Hard to believe a woman with SZA’s voice, brains and looks could ever feel insecure, but her song “Drew Barrymore” is a conflicted journal entry revealing just that.
Specifically, it’s “about being at that sh*tty house party and seeing girls who have very nice hair and new clothes sweep the guys you wish you were compatible with off their feet,” she explains. Writing the song, she “started thinking about every movie that you see Drew in, all her roles are this amazing, kind girl who is misunderstood, but just wants to be loved.”
It’s almost like SZA didn’t just inherit a naming concept from RZA and the Supreme Alphabet, but his penetrating lyricism too. She so intuitively and intimately expresses that feeling of chasing after someone, knowing you deserve better, but still wanting them anyway, that you’re almost mad at yourself all over again, too.
And the song’s so vulnerable, it’s actually notable. When Black women ARE recognized, it’s usually for our strength. But there’s rarely room in our society for a black woman to feel depressed, scared, or lonely. Here, SZA takes up all the space she needs to deal with her complicated feelings, and as UK digital music mag The Line Of Best Fit writes, “in one fell swoop, she dismantles the myth of the Black Superwoman – an infallible figure with infinite emotional resources to distribute and support any and everyone in need of it.”
All of her Grammy nominations, major motion picture soundtracks, and cross-continental tours be damned. In “Drew Barrymore,” SZA sweetly pulls back the curtain hiding her own flaws, uncertainty, and sometimes hypocrisy, but the true beauty here is the permission her words grant us to sit with feeling exactly the same.
𝗟𝗜𝗡𝗘𝗦 𝗧𝗢 𝗟𝗢𝗩𝗘:
“I get so lonely, I forget what I’m worth”