Lizzo's Post-Scandal Comeback: The New Album, Fame, and Betrayal

On 30 July 2023, Lizzo finished a 10-month world tour. She had played 80 shows across North America, Europe, Oceania and Asia, selling more than 853,000 tickets and grossing $86.3m. The rapper turned pop star was on top of the world. Then everything came crashing down.

Two days later, three of her former dancers alleged that they had been subject to sexual harassment, a hostile work environment, religious and racial discrimination and fat-shaming on the tour. Two had been sacked, and one resigned. After the accusations, there was a huge pile-on from mainstream media and social media. And it seems to have gone on ever since. Lizzo, whose real name is Melissa Viviane Jefferson, disappeared. We were told that she was busy recording the follow-up to her huge hit album Special. But there were also rumours that she’d had a terrible breakdown.

Last month, the new album, Bitch, was finally released. The reviews were disappointing, and the sales even more so. After her two previous albums had each shifted more than a million units, Bitch failed to make the top 100 in either the US or Britain. It seems that the world was not prepared to forgive Lizzo, whether the allegations were true or not.

Today, she’s in Los Angeles and we meet by video link. Just as her publicist warns me about topics that are off-limits because of specific legal issues, Lizzo bounds on to the screen, sporting new honey-blond curls, but still with the irrepressible energy of old. She could just as easily be addressing a festival crowd as me and her publicist. “I can’t talk about that, whatever you’re talking about! Hehehe!” She throws her head back and roars with laughter. “What’s up y’all? I’m gooooood.”

Of all the downfalls in the music biz, Lizzo’s is one of the saddest. She seemed to be such a force for good. She had just stolen the show at Glastonbury in 2023, was fabulously talented and the most surprising of role models – a 325lb, classically trained, sonic sex bomb. Lizzo was an old-school preacher with a very modern message about body positivity, sex positivity, diversity positivity; who shook her ass and flaunted her flute in the face of the world, and showed us that anything was possible.

She represented a culture in which old boundaries and expectations had been vanquished, and we were largely free to be what we wanted to be, so long as we did it with kindness. And then came the allegations. Were they malicious, made to destroy the reputation of a woman who seemed too good to be true? Or was Lizzo a fraud? Could the woman who reclaimed the word “bitch” to proclaim her self-worth in Truth Hurts (“I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch”) really merit that description in the old-fashioned sense? Was the artist who celebrated her natural curves in Tempo with the mantra “Thick thighs save lives” really a fat-shamer?

Last December a judge ruled that the fat-shaming allegation did not have enough merit to proceed to a civil trial. But we are none the wiser about the other claims. All we know is that Lizzo has insisted that there is no substance to them and has refused to settle out of court. And that it has taken a hell of a lot out of her. In an essay she wrote last year on her Substack she confirmed she became “deeply suicidal” and for a while had “cut off her loved ones”.

I tell her I saw her at Glastonbury in 2023 and that she was fantastic. She says she knows she was: “Everything was fantastic at Glastonbury.” She sips from her iced coffee. It was such an amazing time for you, I say. “It’s always an amazing time for Lizzo.” Well, I suggest gently, perhaps the past three years have been on the tough side. Silence. After you’d been so celebrated, things got a little difficult, I suggest. More silence. The raucous belly laughter has gone. I ask how she’s coped. “Ermmmm. You get to a level of fame and celebrity when your fame overshadows your art. And I’m there! Ha!” She laughs, but this time there’s not much humour in it. “I never signed up to be just a famous person. I was always, like, I’m going to make art for ever. So when my fame precedes me as an artist it can be uncomfortable, because people care more about what I said than what I made.”

I’m baffled by the fulsome answer she gives to a question I’ve not asked. It feels like we’re shadow boxing. I’m beating around the bush, and she seems to be hiding in it. I ask what she means by her level of fame preceding her art. “Well, you know, I will put out music and the critique of it is never really about the music: it’s more about me. And I think that comes with being this level of famous. I don’t think it’s unique to me. There’s ‘I don’t like this person’. And it’s, like, why? It’s not because they made a bad song; you just don’t like them. And now you don’t like their song. It’s an interesting phenomena, but now I’m settling into it.”

