On July 10, 1932, the Philadelphia Athletics beat the Cleveland Indians 18–17 in 18 innings in a Major League Baseball game played at League Park in Cleveland. Several major-league records were set during the game; for example, Johnny Burnett of the Indians became the only player to hit safely nine (or even eight) times in a game, while Cleveland's 33 hits and the teams' combined 58 hits are also single-game records. Pitcher Eddie Rommel secured the win for the Athletics, pitching an American League-record 17 innings in relief after Philadelphia's Lew Krausse gave up three runs in the first inning. The 29 hits Rommel allowed are a major-league record; the 14 runs against him are the most given up by a winning pitcher.
Coming into the game, the Athletics, who were the three-time defending American League champions, trailed the New York Yankees in the standings by 71⁄2 games. Sunday baseball was still illegal in Philadelphia, forcing the Athletics to make one-game road trips on some Sundays, including July 10. With his pitching staff exhausted by six games in the previous three days, the owner and manager of the Athletics, Connie Mack, took only two pitchers on the train trip to Cleveland, giving the rest of the staff the day off. With no chance of being relieved except by a position player, Rommel pitched with mixed effectiveness, giving up six runs in the seventh inning but only two runs in the final nine innings of the game. He aided his own cause by getting three hits in seven at bats. Cleveland's Wes Ferrell took the loss after Jimmie Foxx got his sixth hit of the game and then scored. Foxx had already batted in eight runs, having hit three home runs and accumulated sixteen total bases, tying a record that has since been broken.
The victory brought the Athletics to within six games of the Yankees, but they came no closer. Philadelphia finished the season in second place, and the Athletics did not win the pennant again for forty years. Neither Krausse nor Rommel pitched in the major leagues after 1932. The July 10 game was the 171st victory of Rommel's MLB career; he never won another major league game.

Philadelphia Athletics 18, Cleveland Indians 17 (1932)


The 1932 Philadelphia Athletics were the three-time defending American League champions, winners of the 1929 and 1930 World Series, and were owned and managed by Connie Mack. The success did not translate to the balance sheet, however, as the Depression led to declining attendance. Successful players expected to be paid well, and Mack had lost a considerable amount of money in the 1929 stock market crash. The Cleveland Indians, on the other hand, had not won a World Series since 1920. By the late 1920s, they were under new ownership, who were determined to spend freely to acquire talent, and after a seventh-place finish in 1928, finished in the top half of the American League standings the next seven years. In 1928, the voters of Cleveland had approved the construction of a new stadium with 78,000 seats, the largest baseball stadium built to that point. At the time of the July 10, 1932 game, it was within three weeks of opening. In the meantime, the Indians played all home games at League Park.
By early July 1932, the Athletics were in second place in the American League, behind the New York Yankees. The schedule called for the Athletics to play doubleheaders at their home field, Shibe Park, each day from Thursday, July 7 to Saturday, July 9, against the Chicago White Sox. The Athletics won four of six of those games, and were 71⁄2 games behind the Yankees at the end of play on July 9.
The Indians were to play a five-game series on those dates at the Washington Senators, with doubleheaders Thursday and Saturday. Cleveland won four out of those five games to advance from fifth to fourth in the American League. Both the Athletics and Indians were then to travel to League Park in Cleveland for a single game Sunday, before both teams went to Shibe Park to begin a four-game series with a Monday doubleheader. Thus, the Athletics were to play nine games in five days, and the Indians eight.


The single game in Cleveland was necessitated because until the 1934 season, Sunday baseball was illegal in Pennsylvania. Thus, the Athletics and other Pennsylvania teams were required to play road games out of the state on Sundays. The Athletics had played a single Sunday home game in 1926 to test the law, but it had been upheld by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The previous Sunday, July 3, the Athletics had gone to Washington to play a one-game series against the Senators.
It was not unusual for teams on such one-day road trips to give some players the day off, in part to economize on train tickets, and Mack took only two pitchers with him to Cleveland, Lew Krausse and Eddie Rommel. Another reason for giving the rest of the pitching staff the day off was their exhaustion after three doubleheaders in as many days. The two pitchers were the team's only relief pitchers: Krausse was a rookie, and Rommel a 12-year veteran in his final season. Rommel, who had pitched five innings over the previous two days, was surprised to be asked to come to Cleveland. Mack also gave two position players the day off. One of them was Mickey Cochrane, his starting catcher, though he included two other catchers among the eleven players he took to Cleveland. According to Sam Otis, sports editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, in reporting on the game, Cleveland manager Roger Peckinpaugh was nearly as bad off for pitching as was Mack. The Indians allowed a half dozen players to skip the one-day trip to Cleveland.


About 10,000 fans came to League Park for the game, which began at 3 p.m. Rommel pitched batting practice for the Athletics, while Krausse was the starting pitcher; Clint Brown started for Cleveland. Brown got off to a shaky start, giving up two runs due to three Athletics hits and his own throwing error. The Indians scored three runs in the bottom of the first inning on a home run by Earl Averill, putting them up 3–2. Mack allowed Krausse to hit in the top of the second inning as the team lacked any pinch hitters other than the one spare catcher, then sent Rommel to the mound for the bottom of the second inning. Neither team scored in that inning. In the top of the third, Brown gave up a solo home run to slugger Jimmie Foxx, his 31st of the season, to tie the score.
Rommel walked with two outs in the top of the fourth inning, sparking a Philadelphia rally: three singles scored two Athletics runs, making the score 5–3 Philadelphia. In the bottom of the inning, however, Cleveland converted three hits, two walks, and a wild pitch from Rommel, into three runs to take the lead 6–5. Philadelphia failed to score in the top of the fifth, leaving two men on base who had reached on a hit and an error, and Brown led off the bottom of the fifth with a hit. Shortstop Johnny Burnett, who had already singled in the first, second and fourth innings, scored Brown with a double to make the score 7–5 Indians. Mule Haas led off the top of the sixth with a double, and came around to score on a single by Al Simmons, cutting the Indians lead to 7–6. In the bottom of the sixth, two hits led to one Indians run, extending the lead to 8–6.


In the top of the seventh, Dib Williams tripled with two out, and was brought home by a single by Rommel, cutting Cleveland's lead to 8–7. Willis Hudlin replaced Brown on the mound, and walked the next two batters to load the bases. The fans booed Peckinpaugh, who was coaching first base, disagreeing with the choice of Hudlin as relief pitcher. Otis stated that Brown "was obviously not himself" and that Hudlin was "helpless" in getting the ball over the plate. The manager then sent in Wes Ferrell to pitch. Ferrell, the ace of the Cleveland staff, had pitched a complete game on Friday, two days before. Jimmy Dykes cleared the bases with a double to give the Athletics a 10–7 lead. Simmons then singled and Foxx hit a two-run home run, his second of the game, to make the score 13–7 Athletics.
Burnett led off the seventh with his fifth hit of the game; three more Cleveland hits followed, cutting the lead to 13–11. Mack called time, and the reporters in the press box speculated he would relieve Rommel, sending in Dykes, the third baseman, to complete the game, as Dykes had been called upon to do in 1926 and 1927. Instead, Mack replaced the catcher, sending in Ed Madjeski for Johnnie Heving. This one change of catchers, along with the three pitching changes, were the only substitutions in the game as each team used only eleven players–Philadelphia had brought only eleven players. Otis suggested that the change in catchers might have led to Rommel's increased effectiveness in the upcoming innings.


When play resumed, Glenn Myatt walked to put runners on first and second. Then Bill Cissell attempted a sacrifice bunt, but popped the ball into the air towards Rommel. Seeing a chance at a double play, Rommel deliberately did not catch the ball, then threw towards second base. The ball went into center field, however, and a run scored, cutting the lead to 13–12. Rommel threw his cap in disgust. He had planned what to do in that situation for years, but when the opportunity arrived, he muffed it. Two more runs followed on a single by Dick Porter before Rommel could strike out Burnett to end the inning, but Cleveland now led 14–13. With Cleveland now in the lead, the fans cheered Peckinpaugh for several minutes.
There was no scoring in the eighth inning, and Ferrell retired the first two batters in the top of the ninth. With Philadelphia down to its final out, Dykes hit a ground ball towards first base, which should have ended the game. Instead, the ball went through the legs of first baseman Ed Morgan, and Dykes was safe. Simmons walked, and Foxx hit the ball down the left field line for a double. The ball became lodged against the bench in the bullpen, and two runs scored, giving Philadelphia a 15–14 lead.
Willie Kamm led off the bottom of the ninth for Cleveland with a double. Ferrell struck out and Porter hit a sacrifice fly to right field, sending Kamm to third base. Burnett got an infield hit, his sixth hit of the game, with the throw to home plate too late, tying the game at 15–15. Averill singled to send Burnett to third base, and advanced to second on defensive indifference. Joe Vosmik sent a fly ball to center field that looked like the game winner, but Haas made a spectacular catch to retire the side and send the game to extra innings.


With the teams having scored thirty runs in the first nine innings, they scored none in the next six, as Rommel and Ferrell matched each other inning for inning. According to baseball historian Lee Allen, "Rommel must have wondered what he had to do to earn his pay check". To that end, he singled with two outs in the top of the tenth, but was out trying to extend it to a double. Outside League Park on Lexington Avenue, streetcars sat empty, waiting to transport the crowd home, but the fans remained in their seats in the ballpark.
In the top of the eleventh, Simmons singled and Foxx walked; a groundout sent Simmons to third base but he was stranded there when the third out was made. In the bottom half of the inning, Burnett got his seventh hit, a double, tying the major league record set by Wilbert Robinson in 1891. This was with one out; following an intentional walk to Averill, Vosmik hit into a double play to retire the side. In the bottom of the twelfth, Morgan doubled, and with one out, Cissell singled, but Morgan was tagged out at home plate. Kamm grounded out to end the threat. Burnett's eighth hit, a single, in the bottom of the thirteenth, went for naught as he was left on first base.
Dykes singled to lead off the top of the sixteenth. He was forced at second by Simmons. This brought Foxx to the plate; he hit his third home run of the game, his 33rd of the season, giving Philadelphia a 17–15 lead. The runs in the sixteenth were the only runs that Philadelphia scored with fewer than two outs. In the bottom of the sixteenth, Porter doubled and was sent to third by Burnett's ninth hit of the game. An Averill sacrifice fly cut the lead to 17–16, and Morgan tied it with a single to drive in Burnett. Myatt grounded out, and with two outs, Cissell sent a long fly ball to center field, but Haas made another game-saving catch with his back against the fence.
Philadelphia went in order in the top of the seventeenth inning; Kamm walked in the bottom of the inning and got as far as second on a sacrifice bunt from Ferrell, but Rommel retired the next two batters to end the inning.
In the top of the eighteenth, Ferrell retired the first two batters. Foxx singled, and Eric McNair hit a drive into center field which took an unexpected bounce over Vosmik's head. Although McNair was thrown out trying to stretch a double into a triple, Foxx had scored, and Philadelphia led 18–17. In the bottom of the inning, Rommel struck out two batters and retired the side in order, ending the game. The game had lasted four hours and five minutes. Had neither team scored, the game would have continued until nightfall put an end to it. Cleveland left 24 men on base; Philadelphia left 15. If Rommel averaged three pitches for each of the 87 batters he faced, he would have thrown 261 pitches, but he probably threw more than that.


