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Three Grammys, a critically acclaimed TV show and a revolutionary new shapewear line into her career, Lizzo’s album is her biggest mission yet. She tells Kenya Hunt about the loves, the lows and the many lessons that got her here
'Just a minute, I’m having my weave melted,’ Lizzo explains, as I wait for her to turn her camera on for our Zoom call. When she does, she’s a vision in blue. Her hair, which is long, side parted, wavy, fluid even, and ‘laid’, as my girlfriends would say, is the colour of sugared almonds. So is her excellent eye make-up, which matches her dress, a bodycon slip in the same shade, from her shapewear line Yitty. ‘I see my glam squad more than I see my man,’ she says wryly. The singer is sitting in her kitchen, skin glossy, the LA sun illuminating her face as if she’s sat before a wall of ring lights. Not that she needs the extra help.
Within the current landscape of pop and R&B music, few lighten the mood as consistently as Lizzo. Among a pantheon of modern chart-toppers that includes Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa, Cardi B, Doja Cat, Olivia Rodrigo and Megan Thee Stallion, to name a few, she’s the woman consistently making a case for positivity – speaking out about societal ills while inspiring her 37-plus million (12.7m on IG; 24.3m on TikTok) strong audience to look at the bright side, rather than despair. She’s become the face of self-acceptance goals. The woman other women see themselves in and aspire to be like. A modern model of self-actualisation.
The writer and popular self-proclaimed internet ‘meme-witch’ Adrienne Maree Brown called her a ‘healer’. Meanwhile, Harry Styles famously said, ‘She’s exactly what you want an artist to be… which is themselves.’
To hear her tell it, becoming Lizzo has been a process in which the evolution of her music is twinned with her own personal transformation, filled with peaks, valleys, dramas, insecurities, heartbreak and, ultimately, victories – all in pursuit of a greater good. With her new album Special, which lands this month, all of her hard-won personal growth converges into one sonic magnum opus.
‘For every artist who goes mainstream, it’s like AD and BC, right? As in before and after your breakout moment,’ she says. ‘It’s a very peaceful place for me to be in now because I feel like all my projects before this were not in pursuit of fame, but in pursuit of telling my story, and finding my voice and then, eventually, helping people,’ she says. This sense of advocacy is a point that Lizzo returns to frequently throughout our time together. ‘If my journey was like, “I’m making these albums until I make it big.” Well, then what? “You won three Grammys, now what? Critically acclaimed, number one. Now what?” I think I would feel a lot of pressure. Because what is that? I can tell my story and share my music and help people. And it’s great because I can now do it without having to explain who I am. I never have to go, “Hi, my name is Lizzo,” ever again. Nah, y’all know who I am. So just enjoy the music. Enjoy the ride.’
Her anthemic single About Damn Time has soundtracked our summer of re-emergence – the parties, the festivals, the hen dos, the drunken TikTok attempts by the pool. But in Lizzo’s world, pop is not just a bop, it’s a vehicle to change the world. Can a song do that? Times are complicated. Nevertheless, Lizzo’s mission is clear.
I WEAR MY FLAWS ON MY SLEEVE AND MY SKIN LIKE A PEACOAT. I SEE SOMEONE LIKE ME ASHAMED TO BE – ‘MY SKIN’
Lizzo began imagining a life as a singer when she was a young girl, named Melissa Viviane Jefferson. As legend has it, she was born in Detroit (Taurus sun; Leo rising) smack in the middle of rush hour. She then moved to Houston, Texas, at the age of 10. It was there that she had her first encounter with one Beyoncé Giselle Knowles. ‘Growing up in Houston, the impact that Destiny’s Child had on me making a decision to become an artist was incredible, mostly because I felt like we were so close to it. Everyone had their, “I saw Beyonce when…” or, “I saw Destiny’s Child at this party…” stories. And that made it seem more accessible. Like, “Oh, maybe I can do this too, if I worked hard enough and had the right people around me.”’ And then, she saw them perform. ‘They had an album-signing event at a Wal-Mart and I skipped school to go see them. I listened to them sing their gospel medley. I’ve seen Beyoncé maybe up to 10 times live now, and she continues to give me that feeling,’ Lizzo says, with her eyes wide.
