Ariana Grande, Kacey Musgraves, and SZA couldn’t sound more different. But on their new and upcoming albums, all three women are singing about the same thing: Saturn. Sure, space is very intriguing, and there may be no celestial body that’s more photogenic than Saturn and its trademark rings. But there’s something deeper here than casual planetary admiration.
SZA’s “Saturn,” released in late February, has lyrics about dreaming of the cosmic entity breaking her for the better. In the first verse of her lead single “Deeper Well,” a song about letting bad people and bad habits go, Musgraves is concerned with the same planet, singing, “My Saturn has returned.” And Grande has a track off her new album, released on March 8, titled “Saturn Returns Interlude” featuring a voiceover about waking up and changing your life.
They’re singing about the astrological phenomenon known as a Saturn return.
A Saturn return is the concept that every 30 or so years in a person’s life, Saturn comes back to the place in the sky that it was on the day that person was born. For a lot of people, 30 also happens to be a time when a huge jump in adulthood happens. And depending on how much you believe in astrology, a Saturn return could have a lot or a little to do with that.
As someone who dabbles in horoscopes and loves pop music, I wanted to get a better understanding of why my favorite female singers are so deeply obsessed with the way a planet orbits. I spoke with author and astrologer Jake Register about why a Saturn return seems to be a rough time for everyone, if all this stuff is just baloney, and whether you can really be a pop star today if you’re not singing about Saturn.
Jake, what is a “Saturn return?” When someone says Saturn return, what does that mean?
A Saturn return happens when you’re between 27 and 29 years old. It’s when Saturn returns to the same part of the same sign it was in in your birth chart. I was born at the end of 1996. I have Saturn in Aries. When Saturn gets back to Aries in like a year and a half to two years, that’s gonna be my Saturn return.
It’s one of the most critical cycles in astrology and, at a very basic level, your first Saturn return is like, “Oh my God, you’re a real grown-up.” It’s all about development and maturity.
I think when you hear about these things — development, maturity, growing up — and how people who are into astrology talk about the term, it seems like a Saturn return is not exactly a fun time. I am not really that excited about things like lessons.
Saturn is the taskmaster of the zodiac. It rules responsibility and if there’s anything to do with Saturn, she’s gonna make you work for it. You don’t have everything sorted out when you’re 26 years old, and once you hit 27, 28, or 29 — that Saturn return age — you start realizing........