Burnett's nine hits in a game, Cleveland's 33 hits and the 58 hits by the two teams combined, set Major League records that still stand as of 2025. No other player has had more than seven hits in a game, and Burnett's seven singles are also a record. Foxx's sixteen total bases tied a Major League record that was surpassed by Gil Hodges of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950. Sixteen total bases remained the AL record until bettered by Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers in 2012, and it remains the record for a player for the Athletics franchise.
Rommel set Major League records by allowing 29 hits in a game, and for the most runs given up by a winning pitcher (fourteen). He also gave up the most bases on balls of any relief pitcher in MLB history, nine. It was the fifth game in Rommel's career in which he allowed fifteen or more hits, and he won all of them.
Rommel set what is still (as of 2025) the American League record for longest relief appearance with seventeen innings. He did not beat the Major League record of 181⁄3 innings for a relief appearance, set by Zip Zabel of the Chicago Cubs in 1915. The two teams tied an American League record with 35 combined runs scored; this was surpassed in 1950 when the Boston Red Sox defeated the Athletics, 22–14, at Fenway Park. The game was at the time the highest-scoring extra innings game in Major League history; this was bested on May 17, 1979, when the Philadelphia Phillies defeated the Cubs at Wrigley Field, 23–22 in ten innings. The July 10, 1932 game is the only one in Major League history to have five players get five or more base hits each: Burnett, Averill, Morgan, Simmons and Foxx.


Allen recorded, writing thirty years later, "What a game it turned out to be!" The North American Newspaper Alliance reported that "for eighteen innings, two never-say-die, if somewhat groggy and erratic, ball teams, had refused to quit". Gayle Talbot of the Associated Press called the game "one of the most spectacular long-distance victories in baseball history ... a game the likes of which won't be seen once in a blue moon". Sam Otis, sports editor of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, wrote that McNair's hit "took a pesky hop into the setting rays of Old Sol to give the Philadelphia Athletics an eighteen-inning triumph over a never-say-die band of Indians in the most dramatic diamond struggle in Cleveland history".
Mack stated that the Sunday victory in Cleveland "looked to be our best day so far of the season". The manager related that "Rommel had to go 17 innings to win and how he stood it is beyond me. Yet he outpitched Ferrell, the Cleveland ace." Mack also stated that Foxx "hit three extremely long home runs, all into Cleveland's far-off left field bleachers".
The Chicago Tribune noted the many batting records set in a game it deemed "one of the most remarkable in major league history", but also noted that Rommel and Ferrell had, in extra innings, given a "remarkable exhibition of pitching". Murray Robinson of the Brooklyn Times-Union mentioned Burnett's record of nine hits and stated that it was "probably the only one that Burnett will ever make. It's usually the case that the average ballplayers pop up with most of the freak records in the book." Stephen V. Rice of the Society for American Baseball Research later called it "one of the wildest and craziest games in baseball history". Baseball historian Norman Macht stated that the fans at League Park "wound up taking the wildest roller-coaster ride in baseball history. Their alternating currents of joy and despair would leave them exhausted—and late for Sunday supper."


The Philadelphia victory, combined with the Yankees losing both games of a doubleheader to the St. Louis Browns, brought the Athletics to within six games of New York, but they would never again be so close that season. The next day, Cleveland and Philadelphia played two games at Shibe Park, and the Indians won both games, also taking the games against the Athletics on Tuesday and Wednesday to move into second place in the AL. In his Sunday newspaper column, Mack blamed the setback on the exhaustion of the team's pitching staff, called upon to pitch ninety innings in five days. On July 31, the teams met again in Cleveland for the opening of Cleveland Stadium before a crowd believed to be over 80,000 people (76,979 paid). Contrasting with the high scoring of the July 10 game, the Athletics beat the Indians 1–0, and beat them again by that score the following day. By this time the Athletics were back in second place, where they finished the season, thirteen games behind the Yankees. Cleveland finished fourth, nineteen games back.
On September 2, 1932, Krausse started for the Athletics and shut out the Red Sox, 15–0. He developed a sore arm and never pitched in the major leagues again, spending the next ten years in the low-level minor leagues. Ferrell, the losing pitcher on July 10, finished the season with a record of 23–13, the fourth straight year he had won twenty or more games. He finished his career in 1941 having achieved six such seasons and with a lifetime record of 193–128. For Burnett, 1932 was the final year in which he played 100 or more games, though he remained active until 1935, a year in which he hit .223 for the Browns, finishing his nine-year major league career with a lifetime batting average of .284. Foxx continued his challenge of Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs in a season, but hampered by a wrist injury sustained in late July, fell two short.
Rommel's feat of pitching 17 innings reminded Murray Robinson of the 26-inning pitching marathon in 1920 between Joe Oeschger of the Boston Braves and Leon Cadore of the Brooklyn Dodgers, that ended in a 1–1 tie; he said neither pitcher was ever the same. He noted, though, that Rommel "has no future to consider". Rommel later stated that his arm was finished after the July 10 game. He had gained his 171st career victory against the Indians, but never won another game. He was released by the Athletics at season's end, and, when he could not find work as a player, was hired by Mack as a coach. After Rommel had a stint as a minor-league manager, Mack recommended that Rommel become an umpire; he spent the next 24 years umpiring, all but two of them in the major leagues.
Mack's financial distress led him, after the 1932 season, to begin to sell off his team's stars. He stated that if Sunday baseball had been legal in Philadelphia, he would not have had to do so. In 1933, the Pennsylvania General Assembly passed legislation allowing local voters to approve Sunday baseball, and Philadelphia's electorate did so that November. This came too late to preserve the team that had won three American League pennants, and Mack's Athletics posted poor records for the rest of the 1930s, as did the National League Philadelphia Phillies. The Athletics did not again win a pennant until 1972, by which time they were playing in Oakland, California. The Indians won their second pennant and World Series in 1948.


Source for all box score statistics, except the names of the umpires, which was here.


Qalaherriaq (Inuktun pronunciation: [qalahəχːiɑq], c. 1834 – June 14, 1856), baptized as Erasmus Augustine Kallihirua, was an Inughuaq hunter from Cape York, Greenland. He was recruited in 1850 as an interpreter by the crew of the British survey barque HMS Assistance during the search for John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition. He guided the ship to Wolstenholme Fjord to investigate rumors of a massacre of Franklin's crew, but only found the corpses of local Inughuit and crew from an unrelated British vessel. With the help of the crew of the vessel, he produced accurate maps of his homeland. Although Assistance initially planned to return him to his family after the expedition, poor sea conditions made landing at Cape York impossible, and he was taken to England and placed under the care of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK).
Enrolled at St Augustine's College in Canterbury, England, Qalaherriaq studied English and Christianity for several years. He was appointed by the Bishop of Newfoundland Edward Feild to accompany him on religious missions to the Inuit of Labrador. He arrived at St. John's in October 1855, and began studying at the Theological Institute. Plagued by illness since his time aboard Assistance, he died from complications of long-term tuberculosis in June 1856, shortly before he was scheduled to travel to Labrador. A posthumous biography, Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian, was published by the SPCK shortly after his death. Inughuit oral histories, collected by Knud Rasmussen in the early 20th century, describe him as the victim of an abduction by the British, and relate that his mother mourned him without learning of his fate.


Qalaherriaq was known by various names. Qalaherriaq or Qalaherhuaq are approximations of his name's pronunciation in his native dialect of Inuktun, rendered as Qalasirsuaq ([qalasəsːuɑq]) in standard Greenlandic. This was rendered as Kallihirua in contemporary sources, and frequently abbreviated "Kalli". He was named Erasmus York (after Captain Erasmus Ommanney and Cape York), before his baptism in 1853 as Erasmus Augustine Kallihirua. Other spellings of his name include Caloosa, Calahierna, Kalersik, Ka'le'sik, Qalaseq, and Kalesing.


Qalaherriaq was born around 1834 to Qisunnguaq and Saattoq, members of an Inughuit band near Cape York and Wolstenholme Fjord in northwestern Greenland. He had a younger sister, and perhaps another younger sibling, both of whose names are unknown. His band, situated near auk-hunting grounds, was encountered by various ships searching for a lost British exploring mission.


In 1845, Sir John Franklin commanded an expedition attempting to transit the final uncharted sections of the Northwest Passage in what is now western Nunavut. The two warships under Franklin's command, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were trapped by ice in the Victoria Strait. The ships were abandoned in April 1848, and all remaining crew members presumably died while attempting to traverse the Canadian Arctic mainland. In March 1848, when the expedition had been out of contact for several years, the Royal Navy's Board of Admiralty launched a series of expeditions to locate whatever remained of Franklin's expedition and determine their fate.
Four concurrent search expeditions were outfitted in 1850 following lobbying by Franklin's widow, Jane, who refused to accept that her husband was almost certainly dead. The first of these expeditions were headed by the barques HMS Resolute and HMS Assistance, accompanied by the steam tenders HMS Pioneer and HMS Intrepid. The second involved only two ships, the brigs HMS Lady Franklin and HMS Sophia. Privately funded expeditions of the schooners Prince Albert (commanded by Commander Charles Forsyth) and Felix (commanded by Sir John Ross) joined those funded by the Admiralty.
On August 12, 1850, HMS Lady Franklin and HMS Sophia, commanded by whaler and explorer William Penny, reached the coast of Cape York. Upon sighting an approaching Inughuit kayak, Sophia anchored. The three men aboard the kayak were invited on deck to meet with Penny's interpreter, Johan Carl Petersen, a Dane from Upernavik. Petersen inquired for information relating to Franklin's expedition, but the relatively large number of European ships previously sighted in the region, coupled with the Inughuit's great excitement aboard the vessel, resulted in no useful information, and the Inughuit returned to shore.


