Victoria Monét had Usher on her mind when she started making “SOS.” As she explains in the latest installment of Rolling Stone’s The Breakdown, while she was in the studio, she was deep down a Confessions “rabbit hole, just studying that album top to bottom, and being so blown away, again, by the art and craft of this body of work.”
At one point, she played a bit of Usher’s “Seduction” for co-writer Daniel Church as they worked on the song. And then, about an hour later, Monét says, “As I’m in the booth, just trying to figure things out, Usher calls. I was like, ‘What the fuck is going on?!’ The energy is like… what? Because sometimes I feel like… if we really focus on something, we can manifest its existence. And I say it all the time, but that was creepy. I was like, ‘No, no, no — is my phone tapped?’”
To be fair, Monét acknowledges, she was already scheduled to work with Usher on a different song (which hasn’t been announced just yet). But when he arrived at the studio, he asked to hear what else Monét was working on, so she played him a bit of “SOS.” After the hook, Monét caught Usher singing along and mumbling something else, so she did the logical thing: She asked if he wanted to get in the booth and try something.
“He starts trying this melody, which ends up being the second verse, his verse of the song,” Monét says. “Comes out and we start writing lyrics to it together. It just felt like… serendipitous! It was very serendipitous. It just fell together into our laps on a magical day in the studio.”
Monét also spoke about collaborating with “SOS” producer DJ camper and why it’s always better to work with friends. She also dug into why “SOS” felt like the perfect way to end her Jaguar II chapter, and expressed her hopes that “SOS” the song might garner a Grammy win — and that “SOS” the emoji might become a “new way to summon your lover.”
