I listened to them sing their gospel medley. ‘They had an album-signing event at a Wal-Mart and I skipped school to go see them. 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. Everyone had their, “I saw Beyonce when…” or, “I saw Destiny’s Child at this party…” stories. ‘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. It was there that she had her first encounter with one Beyoncé Giselle Knowles. She then moved to Houston, Texas, at the age of 10. As legend has it, she was born in Detroit (Taurus sun Leo rising) smack in the middle of rush hour. Lizzo began imagining a life as a singer when she was a young girl, named Melissa Viviane Jefferson. I SEE SOMEONE LIKE ME ASHAMED TO BE – ‘MY SKIN’
#COMIN OUT STRONG SONG KEY SKIN#
I WEAR MY FLAWS ON MY SLEEVE AND MY SKIN LIKE A PEACOAT. Can a song do that? Times are complicated. But in Lizzo’s world, pop is not just a bop, it’s a vehicle to change the world. 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. I never have to go, “Hi, my name is Lizzo,” ever again. And it’s great because I can now do it without having to explain who I am. Because what is that? I can tell my story and share my music and help people. Now what?” I think I would feel a lot of pressure. ‘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. This sense of advocacy is a point that Lizzo returns to frequently throughout our time together. ‘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. ‘For every artist who goes mainstream, it’s like AD and BC, right? As in before and after your breakout moment,’ she says. With her new album Special, which lands this month, all of her hard-won personal growth converges into one sonic magnum opus. 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. Meanwhile, Harry Styles famously said, ‘She’s exactly what you want an artist to be… which is themselves.’ The writer and popular self-proclaimed internet ‘meme-witch’ Adrienne Maree Brown called her a ‘healer’. The woman other women see themselves in and aspire to be like. She’s become the face of self-acceptance goals. 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. Within the current landscape of pop and R&B music, few lighten the mood as consistently as Lizzo.