A marathon 30-song musical feast became a swashbuckling maritime adventure as SZA brought her SOS world tour to London for this, the second in an extended four-night run at the O2. Featuring digitally generated oceans, life-sized boats, a pop-up lighthouse and more, this technically dazzling maximalist spectacle felt at times like a cross between a Broadway stage musical, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and a live-action Spongebob Squarepants episode.
Formerly known as Solána Imani Rowe, the 33-year-old Missouri-born singer gave a full-steam-ahead performance to match her extravagant surroundings, commendably refusing to be upstaged by her own stage.
With a tight, jazzy, versatile band tucked away in the shadowy corners, this performance was as much a platform for state-of-the-art visuals and production design as it was for SZA’s dynamic fusions of R&B, left-field pop and melodic hip-hop. Ablaze with high-resolution video walls, the set began with a striking flourish: the singer perched on a high diving board against a vast blue seascape, recreating the sleeve photo from her 2022 album SOS, an image which was itself based on a famous paparazzi snap of Princess Diana taken shortly before she died.
Stage and screens then reconfigured themselves into a harbourside jetty, complete with mountain backdrop and lustrous golden sunset, where the singer performed a fast-moving run of numbers including the stuttering, sultry trip-hop ballads Seek & Destroy and Golden Clocks.
But the centrepiece of this production was a full-sized boat, perched atop a gently undulating digital ocean. This mid-section featured a rich line-up of SZA bangers, including her Grammy-winning Kendrick Lamar duet All The Stars, the sky-punching soft-rocker F2F, wistful misfit lament Normal Girl, and the confessional low self-esteem weepie Drew Barrymore, whose vulnerable lyric drew huge cheers of empathy from the O2’s mostly adolescent female audience. “I’m sorry I’m not more attractive,” the singer cooed, “I’m sorry I don’t shave my legs at night...”
Pushing the Moby-Dick melodrama to the max, this show’s latter half featured a thunderstorm, a shipwreck and a gravity-defying inflatable lifeboat, in which SZA soared over the O2 crowd. This was a magical stunt, though the syrupy songs in this chapter did drag a little, partly because the normally hyperactive diva was somewhat limited by being trapped in a floating orange dinghy.
Concluding with Hollywood-style end titles and a bulging credits list, this was a frequently stunning widescreen arena-pop blockbuster on a par with tours by premiere league heavyweights like Beyoncé, Madonna or SZA’s managerial stablemate Lamar. Any minor faults lay mainly in pacing and tone. At times the presentation was arguably overstuffed with quick-change ideas, leaving scant room for the singer’s more subtle, relatable, conversational side to shine through. Sense-swamping cinematic spectacle can be a little draining.
That said, the finale featured some superlative set-pieces, notably the deceptively cheery sing-along bloodbath revenge single Kill Bill, accompanied by darkly funny visuals to match its Tarantino-homage title. “I just killed my ex, not the best idea,” SZA beamed as 20,000 fans sang along. Just one of many delicious highlights in this hugely imaginative, ocean liner-sized show.
