{"id":491123,"date":"2026-06-09T18:58:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:58:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/491123\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T18:58:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T18:58:12","slug":"review-lizzos-new-album-bitch-falls-flat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/491123\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Lizzo’s New Album ‘Bitch’ Falls Flat"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tSome cultural curios can make you realize just how long ago 2019 seems, even if only seven years have elapsed \u2014 Bon Appetit videos, Theranos name-checks, reminders of The Good Place\u2019s sardonic optimism. Then there\u2019s Lizzo<\/a>, 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>, a frothy, hooky showcase of her talent and charisma, and the resurgence of her single \u201cTruth Hurts,\u201d a piano-led rebuke of an ex that went to Number One.<\/p>\n

\n\tSince then, Lizzo\u2019s fortunes have been up and down. Her 2022 follow-up, Special<\/a>, had the breezy chart-topper \u201cAbout Damn Time,\u201d which won a Record of the Year Grammy; she appeared on the blockbuster Barbie: The Album and added flute to Dolly Parton\u2019s version<\/a> of \u201cStairway To Heaven.\u201d She also had two lawsuits filed against her for harassment and other claims \u2014 one by three former backup dancers, another by a wardrobe stylist. Lizzo strongly<\/a> denied<\/a> all of their accusations, and has continued to fight them<\/a> in court. In the meantime, she did her best to move on, telling Keke Palmer in late 2024 that the experience had taught her \u201chealthy boundaries\u201d and releasing the self-admiring single \u201cLove in Real Life\u201d a few months later.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat single and its follow-up had a soft landing in the marketplace, and Lizzo re-armed herself with last year\u2019s My Face Hurts From Smiling<\/a>, 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\u2019s run of grievance-airing, feels tired and dry, with Lizzo\u2019s 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 <\/a>changing listening trends \u2014 \u201cthe industry changed so much in the last 3 yrs. streaming replaced radio & I was a radio darling. That\u2019s how my fans discovered my music,\u201d she wrote on the site formerly known as Twitter \u2014 it was a reminder of her music-biz savvy.)<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tBitch has its throwing-down moments. \u201cSexy Ladies\u201d is a triumphant song of the summer candidate, transforming the D.C. go-go band UCB\u2019s 2022 track \u201cSexy Lady\u201d (which in turn flipped the System\u2019s 1987 hit \u201cDon\u2019t Disturb This Groove\u201d) into a get-ready-with-me anthem. The sauntering \u201cLittle Black Cat\u201d has the vibe of a hazy crystal vision as Lizzo summons numerology, astrology, and more \u201cwoo-woo\u201d practices in an effort to bring back a lover.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn the bluesy \u201cWhose Hair Is This,\u201d Lizzo displays her sheer vocal power while freaking out about finding an unfamiliar strand of red hair in her lover\u2019s bed. As her backup singers coo and a vintage organ hums, she goes from melting down about her romantic rival\u2019s attributes to letting out a full-bodied wail \u2014 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\u2019t done the \u201clast-minute undermining of the song\u2019s premise\u201d trick on the song preceding it, the pop-punky late-night Instagram spinout \u201cShe Stole My Man,\u201d whose 100-mph spiral about a dream boy being attached ends with Lizzo rationalizing that her object of brief obsession wasn\u2019t that cute anyway.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe UCB interpolation is sublime, but other callbacks to the past fall flat. The album\u2019s title track takes the chorus of Meredith Brooks\u2019 strummy 1997 hit \u201cBitch\u201d and inspiration from Lizzo\u2019s former collaborator Missy Elliott, but it sounds more like a grab for Nineties alt-adult fans\u2019 algorithms than a standalone statement; lyrics like \u201cIf I lost some followers, it ain\u2019t a loss\u201d come off as a bit protest-too-much. \u201cDon\u2019t Make Me Love U\u201d resembles a tepid mashup of ABBA\u2019s \u201cThe Winner Takes It All\u201d and Tina Turner\u2019s \u201cThe Best\u201d (to be fair, it credits the latter along with Bon Jovi\u2019s \u201cLivin\u2019 on a Prayer\u201d).<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

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\n\tBitch has its full heel turn near the end of the plush \u201cThat GRRRL,\u201d when Katt Williams\u2019 defense of the star drops in: \u201cThey came after Lizzo, and she is unproblematic.\u201d That\u2019s followed by \u201cToo Nice,\u201d where Lizzo takes on her antagonists over glassy pianos and brushed drums. \u201cIt\u2019s always \u2018Drinks on me,\u2019\u201d Lizzo sighs to open the song, later growling that \u201cYou\u2019d be workin\u2019 at the mall if it wasn\u2019t for me.\u201d (In this economy?)\u00a0 The torchy \u201cLike a Crime\u201d follows, with Lizzo vacillating between anger and apathy toward an unnamed fraudster who \u201cbroke my heart and stole my life\u201d as a storm cloud of guitars gathers. As the song fades, a single arpeggiated guitar remains, its fractured chord refusing to resolve.<\/p>\n

\n\tWas it all a dream? \u201cGoodmorning,\u201d the sunshine-bright closer, implicitly asks that question, sounding like a single-camera sitcom theme with wittier lyrics (\u201cYou know the way Jesus turned water to wine?\/ Well, I\u2019ma turn water to Pedialyte,\u201d Lizzo winks) and a pep-you-up imperative. It\u2019s a wild enough tonal shift from the previous three tracks to evoke the phrase \u201ctoxic positivity.\u201d That might be the point, since it ends with Lizzo boogieing into the sunset over an extended outro \u2014 probably while she\u2019s replicating the middle-finger gesture that gets a remix on Bitch\u2019s cover.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some cultural curios can make you realize just how long ago 2019 seems, even if only seven years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[93,61,60,24451,278],"class_list":["post-491123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-lizzo","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}