Pop singer Lizzo has stated that many of the songs on her new album, Bitch, were not written in response to the public backlash against her – but rather about the breakup of a friendship “that was not public at all”.
The star behind mega hits such as “Truth Hurts”, whose real name is Melissa Jefferson, failed to chart in the US or the UK with the new project, with the album selling just 2,649 copies in its first week of release. In the second, sales reportedly dropped to 650 units.
Many critics interpreted several songs on the album, which came out last month and received largely negative reviews, as being in response to the controversy over a lawsuit that was was filed against Lizzo, her production company, and her dance captain Shirlene Quigley in 2023 by three of her former backup dancers.
Their allegations included sexual harassment, body shaming, and creating a hostile work environment. The trio’s accusations were supported by Lizzo’s ex-creative director, dancer and filmmaker Sophia Nahli Allison, who claimed she witnessed “unkind and cruel” behaviour from the singer while collaborating on a documentary.
Lizzo has vehemently denied all the allegations against her; several of the claims, including weight-shaming, have been dismissed by a judge. The case is ongoing, and the singer has stated that she intends to continue fighting in court. “I’m not afraid of the truth,” she told Gayle King on CBS Mornings. “The truth is less salacious than the headlines.”
Speaking to The Guardian in a cover feature for the publication’s Saturday Magazine, Lizzo said she was already having “these crazy revelations” about fame and success before the lawsuit was filed, and that critics were wrong to search every song for references to the allegations.
“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 said, singling out “Like a Crime”, addressed to a person 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,” she said. “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.”
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She claimed that the last time they spoke, the former friend said they were thinking of her and hoped “everything’s OK”.
“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,’” she added. “That was the most hurtful thing I’ve experienced in a long time.”
She said the person in questions was not one of the dancers suing her: “This person has no legal claims; they just joined a hate train.”
The Independent’s two-star review of Bitch said the album was “strangely muted and full of cliched platitudes that suggest she can’t even convince herself that she’s OK, let alone the rest of us”.
“Bitch feels like an attempt to resurrect her image from before the controversy, one of an unbothered, unapologetic and confident queen,” the review said. “Yet in every respect, this record is all over the place.”
Bitch’s commercial performance was a dramatic departure from the success of its predecessor, Lizzo’s 2022 album Special, which sold more than 39,000 copies in its first week, with 69,000 album equivalent units from streams and downloads.
It was enough to get her the number two spot on the Billboard 200, while also being met with positive reviews from critics and multiple Grammy nominations, as well as a win for Record of the Year for the single “About Damn Time”.
Appearing on the Swiftologist podcast last month, Lizzo was asked for her candid take on where her career is at after Bitch failed to chart at all.
“Dropping the album, I took it to heart really, really heavily,” she said. “I hurt my own feelings. And I was really stressed and I was really sad for a few days because I just was like, ‘Wait a minute. This is, like, some of my best stuff.’
“I had to come to terms with the fact that not only is the music industry different in the last three years, and we need to talk about that – we need to talk about the radio aspect – but also, my relationship and my connection musically with the world is different. And I think I had to kind of mourn that.”
Lizzo had previously claimed that changes in the music industry were in part to blame for why her music, including the recent single “Don’t Make Me Love You”, were failing to perform as hoped.
“The industry changed so much in the last three years,” she wrote on X. “Streaming replaced radio and I was a radio darling. That’s how my fans discovered my music.”
However, music executive and pundit Ray Daniels, who hosts The Raydar Report, told Rolling Stone that it was “BS” to place the blame on streaming.
“If you know that the industry is changing, you should be warning your fans ahead of time,” he said. “Why are you not telling your fans to request your song on radio? They’re your fans, they’ll do what you ask them to do.”
The full Guardian interview with Lizzo is available now.