We appear to be having two different conversations. I’m talking about the impact of the accusations and she’s talking about the impact of fame. Gradually I realise that for her they are one and the same thing. She believes the allegations about her behaviour and the way she treated the three dancers came about because of her fame. And now she believes that critics have reviewed Bitch purely through the lens of the scandal.

Did she ever think she’d have to face up to all this?

“Face up to what?” she snaps.

The level of fame and the scrutiny, I say. Suddenly the euphemisms, allusions and coded references to what happened are gone. Now her answer is as direct as you’d expect from straight-talking Lizzo. “No, I don’t think anybody does. Everything was unexpected. The Grammies, unexpected. The number ones, unexpected. The fame, unexpected. The public scrutiny, unexpected. The one thing I did expect was being a fat, black, happy girl, they were going to try to take that away from me. They were always going to try to tear me down. I always knew, from when I was a non‑famous person, that that makes people uncomfortable. So I kind of signed up for that part.”

It feels like you’re fighting back on Bitch, I say. “No, I don’t think I’m fighting. I am responding. My album is very honest. It’s a real reflection of me and the world right now.” She quotes from a song called A Toast: “I hope it makes you happy / To hurt somebody else / And when you lose it all / I hope you find yourself”. The lyrics could be applied equally to the world at large, friends who betrayed her, or the people who made the allegations against her. And this is how she would want it – an all-purpose assault on what she regards as gratuitous nastiness.

“We live in a culture where everybody is racing to get the top comment, and the most hurtful comment wins. We’re in a business of hurting each other. I think everybody was so careful about the way we spoke about others, and everybody was holding people accountable for the last few years, and now the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Being cruel is trendy and acceptable. And I think we’re seeing it at the top of our society, from the leaders, all the way down to comment sections. We’re seeing cruelty at an all-time high.”

Last year Lizzo threatened legal action against the Trump administration after it used her song About Damn Time for a military-themed parade in Washington DC. I ask her if she thinks Trump’s America and the Maga movement is a reflection of this cruelty. She says it goes beyond Trump.

“I don’t want to talk about American politics. I’ve talked about it a lot. I do think the world is unrecognisable. I’m not speaking about any specific political party, I’m speaking in general.” She points out that A Toast was written in 2021. “That was before I met anyone who made legal claims against me. I was already having these crazy revelations; there’s a certain amount of fame and success that will reveal the people around you.”

She insists that the critics are wrong to search every song for references to the allegations. Actually, she says, the overwhelming sense of betrayal is much more personal. “What people don’t know is that most of the sad songs on this album are about a friendship breakup that was not public at all.” She talks about Like a Crime, addressed to someone who “Broke my heart and stole my life”. “That song is about a friend who I was very close with and I employed them and believed in them and they were extremely abusive and lied about me. It was one of the hardest friendship breakups I’ve ever had. I really loved this person, and they secretly hated me and I don’t know why.”

Did she ever have it out with them? “The last time we spoke it was, like, ‘I’m thinking about you, I love you, I hope everything’s OK’, and I was, like, ‘Oh, I love you too.’ Then a year later they were on the internet talking about how horrible a person I am, and I was so confused because I was, like, ‘I thought we were good.’ That was the most hurtful thing I’ve experienced in a long time.” Was this one of the dancers who made the allegations? “No. This person has no legal claims; they just joined a hate train.”

Inevitably, she says the tone of Bitch is different from previous albums. Beforehand, she says, there was a feelgood element to her music. Sure, she sang about her struggles, but she would always emerge from the depths triumphant. She says the 2019 song Soulmate about lost love is a typical example. “It’s, like, I’ve got my heart broken, but in the chorus I save myself every time. It’s, like, ‘Don’t worry, girl, because you’re still feeling good as hell.’ On this album, there’s no resolve. There’s no soft ‘But I’ll be OK’, because sometimes that’s not the reality. Sometimes you’re not OK for a long time.”

In the past, she has said she was never quite the happy-go-lucky personality she has been packaged as. It’s not that the happiness is fake, more that it has been offset by periods of deep depression. Even between 2018 and 2021, when she enjoyed her first success, there were times when she couldn’t see the point of facing another day. It’s overcoming the lows that have made the highs so joyous, she says.

