Some cultural curios can make you realize just how long ago 2019 seems, even if only seven years have elapsed — Bon Appetit videos, Theranos name-checks, reminders of The Good Place’s sardonic optimism. Then there’s Lizzo, the Minneapolis-via-Houston rapper-producer-flautist who, after garnering buzz and critical acclaim during the 2010s, broke big that year with her third album, Cuz I Love You, a frothy, hooky showcase of her talent and charisma, and the resurgence of her single “Truth Hurts,” a piano-led rebuke of an ex that went to Number One.
Since then, Lizzo’s fortunes have been up and down. Her 2022 follow-up, Special, had the breezy chart-topper “About Damn Time,” which won a Record of the Year Grammy; she appeared on the blockbuster Barbie: The Album and added flute to Dolly Parton’s version of “Stairway To Heaven.” She also had two lawsuits filed against her for harassment and other claims — one by three former backup dancers, another by a wardrobe stylist. Lizzo strongly denied all of their accusations, and has continued to fight them in court. In the meantime, she did her best to move on, telling Keke Palmer in late 2024 that the experience had taught her “healthy boundaries” and releasing the self-admiring single “Love in Real Life” a few months later.
That single and its follow-up had a soft landing in the marketplace, and Lizzo re-armed herself with last year’s My Face Hurts From Smiling, a swaggering mixtape that resulted from a two-week creative burst. But where that tossed-off release felt playful and energized, Bitch, the proper album that continues Lizzo’s run of grievance-airing, feels tired and dry, with Lizzo’s biting feistiness sounding curdled and the too-obvious interpolations of older pop hits coming off like a cynical grab for distracted listeners. (When Lizzo recently noted changing listening trends — “the industry changed so much in the last 3 yrs. streaming replaced radio & I was a radio darling. That’s how my fans discovered my music,” she wrote on the site formerly known as Twitter — it was a reminder of her music-biz savvy.)
Bitch has its throwing-down moments. “Sexy Ladies” is a triumphant song of the summer candidate, transforming the D.C. go-go band UCB’s 2022 track “Sexy Lady” (which in turn flipped the System’s 1987 hit “Don’t Disturb This Groove”) into a get-ready-with-me anthem. The sauntering “Little Black Cat” has the vibe of a hazy crystal vision as Lizzo summons numerology, astrology, and more “woo-woo” practices in an effort to bring back a lover.
On the bluesy “Whose Hair Is This,” Lizzo displays her sheer vocal power while freaking out about finding an unfamiliar strand of red hair in her lover’s bed. As her backup singers coo and a vintage organ hums, she goes from melting down about her romantic rival’s attributes to letting out a full-bodied wail — until her freakout is eventually halted by her realization that she did, in fact, wear a red wig recently. The fake-out would land a bit better if she hadn’t done the “last-minute undermining of the song’s premise” trick on the song preceding it, the pop-punky late-night Instagram spinout “She Stole My Man,” whose 100-mph spiral about a dream boy being attached ends with Lizzo rationalizing that her object of brief obsession wasn’t that cute anyway.
The UCB interpolation is sublime, but other callbacks to the past fall flat. The album’s title track takes the chorus of Meredith Brooks’ strummy 1997 hit “Bitch” and inspiration from Lizzo’s former collaborator Missy Elliott, but it sounds more like a grab for Nineties alt-adult fans’ algorithms than a standalone statement; lyrics like “If I lost some followers, it ain’t a loss” come off as a bit protest-too-much. “Don’t Make Me Love U” resembles a tepid mashup of ABBA’s “The Winner Takes It All” and Tina Turner’s “The Best” (to be fair, it credits the latter along with Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer”).
Bitch has its full heel turn near the end of the plush “That GRRRL,” when Katt Williams’ defense of the star drops in: “They came after Lizzo, and she is unproblematic.” That’s followed by “Too Nice,” where Lizzo takes on her antagonists over glassy pianos and brushed drums. “It’s always ‘Drinks on me,’” Lizzo sighs to open the song, later growling that “You’d be workin’ at the mall if it wasn’t for me.” (In this economy?) The torchy “Like a Crime” follows, with Lizzo vacillating between anger and apathy toward an unnamed fraudster who “broke my heart and stole my life” as a storm cloud of guitars gathers. As the song fades, a single arpeggiated guitar remains, its fractured chord refusing to resolve.
Was it all a dream? “Goodmorning,” the sunshine-bright closer, implicitly asks that question, sounding like a single-camera sitcom theme with wittier lyrics (“You know the way Jesus turned water to wine?/ Well, I’ma turn water to Pedialyte,” Lizzo winks) and a pep-you-up imperative. It’s a wild enough tonal shift from the previous three tracks to evoke the phrase “toxic positivity.” That might be the point, since it ends with Lizzo boogieing into the sunset over an extended outro — probably while she’s replicating the middle-finger gesture that gets a remix on Bitch’s cover.
Ken Casey stuck around after the show in San Diego, California, talking to members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Some of the challenge-coin haul.
The band started as a bet. “My band has a show in three weeks,” Casey’s coworker told him in 1996. “I dare you to open for us.”John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Dropkick Murphys (from left): Casey, DaRosa, Webster, Kelly, Rheault, Brennan, and Lynch John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Casey is largely the voice of the band, but the other members back him up. “We’re so lucky he’s the mouthpiece,” says Brennan, left. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Only the Irish can take a song about death and destruction, famine, alcoholism, and raise a glass like it’s an anthem,” says Casey. John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
“Anytime it feels like things are about to plateau for us, something gives us a little bump,” says guitarist Lynch. “It feels exciting. It feels dangerous. It feels like doing something.” John Francis Peters for Rolling Stone
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.