SZA : SOS Tour Shines at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio

Photo: Aaron Quintanilla

On Oct 15, SZA visited the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio for her second show in Texas for the second leg of her U.S. tour. D4vd, as a beginning act, brought outstanding alternative style talent with his soothful vocals. Mostly known for his Tiktok hits, “Romantic Homicide” and “Here With Me,” the fans were eager to listen to these live. During “Here With Me”, D4vd brought his sister, Emily, on stage for a duo performance on this song, bringing much awe into the venue.

A brief break, before SZA’s entrance on stage, the music playlist before the show had the fans already excited and riled up on their feet, dancing and singing at the top of their lungs. Genres playing such as Reggaeton, Latin Urbano, Rap, and R&B, with some hits such as “Gasolina” by Daddy Yankee, “Tití Me Pregunto” by Bad Bunny, and “SkeeYee” by Sexxy Red.

Finally, the lights went out and a huge screen on stage began to display cloud visuals, as it slowly rose revealing SZA sitting on the ledge of a diving board, overlooking the depths of the ocean, reenacting her album cover “SOS”, starting it off by singing “PSA”. By the end of the opening track, the screen decreased, transitioning back to a visual of SZA jumping off into the water. After a screen imagery welcoming the fans to her tour, the screen elevated back once again, this time fully illuminating her, clearly being able to admire her outfit, a lilac sparkly matching jacket and pants, knee high heeled boots and shining brown top.

The set list was separated into five acts–Beginning with the deck portion of it, consisting of “Seek & Destroy”, “Notice Me”, “Love Galore”, and “Broken Clocks”. Having the audience engaged into the beautiful imagery, giving the illusion that SZA, her band and dancers were on a shipping dock. As each song continued, the time of day also changed along with it, the sky and light moved from morning, to afternoon, to evening and to nighttime, all with the help of different cool and warm tones of the lights. “Forgiveless”, “Used”, “Bag Lady” a cover by Erykah Badu, “Ghost in the Machine”, “Blind”, and “Shirt”, made up the second section of visuals: The Engine Room. In this act, the crowd was visually taken from different rooms underground, of which towards the end, the last room gradually started to fill up with water during “Shirt” to represent the ending of not only the song, but as well as the visual Act. Following was the Horizon, a boat sailing across the sea, with an instrumental of “Too Late”, “Smoking on my Ex Pack”, “All the Stars”, “Prom”, “Normal Girl”, “Garden (Say it like dat), “F2F”, “Drew Barrymore”, “Doves in the Wind”, and “Low”. Starting to end the second half of the night, the most magical chapter of the night, SZA performs “Open Arms”, “Supermodel/Special”, “Nobody Gets Me”, and “Gone Girl”, all while she traveled on a lifeboat above the heads of the crowd, blue lasers shooting, creating a line representing the edge of the water. As the last act, she was back on stage, this time being underwater, with the last songs of the set list, “SOS”, a Drake cover “Rich Baby Daddy”, “Kiss Me More”, “Love Language”, “Snooze”, “Kill Bill”, “I Hate U”, “The Weekend”, and “Good Days”.

In the realm of R&B and soul, it was an enchanting journey, filled with impressive and ecstatic visuals like never seen before. SZA was ultimately in love with San Antonio’s energy and warmth, so she decided to come back on stage after her last song, to point out and acknowledge fans she was admiring throughout the night. Dreading having to leave, she performed one more song for the crowd, an acoustic version of “20 Something” to end the beautiful night.

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