‘I can tell my story and share my music and help people. And I can now do it without having to explain who I am. I never have to go, “Hi, my name is Lizzo”’
A week before we sit down, Beyoncé dropped a surprise single and an accompanying announcement that a new album is on the way. Lizzo says that, when she heard the news, she went numb. ‘That excitement never goes away. She doesn’t just put out music for the sake of putting out music – there’s going to be something real, you know what I mean? A teachable moment. Every time I hear her, it’s like, “Man, I want to make people feel this way. How can I make people feel this way, too?”’ One need only scroll through fan videos tagged #Lizzo on Instagram and TikTok – and they are manifold – to see that she’s already doing it. ‘I don’t think people are listening. I don’t think people get it, get it,’ she says, when I ask her about how she perceives her fame. This dichotomy comes up throughout our chat; a paradoxical mix of her fierce confidence and a seeming lack of belief at the power she wields. It’s clear she knows her worth, but there are moments when she seems to wonder if people truly appreciate just how much she’s worth. Her influence is enormous, with TikToks featuring her songs generating 4.9 billion views. And her brand now spans fashion, thanks to her newly launched body-inclusive shapewear, and television, through her popular Prime Video series Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, in which she searches for back-up dancers with curvier, more relatable bodies. Both projects have been widely celebrated for challenging narrow, age-old beauty standards – ideals that influenced Lizzo’s own self-confidence growing up and her desire to lift up other marginalised women now.
When she was starting out as a young singer and rapper, she found her comfort zone performing in girl groups (one called The Chalice and another called Grrrl Prty), rather than as a solo act, because she felt awkward about her weight. ‘I think it was more of, like, an insecurity. Nearly every star I saw on stage was thinner and light-skinned. And they didn’t look like me. Sure, there were women like Missy Elliott and Queen Latifah. But they were the exception to the rule. And so I always felt like, even if the song is great, people wouldn’t want to hear it coming from me. So I thought, if I have other people on stage, too, that will take the focus off me a little bit.’
For young Melissa, a pop star meant: ‘Man, I wish I looked like that.’ She says she admired Rihanna’s style so much, the singer inspired her to get one of her first weaves. ‘I know people want to look like me now. But I’m talking about what it was like in my formative years. I wasn’t really set up to believe that I was desirable. For me, being a pop star – part of it is people either want to be you or be with you. And I didn’t feel like I had any of those qualities.’
So, she decided to change that. ‘And I did,’ she says simply.
I’VE BEEN THE SAME SINCE I’VE BEEN DRIVING SLOW ON BISSONNET. CALL UP ANYBODY I KNOW AND THEY WOULD TELL YOU THAT. FAMOUS, PRETTY, NEW, BUT I’VE BEEN USED TO PEOPLE JUDGING ME – ‘SPECIAL’
Lizzo credits the people around her as being the making of her. ‘In doing the fake it till you make it method, I began attracting a lot of people who thought I was beautiful.’ One of them was her best friend, whom she met in Minneapolis, where she moved to pursue her singing career. ‘She’s always been like, “You look good, you look beautiful”. In the past, a lot of people were my friend because they knew that having me around would make them feel better about themselves. But she genuinely thought I was beautiful and helped me believe it and verbalise it out loud.’
‘I wasn’t really set up to believe that I was desirable. For me, being a pop star – part of it is p
Suddenly, Lizzo wasn’t faking it anymore. She continues, ‘I was like, “Oh no, my [beauty] is real.” And I think that’s an important thing. You start attracting people who see you the way you see yourself. Anyone around you is going to notice you how you view yourself.’
At the moment, the person around her is her mother, Shari Johnson-Jefferson, who has walked into the room Lizzo is in while we talk. Her father, Michael Jefferson, died in 2009. In June, Shari introduced her daughter in a special cameo appearance for the singer’s first time hosting Saturday Night Live. ‘We’re very close,’ Lizzo says. ‘But I don’t get to see her as often as I like.’
There’s also a new man in the picture, actor Myke Wright, and Lizzo appeared to make the relationship Instagram official when she posted a photo of them together on the pink carpet for the premiere of Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls. The slideshow post also included a sweet photo of her hand, gloved in hot pink (because, hello, Lizzo) holding his.
Did I mention the hand had a ring on? It set her comments alight with engagement rumours. When I ask her about the relationship, though, she deftly swerves. ‘It’s a bromance,’ she says, with a laugh.
Lizzo admits she’s come a long way in her relationship with social media, but adds that growing up in the generation before Facebook, Twitter and Instagram (she is 34) has helped. ‘I think I have a very healthy relationship with the way that I view the digital world. I was born before it was everywhere you go, before it was the official news source, and before it was an obligatory or a necessity in your career. I grew up right before it was able to harass you in schools and get you cyberbullied in class. I just missed that mark.’
Last summer, she made headlines when she took to Instagram Live, responding tearfully to the racist and fatphobic comments she received after launching a collaboration with Cardi B on the single Rumors. ‘I’m putting so much loving energy into the world… and sometimes I feel like the world don’t love me back,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter how much positive energy you put into the world, you’re still going to have people who have something mean to say about you.’
Today, her views are much more resolute. ‘I don’t need social media, social media needs me. Social media literally needs people to function. I don’t need to go on the internet and feel better about stuff anymore. I have a therapist. I have best friends. I have an amazing team around me who I can talk to. I got love.’
She describes her current approach to social media much like she does her mission with music: ‘There are millions of people going through what I’m going through, who don’t have an outlet, who don’t have a support system, who don’t have the financial freedom or access to certain things to feel better. I don’t want people to have to suffer like I do. If I can give somebody a cheat code, or if I can give somebody the recipe so they can make their own sauce, I’m gonna do it.’