The following day, Prince Albert and HMS Assistance spotted the same group of Inughuit. A landing party including Charles Forsyth and Captain Erasmus Ommanney went to shore aboard HMS Intrepid, followed by the other ships. They were greeted by two young men, including Qalaherriaq. However, none of the landing party could speak Inuktun, and were unable to communicate with the band ashore. Shortly afterwards, the party was joined by Sir John Ross and his Kalaallit interpreter Adam Beck, who had arrived aboard Felix. After a long conversation, the only ship that could be readily identified from the Inughuit accounts was North Star, a supply ship which had passed through the region during another search for Franklin's expedition.
Upon the officers' return to their ships, Beck became noticeably distressed. He explained that the Inughuit mentioned an additional ship that had passed through the area in 1846 staffed by naval officers, which was massacred by another Inughuit band while camping ashore at Wolstenholme Fjord. After Ommanney and Petersen were informed of the story, they had Beck repeat the story to various officers. Ommanney boarded Lady Franklin and relayed the story to Penny. Ommanney, Penny and Petersen travelled back to Cape York aboard Intrepid, intending to confirm the story and acquire a local interpreter. When the Inughuit repeated the same information about North Star to the explorers and denied any violence against the British, Petersen was convinced that Beck had confused the information about North Star with Franklin's expedition. Ommaney recruited Qalaherriaq to serve as an interpreter.


Ommanney's diary described Qalaherriaq as readily volunteering to go with the expedition, without even returning to camp to gather his possessions. Nineteenth century sources state that he was fully ready to "remain under the captain's own personal care, and be with him always", and that he had stoically accepted his role as an interpreter due to a lack of surviving family. However, this account has been heavily disputed by later scholarship. Significant contradictions exist between period descriptions of Qalaherriaq's decision to volunteer. Explorer William Parker Snow's 1851 account, Voyage of the Prince Albert in Search of Sir John Franklin, describes him as a "young man without father or mother", while Petersen's 1857 Erindringer Fra Polarlandene describes him as being unbothered by leaving his mother. Petersen's account claims that Qalaherriaq agreed to a brief term of service, and was originally supposed to be returned to his family after guiding the mission to Wolstenholme Fjord.
After Qalaherriaq and the explorers boarded Intrepid, they were joined by Beck, Ross, and Forsyth, alongside Horatio Austin of HMS Resolute and Sherard Osborn of HMS Pioneer. Upon cross-questioning, Beck repeated what he claimed the Inughuit had told him, but Qalaherriaq insisted that he was lying. Communication between the two was limited due to linguistic differences between Qalaherriaq's Inuktun and Beck's Greenlandic. Qalaherriaq was able to communicate with Petersen much easier than with Beck. The officers eventually became convinced that Beck was incorrect, but continued towards Wolstenholme Fjord.


Upon transfer to Assistance, Qalaherriaq was washed and dressed in European clothing. He was given the name Erasmus York, although continued to be called variations of his birth name while aboard. He was seen as a curiosity by the crew, who recruited him to participate in the "Royal Arctic Theatre", a trope of theatrical performances. Ommanney described him as "an interesting specimen of uncivilised life". Qalaherriaq was the subject of a satirical article published in the Northern Lights, a ship newspaper published aboard Assistance, where he is depicted as praising European civilization, while making various naïve and childlike statements about ship life, including a joke about him misidentifying sailors cross-dressing during a masquerade as shamanic spirits.
While on board Assistance, Qalaherriaq was said to have drawn several detailed maps of the surrounding fjords. While he was described as drawing them single-handedly, biographer Peter Martin states that Qalaherriaq "certainly did not do so alone". The maps were drawn according to European cartography, and do not reflect Inuit geography or mapping, such as the Ammassalik wooden maps. Geographer Clements Markham, the Assistance midshipman, heavily praised the map in his 1875 Arctic Geography and Ethnology, echoing earlier European praise of Inuit geographical knowledge.


Qalaherriaq guided Assistance to Wolstenholme Fjord where the Europeans investigated the claims of a massacre of the Franklin expedition. The area was devastated due to a recent epidemic. When the crew encountered several abandoned igloos at the site of Uummannaq at North Star Bay, they found a heaped pile of seven bodies. The survivors were assumed to have fled the area without burying the dead due to the disease outbreak. The crew excavated several graves, finding the bodies of both Inuit and British seamen from North Star who had contracted the disease.
Ommanney and his men proceeded to loot the graves and nearby huts for Inughuit artefacts. A British officer examined a grave and removed a narwhal tusk spear that had placed atop the grave as a form of Inughuit grave artifact. Qalaherriaq cried and begged him to put the spear back, recognizing the grave as being that of his father, Qisunnguaq. The grave was repaired by another officer and the spear, considered in Inughuit customs to be used by the dead for protection in the afterlife, was returned.
With sea conditions rendering return to Cape York impossible, Assistance crossed Baffin Bay and wintered at Griffith Island, near the present location of Resolute. Icebergs continued to pose a threat the following spring, and the ship began the return trip to England without returning Qalaherriaq to his family.
Early 20th century Inughuit oral histories, recorded by Knud Rasmussen, describe Qalaherriaq as being abducted by the British, with his mother mourning his disappearance without ever learning of his fate. The loss of an adolescent son, expected to hunt for the family, would place a great material burden on his mother and siblings. This was especially true during an era marked by severe hardship for the Inughuit, characterized by population decline, widespread disease outbreaks, and extreme isolation from outside trade or contact.


Qalaherriaq arrived in England in the autumn of 1851 aboard Assistance, and was brought to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. In October 1851, he visited the Great Exhibition in London alongside Reverend George Murray, secretary of the Society, one of a small group of clergy and officers who served as caretakers to Qalaherriaq.
In around late 1851, Qalaherriaq sat for a life-size double portrait by an unknown artist, which some decades later was donated for display at the Royal Navy College in Greenwich. The double portrait was made according to contemporary European race science, and features emphasis on phrenological and racialized features such as his cranial anatomy and skin tone. Biographers Ingeborg Høvik and Axel Jeremiassen described the portrait as appearing to Victorians as a "visual embodiment of a lower race" which associates the Inuit with the theorized "Mongolian race". He also sat for a photograph while in England, now lost. An illustration based on it is featured in an 1855 edition of James C. Prichard's The Natural History of Man.


In November, at the recommendation of the Admiralty and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, Qalaherriaq was placed in St Augustine's College, a Church of England missionary college in Canterbury. Here he learned to read and write while receiving a religious education, and served as an apprentice to a local tailor. From 1852 to 1853 he was interviewed by Captain John Washington for a revised edition of his Greenlandic linguistics text, Eskimaux and English Vocabulary, for the Use of the Arctic Expeditions. By September 1852, he had made some progress in English but struggled with reading. He was reported to greatly enjoy writing, and made friendships with the children in his spelling classes.
Qalaherriaq had suffered from a chronic illness since his time on Assistance. He coughed frequently, and by the spring of 1853 was bedridden for several days during a period of poor weather. On November 27, 1853, he was baptized as Erasmus Augustine Kallihirua at St. Martin's Church in Canterbury, in a ceremony attended by Ommanney and various ministers and clergy, alongside various members of "the poorer class to whom Kalli is well known".


Appointed by Edward Feild, the Bishop of Newfoundland and the Warden of St Augustine's, Qalaherriaq was sent to the Newfoundland Colony to assist missionary efforts among the Inuit of Labrador. To support this, he was given a £25 per year stipend (equivalent to £3,000 in 2023). He arrived at St John's, Newfoundland, on October 2, 1855. Although all were Inuit languages, Qalaherriaq's dialect of Greenlandic was a distinct language from the Nunatsiavummiutitut dialect of Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, and Qalaherriaq struggled to communicate with a Moravian missionary from Labrador. He attended the Theological Institute (now Queen's College, part of the Memorial University). While in Newfoundland, he practiced ice skating, but continued to suffer from chronic illness.
Qalaherriaq planned to accompany the Bishop of Newfoundland on missionary work to Labrador in the summer of 1856. However, after he went swimming in cold water at St. John's, his health declined rapidly. Bedridden for a week, he died on June 14, 1856. An autopsy done at St. John's in the following weeks concluded that he died of heart failure associated with long-term tuberculosis. His body displayed common symptoms of the disease, including inflamed lymph nodes, blackened lungs, and an "enormously enlarged" heart.
A short biography, Kalli, the Esquimaux Christian, was written by Reverend Murray in 1856 and published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Murray based the book off his personal experiences alongside contributions from Qalaherriaq's other British caretakers. As the secretary of the Society, he had previously worked to organize Qalaherriaq's life and education in England. The memoir became the main primary source on Qalaherriaq's life, alongside the various accounts of the 1850 search expeditions.


The Sonata for E♭ Alto Saxophone and Piano, Op. 19, was composed by Paul Creston in 1939. The sonata was commissioned in the spring by Creston's frequent collaborator, the American saxophonist Cecil Leeson. Creston began composition by June: it was completed by the end of August and slated for publication in 1940, although this was postponed to 1945 due to World War II.
The sonata is in three movements and takes around thirteen minutes to perform. Its form follows a traditional, classical-era structure. The first movement is in a modified sonata form with no recapitulation: two themes are introduced in an exposition and extensively developed, before the movement ends with a coda. Harmonically, it is based on seventh chords, with its tonality moving between several tonal centers. A slower middle movement with song-like melodies follows, before the sonata ends with a rhythmically complex rondo featuring polymeters. The sonata as a whole is of considerable difficulty for both players.
Creston and Leeson premiered the sonata at the Carnegie Chamber Hall on February 15, 1940, although Leeson had performed it on tour prior to that date. No critics were present at the premiere, but the sonata's 1955 debut recording by Vincent Abato and Creston obtained a mixed response. Most found the sonata enjoyable, but there was criticism of a perceived simplistic and salon-like styling. It was the first of Creston's chamber works to be recorded and had appeared on fourteen records by 1980. Today, it is broadly seen as a key piece of the classical saxophone's repertoire and is frequently performed.


