SZA has been announced as the latest performer at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.
Last night (January 29), the Recording Academy took to X to announce SZA as the latest addition to the list of performers at this year’s Grammy Awards ceremony, its caption reading: “You don’t want to snooze and miss this moment!”
⏰ You don’t want to snooze and miss this moment! Watch @SZA at the 66th #GRAMMYs on February 4th at 8 PM ET / 5 PM PT on @CBS.
🔗 See who else is performing: https://t.co/Z5bhlGNtNW pic.twitter.com/tjSWIfD02D
— Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) January 29, 2024
SZA joins the likes of fellow performers Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, Billy Joel, Burna Boy, U2 (who will perform via the first live broadcast from the Sphere in Las Vegas) and Joni Mitchell, who will perform at the Grammys for the first time in her over six-decade career.
The 66th Grammy Awards will take place on February 4, 2024 at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, and will be broadcast live at 8PM Eastern Time or 5PM Pacific Time on CBS. SZA leads the nominations with nine nods, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year and Song of the Year. SZA is followed by Victoria Monét and Phoebe Bridgers, who both have received seven nods. Boygenius, Olivia Rodrigo, Taylor Swift, Miley Cyrus are also up for six nominations including Album of the Year. The full list of nominations can be found here.
Despite having previously been nominated for 15 awards at the Grammys in total, SZA has only ever won one, merely as a feature on Doja Cat’s ‘Kiss Me More’ at the 2022 ceremony. In 2018, she received five nods in total for her acclaimed full-length debut ‘Ctrl’ – to which NME awarded four stars – but did not win any.
In an interview following the release of ‘SOS’, the singer described the Grammys as a “thirsty, dark space” to be in, stating: “The Grammy room is one of the weirdest rooms ever. There is so much wanting in there. Wanting to be noticed, wanting to be, like, acknowledged, to win, wanting to just be amongst n****s in the room, wanting to feel valuable or validated.”
SZA has been teasing the release of the ‘Lana’ deluxe edition of ‘SOS’, which she first announced last September, though a release date has yet to be confirmed. In December, on the day after the one-year anniversary of her chart-topping album, SZA revealed the six variations of album covers for ‘Lana’, which will also feature “seven to 10 new songs”.
The previous day, she reflected on ‘SOS’ in a separate post, writing: “I haven’t processed this year AT ALL cause it’s still happening.. this is beyond my wildest dreams. I never imagined we’d accomplish a fraction of the accolades that came from this.. it often doesn’t feel real and it’s funny cause I swore I’d know what to do if it ever happened . turns out I I froze.. I know the perils of drinking the koolaid so I won’t dabble in that .. but I have to express the immense GRATITUDE I have for every person that made this possible.”
