“If you a bad bitch, today is your day,” Lizzo states at the end of her new song Birthday Girl. Too right. The return of the twerking, flute-playing beacon of body positivity with her fourth album feels like a party in your honour from the moment you press play.
Many people will think this is the woman born Melissa Jefferson’s second collection. After a couple of albums that marked her out as an unorthodox rapper but didn’t attract the mainstream, she took belatedly to singing and, helped along by the enthusiasm of TikTok users, had her first smash with Cuz I Love You in 2019. Her single Truth Hurts set out the central theme of her music (essentially: “I’m amazing – try to keep up”) and took two years to go viral, but when it did, she rode the wave towards eight Grammy nominations and a rise in profile that makes Special one of the biggest releases of the year.
She still knows exactly how to attract the TikTokkers, with their love of novelty dance routines and tiny attention spans. Six of the 12 songs here are less than three minutes long, even the ballads don’t hang around, and almost every line is so quotable it could go on a T-shirt. She still jokes about her weight: “I know you see me coming ‘cause I’m thick,” she sings over the skipping breakbeats of the assertive opener, The Sign. I Love You Bitch, a love song so inclusive it could be about a boyfriend, a girlfriend or a best friend, lists the person in question’s finest qualities: “Gimme your hoodie when I’m cold/Bless your heart, it’s too small.”
This time she’ll sweep an older generation into her gang too. Many of the biggest tunes channel Seventies disco and Eighties synthpop. A fantastic production made with Swedish pop mastermind Max Martin, 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready), could be by The Pointer Sisters. Break Up Twice, a collaboration with Mark Ronson, jumps on the much-sampled Stax soul of Private Number by Judy Clay & Willliam Bell. Everybody’s Gay is the greatest moment amid tough competition. Its restless disco and triumphant horns channel Off the Wall-era Michael Jackson and could encourage Lionel Richie to get back on the ceiling.
There are a handful of points where she shows some vulnerability, as on the bedroom ballad Naked and on If You Love Me, where she sings about the times “When the world can’t love me to my face”. But it’s clear she isn’t an outsider any more. This is her world, and we’re lucky to live in it.
