Lizzo in the Age of Backlash
Lizzo’s charting songs of herself, as encapsulated on her 2019 platinum record “Cuz I Love You,” were infectious, if not cool; her fat and Black body, much as it became an avatar for white women with cellulite, could be viewed as a token of changed values. This assigned her music an unproven political heft, much to her (and associated brands’) profit, with potential for a nasty recoil. It did not help that the music became too brazen in yanking from that particular money tree, juicing the juice of say, “Juice,” till the bit ran dry. Her fourth studio album, “Special,” capitalized on the mounting enthusiasm for what the critic Rawiya Kameir dubbed “empowerment-core,” epitomized by a song like “Grrrls,” a flip of the Beastie Boys song given such decaying lyrics as “That’s my girl, we C.E.O.s / And dancin’ like a C-E-ho.” (This combo—the flip and groan-worthy quip—that’s the Lizzo special. And results sure do vary.)
Some in the pop commentariat will say that it was controversy and hypocrisy that transformed Lizzo into the sort of artist for whom polling the group chat’s feelings about the new album serves to inform them of its existence. In 2023, former employees filed a series of lawsuits against Lizzo for a hostile work environment inclusive of sexual harassment, racism, and fatphobia. These latter two accusations got better play in the court of opinion, and, in hindsight, one gets the sense that we were ready for the unmasking of body positivity, now outmoded. I can believe that some superficial share of Lizzo’s fandom abandoned her out of principle, though I also believe, out of an abundance of evidence, that lawsuits matter little when an artist is making music that people want to hear.
Rather, I suspect it goes back to Target, and the cheery co-optation of diversity that helped relegate Lizzo to the realm of cringe. “Cringe,” as the writer Charlie Markbreiter puts it, “is the gap between how others see you and how you want to be seen.” Target doesn’t even want to be seen as “woke” anymore, having recently scuttled much of its Pride merch—perhaps a concession to our moment of right-wing, Christian revanchist escalation. On the other side, Lizzo’s fame, refracted through Lizzo’s sound, has become an unflattering reflection of liberal unseriousness in the face of such hostility. Of course self-love won’t solve all of this. How did anyone let mass culture run away with that idea? Nor does it matter whether the idea was Lizzo’s in the first place—her sound is inextricable from a bygone article of faith. That’s her real liability.
And maybe she knows it. Maybe to this we attribute the composure of Lizzo’s “BITCH,” as ethos, as idea, as music. Songs like “Don’t Make Me Love U,” “She Stole My Man,” and “Little Black Cat” breeze through power pop (à la Tina Turner), pop punk, and rainy-day R. & B., tapping the usual beats of heartbreak. “And it felt just like a crime / Broke my heart and stole my life,” she sings over acoustic guitar on “Like a Crime.” Cliché is not the issue—heartbreak precisely reminds us how conventional and repetitive love is in its guaranteed permutations. (Olivia Rodrigo, darling of the moment, understands this to popular effect, as on recent, ramping singles “Drop Dead” and “The Cure.”) But competence can engender yearning for its opposite, for a metabolizing, in-medias-res idea. In a recent interview with the New York Times, Lizzo says she’s never had the benefit of a persona to hide behind when the going gets tough, yet she admits that it is “not appropriate,” in our cultural and political atmosphere, for stars to wax morose about their problems. If the real Lizzo is ever with us—whatever “real” can mean in the surveilled world of pop stardom—she would still rather us see her sparkle instead of sweat.
Signs of something interesting can be found in some of Lizzo’s other recent music, namely “MY FACE STILL HURTS FROM SMILING,” a mixtape from 2025 that I’m sure my group chat also doesn’t know about. It’s not a perfect bunch of songs by any means, but the two-disc dump is rangy and untidy, groovy and funny and even a bit mean. Skip the first track, with its opening a-cappella instruction to “protect your peace,” for another set of instructions on track two, during which Lil Jon repeatedly implores listeners to “shut the fuck up, bitch” and Lizzo’s sing-talking adopts a bratty lilt: “If fatherless behavior is a problem / Be a dad.” Her raps, heard on songs like “BOP IT!,” “LACE LIFTERS,” and “YITTY ON YO TITTYS,” hark back to a prior Lizzo, the Lizzo of her 2013 début, “Lizzobangers.” I won’t call it cool. Cringe remains—it’s Lizzo, after all. There’s also abrasion and bad attitude. It is, dare I say, bitchy. ♦