Lizzo grew up in Detroit, Michigan, and then Houston, Texas. Her parents, Shari Johnson-Jefferson and Michael Jefferson, were Pentecostalists and she was raised in the Church of God in Christ. The pair ran a mortgage business until the 2008 financial crisis. Shari sang and played organ in church, but early on Lizzo’s parents believed pop was the music of the devil. When she was 10 they moved to Houston, and a less orthodox lifestyle. She says her father started to dream of creating a Jackson 5-type family band even though there were only three children – Lizzo and her older brother and sister.

The young Melissa Jefferson was a geek and a swot. “I was a bookworm. An overachiever. And I was bullied in middle school.” Was she big? “Yeah, I was a big girl. But you know in Houston, Texas, everything is big. So it’s not that ‘Oh my God!’ to be big. I think for me, it was, like, I grew up as the swot. As a black girl I wasn’t the norm. I was such a nerd. I was always reading manga comics and books, and I played the flute and was in a marching band. I didn’t wear my hair in cool styles. I’d wear my hair in little sweaty buns, and I wasn’t friends with any of the cool kids. I was very, very about books. I’d literally walk into halls reading a book. I think that’s mostly what I was bullied for. Just being different.”

Did it bother her or did she think it was a positive? “I turned being different into my superpower. I remember being like, ‘You think I want to try to be cool with you. I don’t want to be cool with no fucking bully. I’m good: I have my besties for life.’” She was strong? “I didn’t think of it as strong. It was just who I was. And then the summer before high school I stopped reading books so much and started rapping and being the class clown and a little smartass.”

Did that make her more popular? “It definitely made a difference. I would never consider myself the most popular girl in school, but after that I was friends with all the cool people, with all the basketball players and the cheerleader girls.” So it was a big change? “Well, I was still in marching bands, but luckily I was best friends with the coolest girls in marching bands.”

Did she ever think she’d end up as a professional classical musician? Her pupils dilate, as they tend to do when she gets passionate. “Yes! My absolute dream was to be a principal flutist in an orchestra or the ballet.” She studied classical music on a scholarship at Houston University, but dropped out when her father became ill and the family started struggling for money. Her parents moved to Denver, but she stayed in Austin and ended up homeless, living out of her car for six months. Michael died in 2009 of complications following a stroke. He had been her inspiration and driving force. She lost her hope and her way, and gave up on classical music.

She began singing, applied to a job advert for a lead vocalist and joined a prog-rock group called Ellypseas. In 2011, she moved to Minneapolis and formed Lizzo & the Larva Ink, an electro-funk duo with Johnny Lewis, followed by rap groups the Chalice and GRRRL PRTY. In 2013, she made her first solo album, Lizzobangers. Her pacy rap and stream-of-consciousness rhyming over minimalist electronic beats was compared to Missy Elliott and Outkast. The album was highly praised but not commercially successful. In 2016, she signed to Atlantic Records, and a new, more commercial Lizzo evolved. Her third album, Cuz I Love You, was brimming with radio‑friendly R&B‑pop anthems such as Juice, Tempo and Truth Hurts. She became a star. And then came Special in 2022, which solidified her status.

If she could choose now between being a world -famous pop star or principal flautist in an orchestra, what would she opt for? “In 2026? That’s tough! I think there are pros and cons to both. It kind of equals out.”

Really? Most people would assume you’d pick world‑famous pop star, I say. “Yeah, but I’ve seen it’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. I never really wanted to be famous.” What are the downsides? “Fame doesn’t solve any problems. Fame doesn’t make you happier. Fame doesn’t cure depression. Fame doesn’t make your friends any more real. And fame doesn’t guarantee you success. It’s just something that happens to you. I’m grateful for the financial freedom I have, but I also know that fame alone ain’t the cure-all you think it is.”

Rather than transforming your life, she says, fame simply amplifies what is already there. “I think everything we have, we have. So fame amplified my anxiety, depression, some of my joy. Fame amplified some of the bad habits of people around me that maybe I wouldn’t have seen if I hadn’t been this famous.” What does she mean? “I just mean that if your friend was fake before fame, becoming famous shows just how fake they are. Hahaha!”

The three dancers filed their joint lawsuit in the Los Angeles County supe