Paul Creston believed that composition was a spiritual act, "just as vital ... as prayer and good deeds", and thought it should not be restricted to career composers. He was a recipient of a 1938 Guggenheim Fellowship for composition, and part of his wide-ranging output was dedicated to advancing the classical repertoire of instruments little-used within the tradition, like the saxophone. In 1934, Creston met the saxophonist Cecil Leeson through the National Music League, an organization where Creston was an accompanist. Leeson was sponsored by the group and benefited from their provision of accompanists for his tours. He had lost his habitual accompanist, Lois Russell, and was dissatisfied enough with their replacements to beg the league to send "someone who can read". Leeson was presented with Creston, whose playing impressed him. The two began a partnership.
Leeson was a crucial figure to the development of the classical saxophone. At that time, the instrument was perceived as unsuited to art music and restricted to more mainstream musical genres. Along with Creston, Leeson worked with Lawson Lunde, Burnet Tuthill and other American composers to create a large body of work for the classical saxophone, which includes Creston's Suite, Sonata and Concerto. He was the first saxophonist to perform at New York City's Town Hall on February 5, 1937, accompanied by Creston.
Creston ceased performing regularly with Leeson in March 1937 to focus on composition, but they continued to play occasionally together until 1940. On his relationship with Leeson, Creston retrospectively stated: "Cecil Leeson has been the greatest stimulus for the enrichment of the saxophone repertory, and I am most grateful for having been chosen a contributor to the repertory." He credited Leeson for inspiring his love of the saxophone—which he previously thought of as "ugly ... with an irritatingly buzzy tone"—as well as the success of his compositions for the instrument.


At the time Creston composed his sonata, French composers were leading the development of the classical saxophone. The instrument suffered from a dearth of original concert repertoire: aside from Glazunov's Concerto, Debussy's Rhapsodie and Creston's own Suite, Leesons's recitals of the time were dominated by transcriptions of vocal and string music.
In early 1939, Leeson asked Creston to write a sonata for the saxophone after the success of his Suite. He was in the second year of his Guggenheim fellowship, which usually involved a year abroad in Europe, but this was excused due to the political instability caused by the onset of World War II. Although they had ceased regular performances as a duo, Creston accepted the commission following on from the success of his Suite: he was told by Henry Moe, an associate of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, that a recording of the Suite was key to the granting of his fellowship. Creston had only sketched a few bars when he received a visit from Leeson in June. The sonata was completed a couple of months later while Leeson was teaching at the Interlochen Center for the Arts' National Music Camp, and finalized at a meeting when Leeson came back. He received the score on August 28, along with an apology from Creston for being unable to practice the accompaniment:


Enclosed is the score and part to my Sonata. I regret that I am unable to prepare the piano part myself right now as I am preparing for a Town Hall recital in October with violinist Rachmael Weinstock in a performance of my Suite for Violin and Piano. I will learn the part after the recital. Enjoy.


The New Music Group was chosen to publish the sonata and intended to do so in late 1940. Due to staffing shortages from World War II conscription, this deadline was missed. After the war, although engraving was already completed, the sonata was instead published by Axelrod Publications in 1945 and the copyright was assigned to the Templeton Publishing Company. The sonata's publishing rights were acquired by Shawnee Press in 1948. Later, realizing its popularity after attending the 1978 Marcel Mule International Saxophone Competition, Creston wrote to Shawnee's president to suggest that the publishers should consider opening a French branch.
Creston's manuscript is held by the LaBudde Special Collections at the University of Missouri–Kansas City as part of a collection donated by his wife, Louise. The ink-written score has annotations in pencil, and a transcription of the second movement for viola is included.


Unknown to Creston, Leeson decided to test the sonata's reception on a multi-state tour with his accompanist Josef Wagner a month before its official premiere: among their seven performances, they played at Heidelberg College in Tiffin, Ohio (January 9, 1940), Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana (January 11) and Wiley High School in Terre Haute, Indiana (January 15). It was several decades later that Creston discovered the truth; despite Leeson's tour, Creston still considered the New York City performance to be its true premiere.


The sonata was given its official premiere by Creston and Leeson at a New Music Group concert at the Carnegie Chamber Hall on February 15, 1940. Leeson performed the sonata throughout the year, with recitals at St. Vincent's Hall, Elkhart, Indiana (April 21, on his tour with Josef Wagner), and the American Music Festival, New York City, New York (May 8, the last time he would perform with Creston). Creston continued to accompany performances of the sonata into the late 1960s. He played recitals with Frederick Wymaat at the State University of New York (October 22, 1966), and Vincent Abato, professor of saxophone at the Juilliard School, at the New York College of Music (November 13, 1966) and the WNYC American Music Festival (February 13, 1968).


No reviews exist of the sonata's premiere performance as Weill Recital Hall concerts were not frequented by New York critics. Creston, Leeson and their audience were all satisfied with the performance. The sonata's debut recording by Vincent Abato garnered mixed reviews. Several reviewers saw the sonata as being traditional and lacking some depth. Reviewing the Abato record, the musicologist Nathan Broder wrote in The Musical Quarterly that the sonata was a "pleasant little addition to the meager repertory of the instrument", but that it was conservatively composed and "will not advance the cause of music one inch". In a larger discography published by High Fidelity, Ray Ellsworth described the sonata as "well-wrought if lightweight". In a review for the Library Journal, Mark Melson agreed with Ellsworth on the sonata's structure, finding it traditional and ably written. The composer and musicologist Dika Newlin reviewed the sonata in Sigma Alpha Iota's Pan Pipes, finding it enjoyable with "disarmingly catchy rhythms", but also found it to lack depth. Some reviewers detected a French-inspired styling: reviewing Abato's recording in the Saturday Review, the composer Arthur Berger suggested similarities to "salon music of French genre", but with an American influence. American Record Guide's editor James Lyons criticized the sonata's styling as incompatible with the "awfully note-heavy" writing (particularly the accompaniment). In The New York Times, its later chief music critic Harold Schonberg wrote that he found the melodic content enjoyable, but saw it as using a "near-salon approach".
Later reviews of the sonata were more favorable: in a 1979 review for Fanfare, the music critic Walter Simmons lauded the sonata as a "true classic of the saxophone repertoire", with "Mozartian precision" and enjoyable melodic content. He also commented on the sonata's suitability for virtuoso players, being a "flattering medium for representing a performer's artistry". Tim Page of The New York Times wrote in 1983 that he considered the sonata underrated, complimenting its authentic and "distinctly American sound".
According to Simmons, the sonata is "probably Creston's single most widely performed and best-known work". It is widely considered an influential piece in the classical saxophone repertoire. In a conversation with Eugene Rousseau, Marcel Mule stated he considered the sonata "one of the definitive works for saxophone and piano" along with Claude Pascal's Sonatine. By 1978, Harry Gee of Indiana State University suggested that it could be "one of the most often performed twentieth-century solos for any wind instrument". Stephen Cottrell—professor of music at City, University of London—expressed a similar sentiment, saying it is "probably now the single most frequently performed recital work in the saxophone repertoire". Along with his other works, the success of Creston's sonata contributed to the development of the saxophone's repertory by inspiring other American composers—including Edvard Moritz, Bernhard Heiden and Burnet Tuthill—to compose for the instrument.


The sonata is in three movements, following a traditional fast–slow–fast structure:


A typical performance lasts approximately thirteen minutes.


The opening movement is in common time and is written in a modified sonata form without a full recapitulation, comprising an exposition where two themes are stated, a development section and a coda. The movement's harmony mainly uses seventh chords containing tritones and features pantonality: temporary tonal centers occasionally emerge, the principal of which is E major. It starts with a vigorous theme in the saxophone, which suggests a Lydian modality through its use of a sharpened fourth scale degree.


This theme is underwritten by non-functional harmony and can be divided into four motifs: although all motifs are used, the third appears most extensively in the development section.


The music calms after an initial climax and settles into a more stable tonality of E major. A quieter, song-like second theme is introduced in the saxophone, which contrasts the energetic first theme.


A transition occurs following the exposition, introducing the development section. Creston develops the first theme using sequences and repetition, manipulating the third motif. Each repetition has an extra quarter note beat in length, shifting the motif's accentuation and undermining the 44 time. Development of the second theme occurs in the piano, later joined by saxophone. The change to a tonal center of D♭ major develops the theme through a darker timbre. After another transition based on the second theme, the first theme is developed until the movement's close. Creston uses scalic runs and the heights of the saxophones range (up to altissimo G6) to create a climax, before using a coda based on the first theme to end the movement.


"With tranquility" is a slow movement in 54 based on lyrical melodies. Its form is the subject of scholarly disagreement, and is variously described as through-composed and ternary. The movement suggests a key of A major, although this is unstable: this tonal center only appears at the movement's start and end. Harmonically, the movement mainly uses consecutive seventh chords. It opens with the piano playing a single melodic line with chordal accompaniment, moving by step. Simmons suggests that this melody is a development of the first movement's second theme.


After an exposition of this theme in the saxophone, it is developed by altering timbre and harmony, briefly in the tonal center of F♯ major before moving to D major. The piano accompaniment, which was mainly based on quarter note rhythms, now uses faster sixteenth notes to form hemiolas with triplet rhythms in the saxophone. This development builds to the movement's climax, where the parts use imitation of rhythm and melody. The theme returns with C major as a tonal center, now lower in range and volume. It is further developed with rhythmic changes introduced in the development. A final cadence in A major is produced after a triadic chromatic descent. The saxophone ends on the mediant, recalling the ending to the first movement.


