Lizzo Returns, But It Doesn’t Seem Like Her Heart Is in It

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.