Lizzo, the singing, rapping, twerking role model is coming to Australia
Ahead of her debut Australian tour, Lizzo, the woman on Obama’s playlist and Rihanna’s model wishlist, reveals her Aussie dream and how she came to accept her curves as a pop star.
Music
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Exclusive: After nearly a decade of striving, Lizzo has achieved the kind of heady success even she thought would never happen. A singing, rapping, twerking, meme-inspiring, flute-playing, body-positivity-peddling force of nature, the 31-year-old dynamo can now add “chart-topper” to her list of superlatives, and is officially the breakout music star of 2019.
Yet ahead of her first-ever tour of Australia in January, and for all of her prodigious talent, the classically trained singer confesses to deep anxiety as she considers what to put on the wishlist for her visit.
“I want to go to the Sydney Opera House, see if I can sit in for the first-chair flautist,” she tells Stellar over lunch in a Los Angeles hotel suite. “I think that would be easier for me than doing a solo.” But, she concedes, “I would be so anxious. I am confident in everything but the flute … I did it for so long and was literally in competitions [for it], so I get anxiety about being good enough. It’s so wild that I think if I f*ck up on the flute, I’m a failure!”
Lizzo has only been doing success in recent months. And if it looks like her chart-slaying happened overnight, in reality it was a slow — at times strife-ridden — burn.
Born Melissa Jefferson in Detroit, Lizzo grew up in Texas and studied classical music (majoring in flute) at the University of Houston, before moving to Minneapolis and attempting to launch an R’n’B and rap career — first with a girl group and eventually on her own. She lived in her car for a year while trying to break into the industry.
“I think I’m an interesting pill to swallow,” she says. “I’m just different. I tried to be not different for a while. I had to sit back and wonder, ‘Am I on this planet to make cool music and to be cool? Or am I on this planet to make people smile, to make people happy?’ I think once I made that decision, it became the thing I’m best at.”
Eventually, she caught the attention of her adopted city’s ruling pop king. She contributed lyrics and vocals to a song on Prince’s 2014 album Plectrumelectrum, and as she reflects on the experience, she says that “I just wanted it to be perfect, I wanted to be awesome. And the only note [from him] was, ‘This is your song.’ That is wild … so I did exactly what I wanted to do. Then he put it on the album. There it was, the way I did it: the notes, the rap, the squeals. It is so important to encourage artists to just treat everything you do as your art.”
In 2017, not long after she landed her first major label deal, it was time for Lizzo to navigate the mainstream with her idiosyncratic sound.
But her single Truth Hurts landed to deafening disinterest. The singer considered quitting the business as a result, but a pep talk from her producer kept her going. Luckily for her, the music industry isn’t what it used to be.
The internet has had a resounding influence on the tried and true methods of launching new artists and their records — which is precisely why, two years on, the song has enjoyed a six weeks-long run at the top of the charts in her homeland and gone platinum in Australia.
The song’s unlikely second life came about in the most millennial of ways — via Netflix, apps and internet memes.
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Truth Hurts started its ascent in April when it featured in the cult Netflix rom-com Someone Great, then went viral on TikTok, a lip-syncing video app whose users around the world started putting their spin on the hit lyric’s opening line: “I just took a DNA test/Turns out I’m 100% that bitch.”
The song even inspired a #DNATest challenge, where fans substituted their nationalities or identities to shoot down prejudice.
In Lizzo’s quest to make people happy, she and her music also became cool.
Her songwriting demonstrates a gift for juxtaposing shiny melodies with robust lyrical punches that speak to the zeitgeist. The opening lyric “Mirror, mirror on the wall, don’t say it ’cause I know I’m cute” from her single ‘Juice’ (a favourite of Barack Obama, who put it on his Spotify summer playlist) encapsulates the sky-high self-confidence Lizzo projects and encourages her fans to emulate.
From her body-positive activism and feminism, to her self-love crusade and gay rights advocacy, Lizzo’s breakout record Cuz I Love You has an anthem for the displaced who want to find acceptance in her broad church.
As such, Lizzo is suddenly everywhere: on fashion magazine covers, chatting with Ellen DeGeneres and Jimmy Fallon on TV, appearing with Jennifer Lopez in new film Hustlers and giving a roof-shaking performance at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
“There’s been a whole lotta self-destructive trends in music and that’s scary,” she says.
“I mean, when the artist or the song glorifies self-harm, negative self-speak or drug abuse, it glorifies those things. I’m not saying that’s wrong, because that’s their truth. But I am saying my music is becoming more popular because it is the antithesis of that. And people need that balance.”
She had to learn to celebrate her famous curves. She recalls a 2013 interview in which subjects removed items of their clothing as they talked about their relationship with their body. At the time, she admits, she was a “little sh*thead”, hungover and unaware of the concept before she gave the chat, having showed up in a T-shirt, leggings and her favourite bright-red wig.
“This was before body positivity was a trending term,” she says. “I sat there doing this interview thinking, ‘I ain’t got much to take off … And I would have rather taken off anything except my wig, because I was so insecure after cutting all my hair off and I had this little ‘fro.
“And I remember coming to this moment, this catharsis. I’m sitting on YouTube with 10,000 views of me in my bra and my underwear and no wig and no make-up. And that liberated me more than it scared me. From then on, I’ve been shameless about who I am and my body.”
At the VMAs, she exploded onto the stage in a neon yellow bodysuit with The Big Grrrls dancers in tow, a giant inflatable bum bouncing behind them.
In the middle of the performance, she yelled a mantra to the crowd (and millions watching at home): “I’m tired of the bullsh*t and I don’t have to know your story to know you’re tired of the bullsh*t, too. It’s so hard trying to love yourself in a world that doesn’t love you back. So I want to take this opportunity right now just to feel good as hell.”
The set earned headlines and hashtags, a rave review from Rihanna, new fans and more followers on social media, where Lizzo is masterful at bonding with her fans.
Though she admits that minefield brings as many haters as lovers.
“Sometimes it’s really annoying and gross how it shows people’s true colours,” she says. “You follow me but you have this opinion of me, which is the antithesis of everything I talk about.
“Like this one girl who accidentally DMed me saying, ‘What’s her deal trying to empower women and using her body for attention? Isn’t that the opposite of what she’s trying to do?’
“I almost wanted to block her so she couldn’t look at my butt and my twerking videos. This sh*t brings me joy — it brings a lot of people joy.”
And then this queen of future pop erupts in infectious laughter before looking me straight in the eye and declaring: “I don’t need to compare myself to anybody, because you can’t compare to me anyway.”
Lizzo performs at the FOMO Festival in January 2020; fomofestival.com.au.
Originally published as Lizzo, the singing, rapping, twerking role model is coming to Australia