Album of the week: Lizzo – 'Bitch'
On her fifth album, 'Bitch', Lizzo channels heartbreak, anger and resilience into a genre-hopping collection of sharp-tongued anthems, jazz-inflected ballads and unapologetic self-belief
“I hope it makes you happy, to hurt somebody else / and when you lose it all, I hope you find yourself… / And that you get what you deserve… / so here’s a toast to the ones that hurt me most…”
On ‘Toast’, the opening song on her fifth album, Lizzo comes out fighting, albeit in a Great American Song-style piano ballad. It’s a magnificent flex, one that demonstrates her way with a jazz-angel vocal, her mastery of genres and that revenge is a dish best-served ice-cool and classy. The haters might come for her, but that’s no sweat – for Lizzo, this is “just a day in the life of an aspirational bad bitch…”.
The reclaiming of “bitch”, from the album title onwards and across the lyrics of these 12 tracks, definitely gets a little wearing. But Lizzo, certainly, has some anger to burn.
Late last year the quadruple-Grammy-winner prevailed in a court case against three of her former dancers. In a 2023 lawsuit they had accused her of fat-shaming. But as Lizzo clapped back in a victory video on social media: "There was no evidence that I fired them because they gained weight. They were fired for taking a private recording of me without my consent and sending it off to ex-employees." Still outstanding and ongoing, though, are claims from the dancers that they were subject to sexual harassment, claims that Lizzo denies and has vowed to keep fighting.
And fight she does on this album. As this musical powerhouse – who, in her long slog to success, endured a period where her home was a mobile one – sings on the minimal funk of the title track, which samples ‘Bitch’, the 1997 hit by Meredith Brooks: “‘She’s a bitch’… uh, you mean boss / you been through what I been through, you know the cost / if lost some followers it ain’t a loss / ’cause I ain’t lost sleep since I slept in my car”.
Whether it’s the litigants who are wholly the subject of her ire at “the ones that hurt me most” isn’t clear. Certainly they’re not always – the beginning of ‘Like a Crime’ paints the memorable picture of “me and my period fighting to the death, she just might win if I don’t take another breath”.
But indubitably and unavoidably on Bitch, Lizzo is fired up and darkly funny. Her impulse for finding the humour in her clapbacks is evident up front and centre, in an album sleeve in which the middle finger she joyfully serves is in the form of her own body, rising womanfully from her own, giant manicured hand. The doo wop-style ‘Whose Hair Is This’ is another retro sashay, a full-blooded, take-no-prisoners accusation against a partner after she finds an incriminating hair in their bed. Lizzo goes for the jugular before abruptly remembering, “Oh shit, I did have red hair last week”.
Revenge is also a dish best served as a banger. ‘That Grrrl’ (“say you don’t like a big bitch… I know you want my body”) is a techno-disco empowerment anthem that, with a strategic remix, could become an Ibizan summer staple. ‘Don’t Make Me Love U’ twins flashes of body positivity (“I’m a big fine woman, don’t lose your place in line”) to a ‘Billie Jean’ beat and a gloriously soaring, ’80s synth-pop keyboard line evocative of 'The Best' by Tina Turner.
She switches lanes again on the brassy, sassy wee-hours jazz of ‘Too Nice’, before ending, somewhat anticlimactically, with the blandly bopping ‘Good Morning’. It’s all a bit scattershot. But whether she’s processing her recent public spats or other, private, personal challenges, kudos to Lizzo for doing so less with bitchy bitterness than with winking pizzazz.
