Lizzo turns 32: How a homeless college dropout ended up as a millionaire singer and body positivity icon
As Lizzo turns 32 on April 27, she will be celebrated by her fans across the globe as a generation-defining superstar - an African-American plus-size, body-positive singer and musician who is not afraid to embrace her true self as she smashes music records and bags one award after another.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Lizzo is worth $10 million, a major chunk of which was earned after she rose to prominence with the release of her third studio album, 'Cuz I Love You,' last year. It reached number 1 on the iTunes chart and generated multiple popular singles. It was eventually nominated for two Grammys including Album of the Year. In 2020, she ended up winning Pop Solo Performance for 'Truth Hurts' and 'Traditional R&B Performance for 'Cuz I Love You.'
But her life started out as far from a fairy tale. At the age of nine, her family moved from Detroit to Houston, where she joined a marching band at school. Despite having a natural talent for playing the flute, Lizzo, real name Melissa Viviane Jefferson, was bullied at school for being a nerd.
“I was teased like a dog for wanting to be intelligent, for reading, for talking the way I do. But I didn’t dumb myself down just to be accepted. Teachers would call my mom and be like, ‘Melissa is trying to teach my class’. So I was nerdy, but also chubby and sweaty. I liked anime and comics, which just didn’t work in Houston, where everybody is black and listens to rap. I was listening to Radiohead and classical music. I never stopped doing what I loved. And now being a nerd is hot," she said, the Sun reported.
Added to that were the woes that rose from not being able to conform to the ideals of beauty defined by society. “I think, unfortunately, because of mainstream media, a lot of people — specifically women — grow up questioning their beauty. For a long time, I felt like there were things about myself I would change, and I wished that I was somebody else," she said.
She dropped out of college at the age of 20, which meant abandoning her hopes of becoming a professional flutist. She ended up auditioning for a prog-rock band called Ellypseas. She landed the gig after lying about her level of singing experience. But that also meant that every night before going on stage, she would have to down multiple shots of whiskey just to calm her nerves.
As referenced by her in a tweet last year, 2009 was the worst year of her life. "I think I was like 21 because that was the worst year of my life thus far. My father passed away, I was homeless, I didn’t have any money, my band was doing really badly and I was by myself," she said. "I hadn’t been eating because I didn’t have money, and I was honestly the smallest physically I’d ever been. And still, that was the worst I’d ever felt about myself. And I remember one day being like, ‘This is it’."
However, the singer still feels that a couple of years in her twenties that she spent homeless were "privileged" in their own way.
“It sucked. It was very lonely. It was very hard, and I think that I had risked it all for music. I think that I had a luxury and a privilege to be able to sleep on the floor of my drummer’s house, to be able to sleep in a car my sister gave me, to be able to sleep at the studio where my rock band performed, to be able to sneak into 24 Hour Fitness and use the showers there," she said.
At that point, she felt guilty about letting her late father down. “My dad was an advocate for my flute, and he wanted me to go back to college really badly,” she said. “He was going around trying to get money from my cousins to put me back in school. And I’m like, ‘I’m not going back to school.’ I didn’t tell him that though.”
A year after her dad passed away, Lizzo quit Ellypseas, and the year following that, she moved to Minneapolis. By then she had already started using music as a therapy to accept herself.
“Twenty-odd years of me believing that one day I can wake up and be some other girl. It’s like, ‘You’re not going to wake up and be bigger or smaller or lighter or darker; your hair’s not going to suddenly grow down past your knees. You’re going to look this way for the rest of your life’. And you have to be OK with that. I look in the mirror and think 'Damn I don't need anybody to tell me I look good!' I’m not perfect. I fall back sometimes. But this is my life, and I have to do the best I can with it. And if other people are following it, then I need to make it the best life possible," she said.
Although she turned solo, she had to struggle a lot to make a name for herself. Her debut album, 'Lizzobangers' was released in 2013 to modest success. The game-changer came in 2014 when legendary singer Prince revealed that he was a fan and even invited her for an appearance on his album, 'Plectrumelectrum.'
Before he died, the music legend offered to produce an album for Lizzo.
“I used to be so upset that I never had co-signs,” she told Rolling Stone in 2018. “I was like, ‘I’m too weird for the rappers and too black for the indies.’ I was just sitting in this league of my own. To be embraced by Prince and co-signed, I am eternally grateful for that.”
Lizzo went onto release her second album, 'Big Grrrl Small World' in 2015 leading to a record deal. She eventually moved to Los Angeles. In the album was the song 'My Skin' which reflected her years of hard work to become comfortable in her skin.
“I wrote ‘My Skin’ when I was 26, so at that point, I had already gotten to a place where I’m confronting myself and I’m happy with it,” Lizzo explained. “I’ve come to terms with body dysmorphia and evolved. The body-positive movement is doing the same thing. We’re growing together, and it’s growing pains, but I’m just glad that I’m attached to something so organic and alive.”
Last year, Lizzo became the only the second plus-size woman to be featured in Playboy's 66-year history.
Today, a fearless Lizzo writes for herself and the kind of audience she wishes to inspire. “As a black woman, I make music for people, from an experience that is from a black woman,” the singer said. “I’m making music that hopefully makes other people feel good and helps me discover self-love. That message I want to go directly to black women, big black women, black trans women. Period."