"PSA" (also called "Potting Season") is a song by American singer-songwriter reported to be from her third studio album, Lana (2024). The song is backed by vocal harmonies, soft piano, and harps. On it, SZA
raps with
braggadocio, demanding people call her "number one", telling them to serve her, and angering someone to amuse herself.
Before the song's release on Lana, it was used in the official teaser for SZA's previous studio album, SOS, and released on January 5, 2023 as one of two bonus songs on its website-exclusive
digital edition. SZA planned "PSA" for inclusion on the standard tracklist of SOS but was stopped by her label
Top Dawg's president,
Punch, because it did not fit with his vision for the album. After its website-exclusive release, the song was performed during the
SOS Tour as the concert opener and at a surprise concert in Brooklyn, where Lana was officially announced.
Background
SZA released her debut studio album, Ctrl, in 2017. Primarily an
R&B album that deals with themes like heartbreak, Ctrl received widespread critical acclaim and brought SZA to mainstream success. Critics credit it with establishing her status as a major figure in contemporary pop and R&B music and pushing the boundaries of the R&B genre.[note 1] Her next studio album was therefore highly anticipated,[8][9] and she alluded to its completion as early as August 2019,[10][11] during an interview with DJ
Kerwin Frost.[12]
From April to May 2022, SZA told media outlets that she had recently finished the album in
Hawaii and said that it was coming soon.[17] Her 33rd birthday came on November 8, several weeks after the release of "Shirt". To celebrate the occasion, a video was uploaded to her
YouTube account, and she reposted it on social media with the caption: "Happy birthday to me. Clock starts now."[18] The video posted to YouTube was a teaser for the upcoming album. The teaser is directed by Bradley J. Calder, and it uses a song titled "PSA".[19][20] Nearly two minutes long,[21] it features alternating shots of SZA in two scenes: in one, she wears a brown bikini and crouches in a ring of neon green fire, and in the other, she pours blue, fluorescent liquid over her naked self by a beach. As the teaser ends, she makes her way towards the sea, and the video cuts to black before playing
Morse code that translates to "
SOS".[22][23]
Music and lyrics
"PSA", also called "Potting Season", was written and recorded in 2022, after producer
Carter Lang met with Will Miller alongside two other producers for joint recording sessions. Their agenda was making orchestral songs, inspired by music which Lang called "very minimal" and "beautifully haunting", resulting in around 20
demos characterized by
sound layering. Included in the demos were "PSA" alongside one track from the standard edition of the album, named "
Blind".[24]: 56:57
The instruments in "PSA" consist of soft piano[25] and harps,[26] alongside several background vocal harmonies.[22] SZA
raps the lyrics with
braggadocio: she demands people call her nothing but the "number one" and serve her, admitting to insisting this because she needs to curb feelings of envy[26][27] and find a way to cope with her problems: "I don't know how to take losses / Even when, even when they are lost causes."[23] Later, she proceeds to anger someone for her own pleasure—"pissing you off just to get off"—then mocks certain "bottom feeders" who "suck dick by the liter", perceiving them as of less value than her.[18] She closes the song with the lines: "You should go cry about it, not trying to fight about it."[22][25]
Release
SOS
In a Billboard cover story published in November 2022, SZA revealed that the title of her second album was SOS, scheduled for release sometime next month.[28] The album was released on December 9 and debuted atop the
Billboard 200 chart, keeping
Taylor Swift's Midnights (2022) off the top spot and marking SZA's first number-one album in the United States. It spent 10 weeks at number one.[29][30]
The tracking week ending January 6, 2023, marked SOS's fourth week on the Billboard 200; there was a possibility that Midnights might overtake the album and gain the number 1 spot.[31] On January 5, when tracking was about to end, SZA and Swift released
digital versions of their albums that contained bonus material, which would boost both albums' chart performance.[32] In SZA's case, she released a digital-exclusive edition of SOS that can be bought only on Top Dawg's website. It consisted of all 23 songs from the standard edition alongside 2 previously-unreleased songs—"PSA" was one of them.[26][33]
Lana
Despite being used for the teaser, "PSA" was not included as one of the 23 songs in the album's final cut.[34] SZA said that
Punch, president of her label
Top Dawg Entertainment, ordered not to include unreleased tracks like "PSA" on the standard edition despite her and her fans' wishes because it did not fit with his vision for SOS.[35] In her words, "He just has a very strong opinion about curation."[36] As a response, she suggested that the song could be included as a bonus track in the album's deluxe edition.[37]
SZA announced the deluxe edition of SOS, titled Lana, during an album celebration event at
Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City. In it, she said its release was slated for sometime in 2023. Telling the crowd she would perform a mix of officially released songs and unreleased deluxe tracks, she confirmed that "PSA" will appear on the edition's track list, which would contain seven to ten songs.[38][39]
Live performances
The first live performance of "PSA" was during
a 19-show North American tour in support of SOS. Specifically, SZA debuted the song during her concert at the
Schottenstein Center in
Columbus, Ohio, on February 21, 2023.[40] Her set lists started with "PSA", which she performed as she recreated the album cover art on stage, atop a diving board with a screen behind her that projected a video of the ocean.[41][42] When she was done with the song, she appeared to dive onto the stage floor.[43] In the album celebration event, SZA played "PSA" as the third out of seven songs on the set list, which included the three other aforementioned deluxe tracks.[39]
Vulture: "Raw, candid writing isn't new for SZA; it's what made the previous album, Ctrl, such a breakout and one of the high marks of the confessional R&B; of the past decade."[1]
The Recording Academy: "The release of her critically acclaimed debut album Ctrl in 2017 solidified the artist not only as an R&B mainstay, but soundtracked the heartbreaks and growing pains of millions of young people. With her eloquent vocals and layered storytelling abilities, listeners felt every word like it was their own."[2]
The Line of Best Fit: "her debut Ctrl has ascended to classic status, going down as one of the decade's best and cementing SZA's voice at the forefront of contemporary R&B, and of pop."[3]
NME: Ctrl "ushered in a new era for R&B, one where the genre's boundaries shifted, bringing new levels of inventiveness into a classic sound and fusing it with indie, alternative, trap and more[...] SZA herself spent the aftermath of Ctrl trying to grapple with her new stardom and the huge impact that had on her life."[4]
The Daily Telegraph: "Ctrl, the triple-platinum, four-time Grammy nominated debut that propelled SZA to popstar status"[5]
The New Yorker: "Ctrl opened a portal—one that represented not just a major leap for the artist but a breakthrough for the genre itself. Her alternative slow jams pushed her voice to the fore and laid bare all the quirks of her dating life, establishing her as a distinguished millennial anecdotalist in the process."[6]
Consequence: In Ctrl, "SZA's personal style of lyricism has always read like an endless diary entry, and the transcendent nature of her genre-shifting abilities helped revolutionize modern R&B and pop."[7]