In early December 2022, SZA released her long-awaited sophomore studio album SOS, which saw eight songs on its track list peak inside the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100. All throughout the album, SZA croons masterfully about lust, her search for independent happiness, and most notably, her past failed romances.
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During a recent show in London on June 19, as part of the U.K. leg of her SOS Tour, SZA spoke about one of these failed romances. She divulged how an ex-lover of her’s cheated on her in London, which made performing in the city anxiety-inducing for her.
“I never told anybody, but like, my boyfriend cheated on me in this city before. It was terrible,” she told the London’s O2 Arena attendees. “That’s why I was really sad to come here, but you guys made it so much better. Thank you!”
After confiding in her fans about this, she began to play “Nobody Gets Me,” the 14th song on SOS’s track list. Although the song is not about the man who cheated on her in London, it is about her unnamed ex-fiancé, who she has also soured towards since their breakup. “This song is about my other trash ex-boyfriend,” she told the crowd before starting the song.
Containing lyrics like I don’t wanna see you with anyone but me? / Nobody gets me like you and I pretend when I’m with a man it’s you, it’s clear SZA had a strong connection with the mystery ex and was incredibly broken up about their split. She spoke more about this last December during an interview with Hot 97, just days before the arrival of SOS.
“This particular song in entirety is a story about my ex-fiancé and how we went through all these arguments, and we broke up,” she said. “And when we first broke up, it was like terrible, and I just felt like I was gonna be doomed to be in hell for the rest of my life because nobody understood me the way he did, and nobody motivated me the way he did.”
Showcasing a very raw and cathartic performance from SZA, “Nobody Gets Me” peaked at No. 10 on the Hot 100, and was produced by superstar pop instrumentalist Benny Blanco. Later in her conversation about the song with Hot 97, the 33-year-old would go on to emphasize how much the man that inspired the song meant to her, but also how she would eventually recover from the heartbreak.
“He was just this rock in my life that just no longer exists,” she continued. “The stories that I tell in that song about our arguments… That’s the theme on that. I feel like a lot of people don’t understand me but it’s okay.”
Photo by Erika Goldring/WireImage
