Lizzo is clapping back at the criticism she’s received over her comeback song, “Still Bad.” In a series of X posts on Monday and Tuesday, the pop singer criticized the people who say her music is “too optimistic,” saying that Black woman joy simply “triggers” people.
“I think seeing and hearing a Black woman make real music with radical joy triggers miserable people… but I follow in the footsteps of Janet, of Funkadelic, of Earth Wind and Fire… nobody’s doing it like me for Us. And I stand on that,” Lizzo wrote in one post, after describing how her song “Still Bad” is more of a “call to action for the negativity” she’s experienced.
“Imagine listening to ‘say it loud I’m black and I’m proud’ and saying it’s too optimistic 😂 imagine listening to ‘hey yah’ and saying it’s too poppy,” she continued. “What André say? Yall don’t wanna listen ya just wanna hate 🤪”
Across several posts Lizzo compared the hate she’s received (and her music) to Black icons such as James Brown, Janet Jackson, Tina Turner, and Whitney Houston, saying Houston and Aretha Franklin got “backlash” for being too pop. “They kept going… and so will I,” she wrote. “I’m out here reclaiming rock n roll for US.”
“The way this world treats black women is sickening… blacklisted Janet and now 20yrs later yall calling her music “cute black girl bops” & giving her flowers… Dogged Whitney for her love life & called her a drug addict for laughs but now yall wanna honor her,” she later wrote. “Yall laughed at Tina’s abuse and never let her forget… The least protected person in America…”
Lizzo ended her Twitter posts by encouraging people to not let the internet break people down, and encouraged others to “free yourself from the opinions of people that do not matter.” She wrote: “What happened to me was supposed to destroy me but it has only set me free! Now I know none of this is real. The only thing that’s real is the love that I share with my family, my friends, nature, my fans, in Real Life.”
Lizzo’s posts come several days after she released her comeback single “Still Bad,” the first off of her upcoming Love in Real Life, expected later this year. During her show in Los Angeles, the singer revealed she had been in “such a dark depression” before coming back.
“I was so heartbroken by the world, and so deeply hurt that I didn’t want to live anymore, and I was so deeply afraid of people that I didn’t want to be seen,” she said at the show. “Eventually, I got over that fear, I went to a concert, kind of like this … and as I was walking through the crowds and something miraculous happened: someone I didn’t know, looked at me and said, ‘Lizzo, I love you.’”
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