"With gaiety" is a seven-part rondo in 24 with an ABACADA structure. It is in D major, although departures to other tonal centers occur in the rondo's episodes. Unlike previous movements, quartal, diminished and augmented chords are used sparingly. Creston instead uses mainly seventh chords, major triads and minor triads, contributing to a more upbeat mood. The movement has a complex rhythmic foundation, drawing on musical traditions from Spain and Latin America. A set of polymeters is presented at the outset: the saxophone (marked "crisp") and left hand of the piano are in 58 with the saxophone accenting each grouping with a mordent, while the right hand of the piano is playing sixteenth notes in groups of 38.


After the principal theme is introduced, a short transition occurs in the piano before the first episode. A new polymeter is introduced: 24 in the saxophone against 38 groupings in the piano. Accents continue to be used to distinguish groupings. The principal theme returns after a transition (the saxophone melody and piano countermelody are now switched) but is abruptly diverted into another episode after seven bars. A short saxophone transition based on diminished arpeggios leads into a calmer episode: smooth melodic lines inspired by movement II appear in the saxophone and accents are absent from both parts.


Another piano transition brings about the principal theme in F♯ major, now much quieter and more developed. A transition from both players leads into the last episode in the key of A major, which is dance-like in nature. The principal theme returns for the last time, now in the home key, and is developed further before a coda. The sonata ends with a scalic climax passed between both instruments.


Creston's designation of the piece as a sonata—a rarity among his works—distinguished it from its predecessor, suggesting a classical styling as opposed to his baroque-inspired Suite for the saxophone. According to Simmons, this difference is shown by the first movement's use of sonata form, and generally in the greater strength of the sonata's climaxes. The sonata's form is traditional, with each movement's form and tempi following classical era expectations established by composers like Mozart. The movements are connected by their main tonal centers, which progress in perfect fifths (E major → A major → D major). Writing is often contrapuntal, but not imitatively: there are no fugal or canonic devices in the sonata. Contrary to traditional practice, Creston eschews Italian tempi and expression markings, using English throughout the sonata (e.g. increase instead of crescendo).
The sonata is of substantial difficulty to the saxophonist, using a generally high tessitura along with irregular patterns and scales. It uses all of the saxophone's regular range, venturing into altissimo F♯s and Gs several times. The piano accompaniment to Creston's sonata is also difficult and requires a large hand span. It is often described as being just as—if not more—difficult than the saxophone part.


Creston expressed uncertainty over the original tempi ( = 126, = 66 and = 160) on multiple occasions. He requested that performers of the sonata change the tempi at the 1978 Marcel Mule International Saxophone Competition in Gap, France. Jean-Marie Londeix, a jury member at the competition, recounted that Creston's new tempi were = 120, = 60 and = 144. Creston had previously that expressed the original tempi were too fast in a 1975 letter to Londeix. Londeix considered these alterations beneficial, giving a better balance of tempi and "[allowing] a more clearly defined chamber music character to emerge".
During a visit to Ithaca College in 1976, the college's saxophone professor Steven Mauk asked Creston about the accuracy of the sonata's tempi. According to Mauk, Creston self-deprecatingly exclaimed that "the person who put the tempo markings on this piece was a fool", suggesting slower tempi of = 52–56 and = 144 for movements II and III instead.


Leeson and Creston recorded movements I and II of the sonata in late 1939 using a Federal Recorder owned by Leeson. The discs still exist, but cannot be played. Vincent Abato made the first commercial recording of the sonata in 1955, accompanied by Creston. This was the first time one of Creston's chamber pieces had appeared on record. The first stereo recording was made by Donald Sinta and Nelita True, c. 1968. By 1978, the sonata had appeared on eight records, including those made by Marcel Mule, Sigurd Raschèr, François Daneels and Jean-Marie Londeix; two years later that number increased to fourteen. Later recordings include those issued by Arno Bornkamp, Alex Mitchell and Alina Mleczko (see below).


Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003) was the twenty-second collection by British fashion designer Alexander McQueen for his eponymous fashion house. The collection is based on the idea of exiles travelling eastward through northern Eurasia: Siberia, Tibet, and finally Japan. The designs borrow heavily from the traditional clothing and art of those areas, and reflect an overall aesthetic of luxury, with voluminous silhouettes and rich materials. Cultural motifs include heavy embroidery, traditional patterns, and kimono-like shapes.
The runway show was staged on 8 March 2003 at the Grande halle de la Villette in Paris, with production by McQueen's usual creative team. The set was made to look like a desolate tundra with rocks and snow. A clear plastic wind tunnel was suspended over the runway on industrial scaffolding for some models to walk through. Fifty-nine looks were presented in roughly three stages, representing the journey through each of Siberia, Tibet, and Japan. The show ended with a model struggling through the wind tunnel in an enormous kimono.
Critical reception was mostly positive and sales were reportedly strong. Academic analysis has considered whether McQueen was engaging in cultural appropriation of Asian culture. Items from Scanners have appeared in exhibitions like the retrospective Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.


British fashion designer Alexander McQueen was known for his imaginative, sometimes controversial designs. During his nearly twenty-year career, he explored a broad range of ideas and themes, including historicism, romanticism, femininity, sexuality, and death. He began as an apprentice on Savile Row, earning a reputation as an expert tailor; later he learned dressmaking as head designer for French fashion house Givenchy. Although he worked in ready-to-wear – clothing produced for retail sale – his showpiece designs featured a degree of craftsmanship that verged on haute couture – extremely high-end custom designs with elaborate handiwork.
McQueen's personal fixations had a strong influence on his designs. He played on visual and thematic contrasts for effect. He incorporated his love of nature into his works with visual motifs and organic materials. The set for his Autumn/Winter 1999 collection The Overlook had depicted an isolated winter landscape inspired by the Stanley Kubrick horror film The Shining (1980). Scanners returned to a winter setting, the opposite of the Amazon rainforest inspiration for Irere (Spring/Summer 2003). McQueen was also fascinated with Japanese culture and Buddhism. He had referenced Japanese clothing in his previous collection Voss (Spring/Summer 2003) and would do so again in It's Only a Game (Spring/Summer 2005).
His fashion shows were often elaborate to the point of being performance art, and audiences began to expect him to present dramatic spectacles. Previous seasons had seen models drenched with artificial rain (Untitled, Spring/Summer 1998), sprayed with paint by robots (No. 13, Spring/Summer 1999), or trapped in a faux-padded cell (Voss, Spring/Summer 2000). Although generally well-received, Irere had garnered some criticism for its fairly mundane show.


Scanners (Autumn/Winter 2003) was the twenty-second collection McQueen designed for his eponymous fashion house. The collection is based on the idea of exiles travelling eastward through northern Eurasia: Siberia, Tibet, and finally Japan. The materials, silhouettes, and aesthetics of the designs borrow heavily from the traditional clothing and art of those areas, reflecting the cultural exchanges that followed the Silk Road and the resulting spread of Buddhism. McQueen was inspired by the view of the tundra on a flight from London to Japan.
Overall, the collection had a sense of opulence, and McQueen's precision tailoring was prominent throughout. Silhouettes were luxuriously oversized, with frock coats over tight waists and full A-line skirts. There were also draped and empire waist dresses. Materials were similarly rich: brocades, fox and mink furs, and leather. Other items were rendered in modern materials like neoprene. Some critics suggested an influence from McQueen's time at Givenchy, particularly in the silhouettes and level of craftsmanship. As was typical for McQueen, there were historicist touches throughout.
The collection opened with Russian-inspired pieces featuring embroidery, pom-poms, metallic trimming, and fur – known historically in Russia as "soft gold" for its value as a luxury good. The embroidery may have drawn on imagery from Russian folk tales. This phase also included jute and quilted fabric for several items. The emphasis on muted khaki tones in both plain and quilted fabric suggested an influence from military chic. Although placed in the Russian section of the show, the panelled structure of Look 12 is reminiscent of samurai armour.
The introduction of checkered fabric and a complex geometrical floral pattern called kati rimo indicated a transition to Tibetan-inspired clothing. Kai rimo, meaning "brocade design", is a traditional Tibetan pattern derived from Chinese textiles. Items with this pattern, including fabric and painted furniture, are associated with Buddhism because they were often used for temple decorations. While traditionally multi-coloured, McQueen's versions in this section were rendered in black and white. Additional Tibetan-inspired elements include full circle skirts, use of shearling, and decorative braiding. The checked patterns, particularly the Glengarry cap from Look 33, have been variously interpreted as military chic or op art. Others have interpreted this segment, chiefly the bodysuits in leather, as drawing on motocross, punk fashion, and cyberpunk fashion, with influence from the film Blade Runner (1982).
The final phase of Scanners borrowed from the clothing and culture of Japan, incorporating kimono-like silhouettes and sunrise motifs that played on the country's nickname, Land of the Rising Sun. In this portion, geometric patterns were rendered in red on white, particularly shokkō, the Japanese name for the Tibetan kai rimo pattern. Like kai rimo, shokkō patterns were also associated with Buddhist temples. Some looks may have been influenced by Japanese manga characters.


