Waiting six years to follow up a critically acclaimed debut album isn’t the usual recipe for pop success.
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However, when SZA released SOS in 2022, she didn’t disappoint. SOS debuted atop the Billboard 200, and it’s a remarkable answer to her extraordinary debut Ctrl. It completed a transformation from cult artist to global superstar.
SZA’s soliloquy in “Good Days” turns inner meditations into gorgeous R&B therapy.
The dreamy Grammy-nominated first single is a psychedelic trip matched only by its accompanying Alice in Wonderland-inspired music video.
A War in My Mind
“Good Days” follows SZA struggling with despair while reflecting on a former lover. The anxiety and feelings of wasted time in a broken relationship find the singer soul-searching over a guitar-driven alternative R&B groove.
Good day in my mind, safe to take a step out
Get some air now; let your edge out
Too soon, I spoke, you be heavy in my mind
Can you get the heck out?
I need rest now, got me bummed out
You so, you so, you, baby, baby, babe
I’ve been on my empty-mind s–t
The cascading guitars echo the accumulating negativity SZA attempts to overcome. Still, Jacob Collier’s outro vocal blames her former lover for the damaging noises in her head.
I try to keep from losin’ the rest of me
I worry that I wasted the best of me on you, baby
You don’t care
Said, not tryna be a nuisance; it’s just urgent
Tryna make sense of loose change
Got me a war in my mind
Gotta let go of weight; can’t keep what’s holding me
Choose to watch
While the world break up and fall on me
SZA Gets Biblical
Furthermore, the “Kill Bill” singer declares she feels like Jericho, and perhaps the simile means she’s falling apart like the ancient city’s walls in the Book of Joshua.
She also mentions Job, which may be SZA’s way of keeping faith through despair. Moreover, SZA completes the biblical imagery with a well-worn, laborious expression, dragging herself through the tumult.
Feeling like Jericho
Feeling like Job when he lost his shit
Gotta hold my own, my cross to bear alone, I
Ooh, paid a deal, way to kill the mood
The Writers
SZA co-wrote “Good Days” with Jacob Collier, Carter Lang, Christopher Ruelas, and Carlos Munoz. Lang is famous for his work with Post Malone, Doja Cat, and Lil Nas X.
Lang also produced the track with Nascent and Loshendrix. The Los Angeles-based Loshendrix earned his first Top 10 hit with “Good Days,” but the song lingered as the producer had pitched the idea to another artist.
The guitar-based loop remained unfinished, so Loshendrix sent a voice memo to Nascent in Chicago. Nascent immediately created a beat and returned it to Loshendrix, who then completed the track and sent it (again) to the artist. (Loshendrix kept the well-known artist’s name anonymous). He told Genius the artist “kinda ghosted me.”
It May or May Not Happen
The instrumental lay on a hard drive for months before Lang played it for SZA. Meanwhile, Loshendrix sent the track to another artist who wrote a song around the piece.
Said Loshendrix, “There was one artist that I felt bad for, she wrote a really crazy record to that beat. She sent it to us the same week Carter Lang ended up playing that track to SZA.”
Still, the song remained incomplete for nearly a year before SZA recorded the hook. SZA struggled with harmonies and sent the song to Collier for help. She was so excited with Collier’s accompaniment that she leaked the track on her Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Guitar Loops
A 16-bar guitar loop is the DNA of “Good Days,” using a phrase Loshendrix created with a Line 6 guitar looper pedal. He used his sampling background to sample himself—a convenient bulwark against lawsuits.
Beauty and chaos fight for space in the loop, and it’s reminiscent of the “weight” overwhelming SZA’s thoughts. However, they also sound tranquil. The instrumental serenity mirrors the peace she’s after.
Like “Alice”
Lewis Carroll’s fantasy novel Alice in Wonderland follows Alice through a rabbit hole into an illusory world of creatures. In the “Good Days” video, SZA is dreaming in a related mushroom-induced world where she alternately pole dances in a library and is stuck in a hole in the ground of a trippy garden.
Just as she teased “Good Days” in the outro to the video for “Hit Different,” SZA previews another SOS track, “Shirt,” at the end of this video.
SZA lives in a unique space where the mystical meets the earth, and softness meets hardcore. Thankfully, her cosmic talent inhabits this planet.
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Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for The Recording Academy
