How did winning a Grammy for ‘Snooze’ by SZA affect the song’s popularity and how people listen to it?
SZA’s “Snooze” has won the award for Best R&B song at the 2024 Grammys. It has been over a year since she released her acclaimed album, SOS. On Sunday, February 4th, SZA was won three Grammy awards for her album.
SZA, whose real name is Solána Imani Rowe, is an American singer and songwriter born on November 8, 1989, from New Jersey. She gained prominence for her unique blend of R&B, neo-soul, and hip-hop influences, characterised by her emotive vocals and introspective lyrics.
SZA’s breakthrough came with her debut studio album “Ctrl,” released in 2017. The album received widespread critical acclaim for its honest and relatable exploration of themes such as self-discovery, relationships, and empowerment. “Ctrl” included hit singles like “Love Galore” and “The Weekend,” earning SZA several Grammy nominations.
After almost 6 years, SZA finally released her sophomore album ‘SOS’. This highly anticipated album broke the charts. SZA is now the first black female artist in history to spend over a full year in the top 10 of the Billboard 200. Because of her overwhelming success of her sophomore album, SZA was nominated for nine Grammys this year. One of her nominations included Best R&B Song, for her track Snooze.
Metadata
- Title of the track: Snooze
- Length: 3:21
- Release date: December 9, 2022
- ISWC: T3152946157
- ISRC: USRC12204591
- Name of the songwriter(s) with IPI or ISNI:
- EDMONDS KENNY B — 136864551
- FERGUSON BLAIR FRANCIS- 396441922
- RIDDICK TYNES KHRISTOPHER VAN- 630537957
- ROWE SOLANA I- 687343408
- THOMAS LEON G III- 657868188
The Data Curation
From its first release, the song was already a hit. Not only the initial traction of a Grammy Nomination, but actually winning best R&B song made every spectator wonder.. what makes this song so great? In order to explain how winning a Grammy award impacted the songs popularity, I collected data from WARM and Chartmetric. From all the data sets, I exported each CSV on Tableau Prep Builder and Tableau Desktop. I then developed maps/charts based on WARM airplays, Spotify Streams, Youtube Views, and Shazam Counts within the last year to truly analyse the impact of this award.
Many artists who win a Grammy gain a lot of acknowledgement for their award. Every year, people who are not familiar with Grammy winners/nominees tend to research the song. If the song is a hit, most consumers will add the song to their library immediately. The Grammy awards are one of the easiest ways to discover new music.
This Grammy night was finally the night where SZA was recognized for her artistry. R&B is an underrepresented genre where not many artists get recognition. But on Feb 4th, SZA swept away the R&B category. Her versatile album has captured fans all over the world, and Snooze was the perfect love song. The next morning after winning best R&B song, people in their cars on the way to school and work love to hear a Grammy recap. In America, radio stations sky rocketed in radio plays taking over the country.
With over 550 fresh plays in the United States, the song was ringing all over the nation. In addition to radio plays, Spotify streams grew exponentially. Dating back to last February, the track Snooze was receiving 890M weekly streams on Spotify. Fast forward a year later, on the week of the Grammy Awards (Feb. 4), Snooze reached 5.3B streams on its platform. Because of the award, curators and users were adding it to their playlists and daily music.
Not only was Spotify surging, but Youtube views for the official music video rose as well. The music video captures a great illustration of this dreamy ballad. It also guest stars pop icon, Justin Bieber as her love interest which attracted a lot of viewers as well.
I was able to curate data from Chartmetric and clean both Spotify and Youtube streams using Tableau Prep Builder. From this, I was able to compare how music consumers were heavily influenced to listen to the song and watch the official music video on the week of the Grammys. It is evident that the song received the most traction during Grammy week.
There is also a plethora of people who have never heard of the song until the Grammys. SZA winning this Grammy lead to more playlist curations, airplays, and public play in stores. Because of this heavy rotation, Shazam searches have been growing in the last 2 weeks. There was a huge jump in how many times her song was Shazam’d daily.
From conducting charts based on WARM and Chartmetric data it is evident to see that people gravitated to the song more after its Grammy achievement. I have pulled additional data on my Tableau Dashboard to fully analyse how Grammy Award Winning Song, Snooze is SZA’s most popular track.
Conclusion
In the industry today, it is rare to see a song have such longevity for so long. Snooze by SZA will not meet its decline for a while. For over a year, the song has been on a gradual incline to success. But since the song has achieved a Grammy Award, the popularity of the song is definitely at its pinnacle. The song has been getting substantial airplay and stream on DSPs like Spotify and Youtube. People are starting to consume the song more and more because of its praise from the Recording Academy.
Winning an award at this caliber isn’t for nothing. To get majority of votes through the whole voting committee at the Recording Academy is very significant. Snooze is the perfect example of a love song that is a smash hit. Winning a Grammy for this song a week before Valentine’s Day may also be a win in itself. Instead of the popularity lingering for only a week after the Grammy awards, it has the potential to increase airplay and streaming throughout all of February.
Finding the most accurate data for this analysis was crucial. Being able to show the impact of streams in relation to the exact week of the Grammy Awards is very important. It is clear that the song is reaching numbers like never before as a result of the Grammy award. There are viewers from all demographics who watch this award ceremony. Many ethnic groups, races, ages, and genders all range while watching the Grammys because it caters to so many different genres and audiences. Snooze by SZA appeals to so many different audiences because it is such a smooth and sensual song.
Being nominated and winning a Grammy can bring so much attraction to an artists work. The Recording Academy has been a credible music source for almost 65 years, focusing on the best music and artists on each year. Watching the Grammys means that people love music. Music lovers will always discover and find great songs, playlist curators will add Grammy winners to their playlists, radio hosts will recap and play top songs of the week, and coffee shops & stores will play the most popular hits. All because the Recording Academy declared Snooze by SZA best R&B song of 2024.
Limitations
- Although SZA is a global sensation, the Grammys are an American award show. Many viewers, spectators, and listeners were American citizens. WARM data relies heavily on US radio stations and listeners.
- Data excludes Apple Music, Tidal, Soundcloud, Tik Tok, other DSPs data
- Please take into consideration other versions of the track as well. The Sped Up, Instrumental, Acoustic [feat. Justin Bieber], and Apple Music Live are all versions of the track that may have been impacted after the Grammy award. Data was not included.
- WARM data is specifically pulled from the week of the award show. Since there is no previous data from prior weeks, the data only represents the automatic surge in plays after the awards.