The runway show was staged on 8 March 2003 at the Grande halle de la Villette in Paris. Invitations were printed with images of McQueen's brain scan. The soundtrack included the Sid Vicious cover of "My Way", the Tiffany cover of "I Think We're Alone Now", and the Sparks single "This Town Ain't Big Enough for Both of Us". Air raid sirens played over pop music from Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears. The showpiece sections featured selections from the 1904 opera Madama Butterfly.
McQueen typically worked with a consistent creative team for his shows. Katy England was responsible for overall styling, while Gainsbury & Whiting oversaw production. Joseph Bennett, who had designed all of McQueen's runways since No. 13 (Spring/Summer 1999), took care of set design. Eugene Souleiman styled hair, while Val Garland handled makeup.
Philip Treacy created headwear for the collection, including Glengarry caps, headpieces based on the Japanese rising sun motif, and an engraved red and white glass mitre worn with Look 47. The mitre may have been a tribute to Isabella Blow, who was a mutual friend and muse of Treacy and McQueen; she wore a similar hat in a Vanity Fair portrait in 1997. The hat worn with Look 2, a black peaked cap adorned with a circle of black feathers shaped like spears may also have been a reworking of one that Blow wore for The New Yorker in March 2001.
The set was made to look like a desolate tundra with rocks and snow. The backdrop was a satellite photograph of Antarctica. McQueen said he "wanted it to be like a nomadic journey across the tundra. A big, desolate space, so that nothing would distract from the work." A clear plastic wind tunnel was suspended over the runway on industrial scaffolding for some models to walk through. Bennett designed the tunnel to look like a "35 mm film strip" in which models fought a "horizontal blizzard". Models were styled with large buns placed, like topknots, at the top of their heads; topknots were traditionally worn by samurai.
Fifty-eight looks were presented. The show opened with Adina Fohlin crossing the overhead walkway wearing a fur-trimmed vest and A-line skirt, followed by a series of about twenty Russian-inspired looks. Looks 23 to 41 were monochromatic black and white, with Tibetan-inspired patterns. Following these looks, the lights went down and Fohlin returned to the walkway, which now functioned as a wind tunnel. She wore a black and white bodysuit with a cape harnessed to her. Two models in red and white ensembles entered and crossed the darkened stage while Fohlin crossed above, her embroidered white cape billowing behind her in the wind.
The final phase of the show comprised fourteen looks inspired by Japanese culture, including several with red and white palettes and some fur coats. The lights went back down and Ai Tominaga appeared in the walkway, clad only in a long, ornately embroidered white kimono worn over briefs and boots. A strong wind and fake snow roared through the tunnel, blowing the kimono back and exposing her naked chest as she struggled to cross. The audience applauded when she reached the end. The lights came back up and the models returned to the runway for their final turn, followed by McQueen all in white.


Scanners drew a mostly positive reception from contemporary critics. Authors differ in their assessment of the consensus. Andrew Wilson reported that the show was well-received, particularly the wind tunnel; while Katherine Gleason's book reported that reception was mixed. Women's Wear Daily reported that it was the 10th-most-viewed collection at Style.com that season, with 674,632 views in the first two weeks. Sales were reportedly good; a trunk show held at McQueen's New York location following the runway show garnered $1.2 million in orders. One corset-silhouetted coat trimmed with fur became a best-seller.
Reviewers noted the way McQueen played on contrasting ideas in various ways. Writing for The Independent, Susannah Frankel called it a "brilliant fusion" of opposing ideas like pop and punk, East versus West, and historicism and futurism. She felt the furs and brocades were romantic, while the checked prints and leathers were appropriate for "rock divas". Hilary Alexander of The Daily Telegraph noted contrasting silhouettes: severely tailored tops paired with soft, loose skirts, for example.
Many complimented the tailoring, McQueen's speciality. Sarah Mower did the same in her Vogue review, calling them "devilishly accurate", but argued that the best designs in the show were those that showed "McQueen's softer, more romantic side". Suzy Menkes of the International Herald Tribune and Charlie Porter of The Guardian both thought McQueen was refining a distinct silhouette with the collection. Frankel felt that McQueen's imagination came through despite the conventional style of some items. Several of the design motifs were considered on-trend for the season by critics: the voluminous shapes, black and white prints, and luxury elements. Designs inspired by armour, as in Look 12, were also popular; Porter suggested this was an exploration of a long-standing trend for metallics.
The artistic quality of the designs stood out for reviewers. Frankel thought that McQueen had correctly balanced his artistic showpieces with more commercial designs suitable for retail sale. Writing separately, Menkes and Lisa Armstrong at The Times each wrote that he had successfully married his showmanship and imagination with the refinement demanded by haute couture. Rod Hagwood felt the clothes were as close to couture as was possible for a designer working in ready-to-wear. Alexander thought the collection was intended to demonstrate McQueen's availability for couture orders, citing Tominaga's kimono as an example. Hand-embroidered with an orgy scene from an erotic painting, it had taken fifteen people five weeks of work and was expected to sell for £150,000.
Most critics were impressed with the theatrical elements. More than one called them "jaw-dropping". Guy Trebay, in his fashion diary for The New York Times wrote that the narrative and concept had a "delightful absurdity". Mower thought the narrative was unintelligible, but felt the unique aesthetic it brought made it worthwhile. Others were pleased with the oversized showpieces from the wind tunnel, guessing that they were at least twenty feet long. Frankel called the use of an orgy scene as decoration for the final kimono a "quintessential McQueen" touch. Judith Watt likened Tominaga's appearance in the wind tunnel to the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
Some critics were more ambivalent. For The Sydney Morning Herald, Maggie Alderson thought the collection saw McQueen doing "his usual bit pushing the boundaries where drama meets misogyny", although she found it "superb" overall. Cathy Horyn of The New York Times liked the designs, but felt "the special effects overwhelmed the clothes". Similarly, Robin Givhan, in her Washington Post review, called the collection unmemorable compared to the finale. Karen Homer, writing in retrospect, compared it to the previous season's collection, Irere (Spring/Summer 2003), writing that both were commercially-focused collections that lacked McQueen's typical level of runway showmanship. The heavy use of fur was contentious. Porter called it the "one low point" of the show. Frankel criticised the use of fur as seeming "too easy a statement of status and wealth" compared to the more radical designs elsewhere in the collection.


Textile curators Clarissa M. Esguerra and Michaela Hansen identified a clinging bandage dress from the retail collection, which had zippers for side seams, as a reworking of similar styles by Azzedine Alaïa, a designer McQueen admired. They pointed to the tailoring in other items, such as the checked suit from Look 24, as evidence of McQueen's skill at cutting fabric. Each piece of the pattern is cut and arranged deliberately to create curves that flow along the body, creating an optical illusion that seems to sculpt the body.
Esguerra and Hansen felt that the way McQueen borrowed ideas from various cultures in Scanners, based on his own personal fixations, demonstrated that cultural appropriation can in some contexts be "specific and meaningful" while also being "incomplete or decorative". Anna Jackson argued that McQueen's incorporation of elements from Japanese clothing was more "transformative" than similar efforts by other designers, who treated these aesthetics as a novelty.
In an essay about McQueen's use of death symbolism, Eleanor Townsend cited the brain scan invitation from Scanners as an example of the designer's awareness of his own mortality.


McQueen explored complex black and white prints again in The Horn of Plenty (Fall/Winter 2009).
Look 33 was photographed for Vogue by Thomas Schenk. In 2014, Harper's Bazaar named Scanners one of McQueen's most memorable shows, citing the wind tunnel performances. Vogue interviewed several McQueen models for their February 2020 issue. Fohlin recalled her appearances in Scanners positively, saying that McQueen's "shows were always something more than a regular runway; as a model you had more space to perform."
Two items from Scanners appeared in the retrospective exhibit Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty: Look 3, a dress covered with metal sequins, and Look 21, a jute dress heavily embroidered with flowers. An essay book released for the 2015 revival of the exhibition includes sketches from Scanners. The 2022 exhibition Lee Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse featured several items from Scanners, primarily from the retail collection, as well as Look 24, a checked suit. The checked suit was juxtaposed with a suit by 20th-century costume designer Gilbert Adrian, demonstrating their mutual mastery of advanced tailoring techniques.


Addie Viola Smith (November 14, 1893 – December 13, 1975), also known as Shi Fanglan (Chinese: 施芳蘭; pinyin: Shī Fānglán), was an American attorney who served as the United States trade commissioner to Shanghai from 1928 to 1939. She was the first female Foreign Service officer in the United States Foreign Service to work under the United States Department of Commerce, the first woman to serve as an assistant trade commissioner, and the first woman to serve as trade commissioner.
Smith was born and raised in Stockton, California. In 1917, she moved to Washington, D.C. While working for the United States Department of Labor, she attended the Washington College of Law part-time, earning her bachelor of laws in 1920. In October that year she joined the Foreign Service and was assigned to Beijing as a clerk in the trade commissioner's office. Smith was promoted to assistant trade commissioner in Shanghai in 1922, and appointed trade commissioner of Shanghai in 1928, a post she held until 1939. For the remainder of her career, she held several roles in the United States government, international organizations, and the United Nations.
Throughout her life, Smith was also a member of several feminist organizations; scholars have described her international feminist activism as being rooted in imperialist and colonialist attitudes. Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Hinder, in Shanghai in 1926. They lived together until Hinder's death in 1963. Smith died on December 13, 1975, aged 82, in Mosman, New South Wales, and was cremated. She and Hinder were memorialized by their friends with two stone seats at the E.G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens in Caringbah.


Addie Viola Smith was born in Stockton, California, on November 14, 1893, to Rufus Roy Smith, a publisher, and Addie Gabriela Smith (née Brown). From 1910 to 1917, Smith worked for two wholesale companies. She also learned stenography and earned a degree in business administration from Heald's Business College in San Francisco. In 1917, she passed county, state, and federal civil service exams. She moved to Washington, D.C., in April 1917, and was hired into the United States Department of Labor by Julia Lathrop, the director of the United States Children's Bureau, to work under Grace Abbott in implementing recently passed child labor legislation. Smith also served as a confidential clerk to an assistant secretary of labor, assistant chief of the Women's Division of the United States Employment Service, and chief of the Information Division of the United States Training and Dilution Service. In 1919, she worked on the first National Industrial Conference and edited the proceedings of the first International Labor Office Conference.
During her service with the Labor Department, Smith attended the Washington College of Law as a part-time student and obtained a bachelor of laws degree in 1920. She was also mentored by a network of women in government and politics, whom she drew upon throughout her career.


Smith was appointed to the United States Foreign Service as a Foreign Service officer in October 1920 and assigned to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce under the United States Department of Commerce. She was the first woman to serve as a Foreign Service officer under the Bureau. Smith initially worked as a clerk in the trade commissioner's office in Beijing. As a clerk, Smith was responsible for surveying industry, compiling data, and identifying investment opportunities.
Early in 1922, Smith requested permission to sit for a civil service examination so that she could obtain a promotion to assistant trade commissioner. Despite support from her immediate supervisor and American businesses operating in China, the assistant director of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, O. P. Hopkins, denied her application. Hopkins wrote to Smith: "The Bureau has not yet made any definite decision as to what its policy will be toward employing women as assistant trade commissioners and trade commissioners." Smith wrote back, stating that "the opening of higher positions to women is not nearly so 'grave and serious' a matter, as is the caliber of the representatives, be they men or women, which the Bureau sends to its foreign posts", and that she had a right to sit for the exam. The former chief of the Woman's Division of the United States Employment Service, Hilda Muhlhauser Richards, also intervened on Smith's behalf—threatening to "take the issue to New York women's organizations"—prompting Hopkins to reverse his decision. Smith became the first woman appointed to the post of assistant trade commissioner on November 1, 1922.

