touch on this as she both begs to be seen by an unnamed suitor yet also chastises them for not seeing her potential in the first place. the chastising continues in "love galore" with the notorious line "why you bother me when you know you don't want me?" and then furthermore in the next song, "doves in the wind", which takes on the complicated nature of desire when the power dynamics between the sexes shift. moreover, only sza can make "busting it open on a headboard for the right one" sound poetic.

however, while it is important to take in the confident nature of sza's tales of woe in dating, what is unique about ctrl is that it sheds light on these issues face way that that's not only nakedly honest and intimate, but also powerful in the way that is demonstrates that pain demands validity. 

and that's where the album shines. 

because it's not easy to be honest and its especially hard to be honest with yourself about your own imperfections. take the song "normal girl" for example, which describes the kind of girl sza wishes she was.

"the type of girl you take over to mama / the type of girl your fellas would be proud of"

 

but she's not and that's okay.

throughout the entirety of ctrl, sza speaks her shame and insecurities and she does so with a poetic and comfortable ease that puts my 15 years in therapy to shame. and moreover, it ends on the note that illustrates that while most of us know all of the things that are wrong with ourselves, it is going to take a lot more to work though that shit and that, in itself, means something.