I’M NOT THE GIRL I WAS OR USED TO BE. UH, BITCH, I MIGHT BE BETTER – ‘ABOUT DAMN TIME’
At the moment, her feed has also become a very effective shop window for Yitty, which she hopes will help the fashion industry become a more welcoming space for women of size. She says she has too many experiences being on set for fashion shoots, ‘bursting out of the samples’. With Yitty, she hopes to normalise a system in which clothes are designed with bigger bodies in mind, rather than size-six garments being scaled up. I share with her my own frustration with producing shoots featuring curvier models in which we feature custom-made clothing (because sample sizes are criminally small) that readers will most likely not be able to find in shops. ‘I’ve had a lot of shoots with people making outfits from scratch for me. And I’m not mad at it. Thank you. But what about the millions of people who are my size or bigger who can’t get access to chic and glamorous clothing? I don’t want to be the token big girl for the fashion world. I want to open the door. I want this for everybody.’
She decided to start with shapewear because it’s the most triggering. (It’s also booming, with a wave of women-led labels creating undergarments for all shapes and sizes, from Kim Kardashian’s Skims to the feminist-leaning Heist.)
For Lizzo, the decision was bigger than business. It was personal. ‘More than any piece of clothing, shapewear can make people feel ways about their bodies and, most of the time, it’s bad. I want to revolutionise shapewear. I want to change how people think when they hear the word “snatched”. I don’t want people to ever have to deal with a girdle again in their lives.’
It’s hard to talk about Lizzo’s music without talking about her commitment to advocacy. And I can understand why she’s so vocal about it. Pop music can easily be taken at surface value – in this case, a cute beat to shake your booty to. Lizzo’s light, catchy, feel-good hooks are deceptive. There’s a radical, zeitgeisty undercurrent running through the happy lyrics. She says she reached a turning point with her music in 2015 when she wrote My Skin, after a young Black man was shot and killed by police a block away from her house in Minneapolis. ‘People were out there in the streets, protesting and gathering and organising and speaking out for this man. And it inspired me: like, “Wow, I want to write a song to help people who are experiencing this feeling”. Because it had a message, I felt like it should be heard by millions of people. You know? So, I think I had the moment when I was very happy being an indie artist. But after I wrote My Skin, I was like, “Oh, music can actually help people.” If I can be that person, then why run away from that purpose?’
She recorded her new album Special in her house in LA during lockdown, whittling down its final lineup of tracks from hundreds that she wrote. ‘I have so many songs at this point, some that are my favourite I’ve ever written. But I’m not putting them on the album if they don’t serve the greater purpose. You know? And I think the greater purpose is: what do I need to say right now that can help people forever?’
She was thinking about social justice (‘the rights of Black people is what I’ve been focused on since the beginning’), climate change and the growing population of people struggling with mental-health issues. ‘It seems like, every week, we are hit with traumatic events. And one doesn’t outrank the other. They’re all equally as tragic, equally as terrifying, equally as traumatic,’ she says. A week later, she would announce donations to Planned Parenthood and a series of abortion funds following the Supreme Court’s repeal of Roe v Wade. ‘I feel like the human brain is only capable of fixating on one thing at a time. So even on a biological level, thinking about everything we need to fix makes my head hurt. And it’s got to the point where it’s like, there are so many things wrong. Why don’t we just talk about starting over?’
‘I don’t need to go on the internet and feel better about stuff anymore. I have a therapist. I have best friends. I have an amazing team around me who I can talk to. I got love’
Sitting in her house in 2020, she found solace in the music-making, an experience she also felt conflicted about. ‘It was hard for me to find meaning, being an entertainer, while people were dying at a high rate,’ she says. ‘I had to remember, when we come out of lockdown, people are going to be coming out of a depression. And the end of lockdown does not signify the end of their mental-health struggles. So I wanted to make music that people can use as a soundtrack to survive. That was the driver for this album.’ The music is undeniably upbeat, and dance challenge-friendly. But the lyrics have a depth and honesty that seem to draw from years of therapy. ‘All of these incredible songs are giving people the language to express themselves and to have a release after everything they’ve experienced.’ She says she wants her music to pull you out of a bad mood, but also give you a playlist to protest to.
‘I spent years being ashamed. It took a lot of work for me to feel worthy of being in this place. To feel worthy of being a force to be reckoned with,’ she says. And now that she’s there, she’s determined to bring a whole world of women with her. It’s about damn time.
Lizzo is on the cover of ELLE UK's September 2022 issue, which hits newsstands on July 28th.
Further shoot credits: HAIR: Shelby Swain. MAKE-UP: Alexx Mayo. NAILS: Karen Jimenez at Opus TAILOR: Hasmik Kourinian. PRODUCER: Rachel Oliver. FASHION ASSISTANT: Grace Clarke