Early foreign service career in China (1920–1927)


While serving as assistant trade commissioner, Smith again sought promotion to full trade commissioner. After an initial rejection, she sought help from Clara Burdette, president of the California Federation of Women's Clubs, who appealed to Herbert Hoover, the then-Secretary of Commerce and a personal friend. As it happened, Smith's appointment had already been confirmed by Julean Arnold, her immediate superior, and she took up the role on January 1, 1928. Smith was the first female trade commissioner in the Foreign Service. She also served as the registrar of the Chinese Trade Act of 1922. In that role, Smith was responsible for ensuring corporate compliance with registration requirements, sometimes litigating against firms herself in the United States Court for China—becoming the third woman to be admitted to practice before the court in 1934.
As trade commissioner, Smith was responsible for reporting on Chinese industry, infrastructure, and trade opportunities to the Department of Commerce; advising American business interests; serving as a liaison between American and Chinese businesses; implementing U.S. trade policy; and promoting the expansion of American trade in China. During her tenure, she was respected by her colleagues and by Americans doing business in China. Barbara Miller, in 1936, wrote for the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine: "Business men visiting China generally agree, 'If you want accurate information on foreign trade—and want it today—go to Viola Smith.'"
Smith was an avid motorist, driving thousands of miles in China throughout her career. She was considered an expert on roads in China, and she was regularly consulted by the Chinese government and American companies on road proposals and related business opportunities. As trade commissioner, she prioritized building roads as a means of increasing the import of American automobiles to China.
In 1935, Smith began lobbying to bring shortwave radio broadcasting to China, believing that there was demand among American expatriates in Asia and estimating the Shanghai market at approximately 12,000 listeners. She believed that this market would purchase American-made receivers; that both American expatriates and Chinese listeners would purchase American goods advertised on radio programs; and that American radio would improve China–United States relations. In 1937, she persuaded General Electric to open W6XBE, which rebroadcast NBC's domestic radio programs to China from the San Francisco Bay Area. The station launched on February 19, 1939. Based on feedback from other Americans in China, Smith worked to improve its programming, suggesting that the station "give succinct resumes of important American happenings and events, to be given by prominent persons identified with American governmental, commercial, financial, and cultural life", such as "broadcasts of Carnegie Hall concerts, symphony orchestras, military bands, and similar items".

Trade commissioner in Shanghai (1928–1939)


Smith resigned as trade commissioner in 1939, when she was appointed consul and secretary to the United States Consulate in Shanghai. In that role, she worked to evacuate Americans during the 1941 Japanese invasion of the Shanghai International Settlement. From 1942 to 1946, Smith lived and worked in Washington, D.C. She served as an economic specialist for the United States Department of State from 1942 to 1943, and worked with the China America Council of Commerce and Industry on post-war trade from 1944 to 1946. She returned to China in 1946 to open the council's Shanghai headquarters—a move that the Associated Press described as "[a]n indication that China is beginning to right itself after eight years' war with Japan"—and then worked for private companies and the United States China Relief Mission.
In 1949, Smith left China and moved to Bangkok, where she worked for the United States Economic Cooperation Administration and the United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East. From 1952 to 1964, she was the representative of the International Federation of Women Lawyers to the United Nations in New York; in her later years, she conducted much of her work from Sydney.

Post-trade commissioner career (1939–1975)


During her time in Shanghai, Smith joined and helped to organize international feminist groups. She was a member of several organizations, including the American Women's Club of Shanghai and the Joint Committee of Shanghai Women's Organizations. She was nominated to run for the Shanghai Municipal Council in 1930 by women's groups, but withdrew after receiving a cable from the Department of Commerce that stated it would be "undesirable" for Smith to serve on the council. Smith's activism sometimes caused tension with Chinese women; she and other Western expatriates viewed their role as engaging in dialogue with Chinese women and "sincerely endeavor[ing] to reflect the best of American ideals and traditions". According to the historians Alexandra Epstein and Sarah Paddle, Smith and her contemporaries also adopted colonialist or imperialist mindsets, seeking to instill American values in China through intellectual exchange and philanthropy.
For example, in August 1928, Smith attended the inaugural Pan-Pacific Women's Conference, a meeting of internationalist feminists in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, along with two Chinese women, her partner Eleanor Hinder, and another Western expatriate woman in China. At the conference, Smith—without consulting the Chinese members of her delegation—suggested that China host the next conference in 1930, causing what Epstein has called an "international incident". Dr. Me-Iung Ting, a Chinese woman, responded "If the next conference is going to be held in China the invitation should be from the Chinese women".


Smith met her life partner, Eleanor Hinder, in March 1926. Hinder, an Australian woman, was then working on a fellowship grant with the Young Women's Christian Association. Soon thereafter, Hinder and Smith fell in love, and Hinder moved into Smith's apartment. They lived together in Shanghai until 1941—with some periods spent apart as a result of work and war—where they were "devoted to each other, shar[ing] a house[ ] and creat[ing] a garden". During the 1950s, Smith and Hinder spent much of their time living in New York, traveling often for Smith's work with the United Nations. After Hinder was denied United States citizenship, Smith and Hinder established a residence in Sydney, Australia, in 1957. Smith was a member of the Royal Australian Historical Society, the League of Women Voters, Sydney, and the Australian Local Government Women's Association, serving as its vice president from 1968 to 1970. Hinder died in 1963; Smith remained close with her family and chronicled their genealogy. As executrix of Hinder's estate, she compiled and annotated Hinder's papers for contribution to the Mitchell Library. In 1975, she published Women in Australian Parliament and Local Government, which at the time was believed to be the only comprehensive record of women who had served in the Australian government.
Smith died on December 13, 1975, aged 82, in Mosman, New South Wales, and was cremated. Smith and Hinder were memorialized in 1977 by their friends and women's groups with the placement of two stone seats at the E.G. Waterhouse National Camellia Gardens in Caringbah. One of the seats was put near an entrance to the gardens. The other was placed next to a camellia, planted by Smith, named "China Doll".


"Smoking on My Ex Pack" is a song by American singer-songwriter SZA from her second studio album, SOS (2022). The second of the album's three rap tracks, it is a boom bap song with a chipmunk soul production style, fusing hard-hitting drum beats with a sped-up sample of Webster Lewis's "Open Up Your Eyes" (1981). Before SOS, SZA had been known as an R&B artist who made "sad girl" music, a narrative she wanted to dispel because she viewed it as reductive. Particularly, she believed her being categorized strictly as R&B was racially insensitive. As such, she wanted to experiment with "aggressive" hip hop music for SOS, leading to the conception of "Smoking on My Ex Pack". Its producer was Jay Versace, to whom SZA credited her first attempts at rap music.
In the lyrics, SZA makes braggadocious comments about her sexual desirability and ridicules her past lovers in various ways, for instance insulting their penises. Her rapping originally lasted for over two minutes, but she had the song cut in half because she was unsure if the rapping was good enough. Critics in contemporary reviews felt otherwise and found the songwriting effectively harsh and the flow satisfactory, believing it showcased SZA's potential to become a proper rapper. Some deemed "Smoking on My Ex Pack" a highlight of SOS or of her discography. After the album's release, the song charted in the US and Canada, reached number 71 on the Billboard Global 200, and was included in the set list of the SOS Tour.


SZA released her debut studio album, Ctrl, in 2017. Primarily an R&B album that deals with themes like heartbreak, it received widespread acclaim for SZA's vocals and the eclectic musical style, as well as the emotional impact and confessional nature of its songwriting. The album brought SZA to mainstream fame, and 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. Her next studio album was highly anticipated by fans and music critics alike, and as early as August 2019 she alluded to its completion "soon", during an interview with DJ Kerwin Frost.
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. Wanting to experiment with genres she had not yet incorporated in her discography, SZA envisioned it to be an amalgamation of disparate musical styles, or in her words, "a little bit of everything". While some tracks were balladic or soft, certain others had an "aggressive" sound. Apart from the "traditional" R&B that had been a staple of SZA's past works, the album also contained prominent elements of hip hop music.


SZA wanted to include rap as a major element of her second studio album, SOS (2022). The media tended to categorize her as an R&B artist, and she staunchly disagreed with the description. In her view, she was being described strictly as R&B because she was a Black woman, to which she asserted: "I love making Black music, period. Something that is just full of energy. Black music doesn't have to just be R&B [...] Why can't we just be expansive and not reductive?"
According to Punch, president of SZA's record label Top Dawg Entertainment, SZA recorded an "[extended play]'s worth" of strictly rap records during the making of SOS. The final product contains three rap tracks—one in the beginning, one in the end, and one in the middle. The rap track in the middle is titled "Smoking on My Ex Pack". The song's composition incorporates chipmunk soul, a production style that uses looped, sped-up samples of soul music; in the case of "Smoking on My Ex Pack", the song sampled is Webster Lewis's "Open Up Your Eyes" (1981). "Smoking on My Ex Pack" is a boom bap song, built around hard-hitting drum beats.
Jay Versace, a record producer and former comedian, produced "Smoking on My Ex Pack". Versace, whom SZA credited with getting her interested in creating "aggressive" rap music, created the beat sometime in 2022, three years after the two first met up for the album's recording sessions. He was inspired by the boom bap music he had heard growing up, much of which played on his car radio when he was driving with his father. For "Smoking on My Ex Pack", he wanted SZA's take on these childhood songs: "I literally made that for her [...] That was specifically for her."
Versace chose to sample "Open Up Your Eyes" because of his interest in love ballads from the latter half of the 20th century, citing the "really crazy instrumentation in their music". Particularly, he liked the song's horns and vocals, so he created the sample in Ableton and formed a beat around it. Once he finished, he sent the audio file to SZA, who started writing the lyrics almost immediately. About the production, she texted him: "Your beats are so easy to write to. Why am I already writing lyrics right now?"


SZA said that while creating SOS, she learned that sometimes she could act like a villainous "bitch" and that she had to come to terms with this perception of herself. According to her, many songs on the album centered around themes of revenge and "being pissed" to a degree that she had never felt before. She described how these feelings manifested in its tracks: "It is in the way I say no [...] It's in the fucked up things that I don't apologize for." Versace encouraged her to "talk her shit" on "Smoking on My Ex Pack", the lyrics to which she wrote to dispel a narrative that she only made "sad girl music". Its initial version was over two minutes long, but SZA scrapped the song's first half because she did not feel confident enough in her rapping skills.
The released version of "Smoking on My Ex Pack" is 1 minute and 23 seconds long. Spin compared its lyrics to blind items, or articles that do not disclose the identity of their subject and are frequently gossip pieces. Braggadocio is also a major element of the songwriting. In the song's verse, SZA communicates her desirability to men and announces "them hoe accusations weak" and "them bitch accusations true". After revealing how she embodies those traits by saying she presents an unfriendly attitude and has sex with men she calls heart throbs, she finds various ways to insult her past lovers.
SZA raps about having "your favorite rapper" blocked on social media, saying she heard a rumor that his "dick was wack". Certain athletes, who try to flirt in her messages and incessantly ask she text them back but to no avail, are other subjects whom she targets. Her lesser side, she reasons, loves to taunt people, explaining her refusal to make exceptions for any of the men she does not acknowledge. She rejects an ex-boyfriend seeking to rekindle their relationship, through the lines "he screamin', 'Gеt back together', I'm screamin', 'Back of thе bus, trick!'" The lyrics contain a comparison between SZA's former romantic partners and Sideshow Bob, a character from The Simpsons who is a clown and a criminal:


During a Billboard cover story published in November 2022, SZA revealed that the album's release date was scheduled for sometime during the following month. She posted the album's track list on Twitter on December 5, and SOS was released four days later. Out of 23 songs, "Smoking on My Ex Pack" appears as the eleventh track. The song charted in Canada, the United States and its component Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, and the Billboard Global 200 upon the album's release. In April 2023, it was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.
One month after the album's release, American rapper Latto performed a freestyle rap over the beat of "Smoking on My Ex Pack". SZA reacted positively; on Instagram, she wrote, "OH ITS UPPPPPP [sic]", paired with a heart emoji. The song had its live performance debut during the SOS Tour, performed while SZA went backstage for an outfit change, which the stage screen captured.


Critics were positive about SZA's experimenting with rap on "Smoking on My Ex Pack", lauding it for showcasing her more confident side. They welcomed its lyrics for marking a departure from her other works, which primarily focused on angst and vulnerability, and its placement between tracks that, by contrast, focused on SZA's insecurities about her relationships. Much of the praise focused on the harshness and unfiltered nature of her songwriting. They found it clever, funny, or emotionally impactful. Shaad D'Souza of The Guardian wrote: "the [SOS] lyrics that stick out to me aren't the deeply sad ones that seem to be the basis for a lot of 2am tweets and TikTok captions, but the ones that call bullshit on ideas that SZA should have to be respectable or 'real'." Other music journalists wrote that "Smoking on My Ex Pack" exemplified the album's begrudging side and was the album's "most stank-face-inducing" track.
Another point of commentary was SZA's flow and delivery, attributes that led many critics to think her first attempts at rap music demonstrated her potential to become a good rapper. In the words of The Sydney Morning Herald's Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen: "she takes to rapping for the first time and she sounds like a natural, with impeccable flow and a healthy dose of venom." For this reason, Steffanee Wang of Nylon and Precious Fondren of HipHopDX called "Smoking on My Ex Pack" a highlight of SOS—Fondren recommended that readers play it on repeat. Some critics liked how the harsh rapping in "Smoking on My Ex Pack" juxtaposed the soft sound of the album tracks that come before it. Paul Attard, Slant Magazine writer, argued that this provided the album's otherwise weak middle section some much-needed catharsis.
"Smoking on My Ex Pack", for critics Jason P. Frank of Vulture and Robyn Mowatt of Okayplayer, was a highlight of SZA's discography. Encouraging SZA to make more lyrically similar songs, Frank wrote: "in the context of her career, it's also a flex; her best is not her limit — it's the floor." In Complex, Ecleen Luzmila Caraballo listed the "Smoking on My Ex Pack" rap verse as one of the best of 2022 and wrote that SZA's usage of wordplay further strengthened her lyrics. She and Frank, however, took issue with the song's length, feeling "Smoking on My Ex Pack" did not reach its full potential due to its shortness.


Adapted from the liner notes of SOS
Recording and management


Engineered at Westlake Studio A (Los Angeles, California)
Mixed at The Gift Shop (Los Angeles)
Mastered at Becker Mastering (Pasadena, California)
Contains a sample of "Open Up Your Eyes" as performed by Webster Lewis, written by Skip Scarborough and Raina Taylor, published by Warner Chappell Music, Inc. (BMI) and Raina Bundy (Raina Bundy Publishing Designee) (BMI), used courtesy of Sony Music Entertainment.
Personnel


The Sun has appeared as a setting in fiction at least since classical antiquity, but for a long time it received relatively sporadic attention. Many of the early depictions viewed it as an essentially Earth-like and thus potentially habitable body—a once-common belief about celestial objects in general known as the plurality of worlds—and depicted various kinds of solar inhabitants. As more became known about the Sun through advances in astronomy, in particular its temperature, solar inhabitants fell out of favour save for the occasional more exotic alien lifeforms. Instead, many stories focused on the eventual death of the Sun and the havoc it would wreak upon life on Earth. Before it was understood that the Sun is powered by nuclear fusion, the prevailing assumption among writers was that combustion was the source of its heat and light, and it was expected to run out of fuel relatively soon. Even after the true source of the Sun's energy was determined in the 1920s, the dimming or extinction of the Sun remained a recurring theme in disaster stories, with occasional attempts at averting disaster by reigniting the Sun. Another common way for the Sun to cause destruction is by exploding ("going nova"), and other mechanisms such as solar flares also appear on occasion.
Besides being a source of destruction, the Sun has been used in fiction as a source of power—both in the form of solar power and superpowers. The solar wind is also used for propulsion by spacecraft equipped with solar sails. Solar eclipses have appeared in a large number of stories, in the earliest ones often used as a ruse by characters who know that they can be predicted mathematically against those who do not by pretending to cause them, perhaps inspired by the story of Christopher Columbus doing the same with a lunar eclipse in 1504. When audiences grew weary of this trope by the 1930s or 1940s, eclipses became much more rare in fiction writing, though they saw a comeback towards the end of the century as harbingers of social upheaval. Sunspots, and their 11-year cycle of frequency in occurrence, appear in a small number of works. The Sun poses a danger to spacecraft that approach it closely, a situation that occurs by necessity or design in several stories. It is sometimes depicted as being sentient, though this is rare compared to other stars getting the same treatment. Overall, the Sun remains relatively uncommon as a point of focus in science fiction, particularly in comparison to depictions of Mars and Venus; says science fiction bibliographer Richard Bleiler, "Perhaps because it is generally taken for granted, the fictive potential of the Sun has barely been tapped".


The Sun received comparatively little specific attention in early science fiction; prior to the late 1800s, when Mars became the most popular celestial object in fiction, the Sun was a distant second to the Moon. A large proportion of the works that nevertheless did focus on the Sun portrayed it as having inhabitants. In Lucian of Samosata's work A True Story from the second century CE, described by science fiction scholar Gary Westfahl as the first depiction of space travel in fiction, the inhabitants of the Sun are at war with those of the Moon. Later stories with an inhabited Sun include Athanasius Kircher's 1656 work Itinerarium exstaticum and Cyrano de Bergerac's posthumously published 1662 novel Comical History of the States and Empires of the Sun. In the 1700s, solar inhabitants were depicted by French authors Chevalier de Béthune, whose 1750 novel Relation du Monde de Mercure describes them ruling over the inhabitants of Mercury, and Marie-Anne de Roumier-Robert, whose 1765 novel Voyage de Milord Céton dans les sept planètes portrays a society on the Sun characterized by equality of the sexes.
The concept of the plurality of worlds—the notion that other heavenly bodies should be essentially Earth-like and therefore habitable—endured in fiction with regard to the Sun well into the 1800s. These works include George Fowler's 1813 novel A Flight to the Moon; or, The Vision of Randalthus, the anonymously published 1837 novel Journeys into the Moon, Several Planets and the Sun, and Joel R. Peabody's 1838 novel A World of Wonders. Even in the early 1900s, when the temperature of the surface of the Sun had been determined by spectroscopic measurement, the portrayal of the Sun as inhabited persisted in some works of juvenile fiction such as John Mastin's 1909 novel Through the Sun in an Airship and Donald Horner's 1910 novel By Aeroplane to the Sun.
In the 1900s, as it became evident that no conventional organisms could possibly survive the conditions on the Sun, more exotic solar lifeforms started appearing in fiction. Some of these live inside the Sun itself rather than on its surface, as in short stories like Jack Williamson's 1935 "Islands of the Sun", Raymond Z. Gallun's 1935 "Nova Solis", and Henry J. Kostkos's 1936 "We of the Sun". Others take up residence elsewhere in the Solar System: in Leigh Brackett's 1942 short story "Child of the Sun", an intelligent alien from the Sun lives on the fictional planet Vulcan inside the orbit of Mercury, and the titular creatures of Olaf Stapledon's 1947 novel The Flames are lizard-like solar beings residing inside igneous rocks on Earth. Arthur C. Clarke's 1958 short story "Out of the Sun" features life "formed of tangles of magnetic flux on the surface of our Sun", and Edmond Hamilton's 1962 short story "Sunfire!" depicts an energy-based lifeform living in the Sun's corona.


The Sun has been a source of destruction or the threat thereof in many stories, most commonly either by fading or exploding. In the rare science fiction films where the Sun is a central point of focus, it seldom plays any other role.