Lizzo has spoken about her experience of being “cancelled”, and said that she thinks everyone should experience it “at least once”.
The pop star shared her thoughts in a new Substack essay, titled CANCEL ME (AGAIN): A ‘cancelled’ woman’s take on why everyone should get cancelled at least once. Published on Monday (December 1), it saw her acknowledge how the backlash she has received has led to her learning a lot about herself.
At the start of the post, she began by explaining how she was “raised in the Pentecostal COGIC church in Detroit, Michigan where the idea of hell was very real”, and grew up being convinced that “you were on a first class flight to eternal damnation in a lake of fire” if you were a bad person.
Despite these efforts she made to be “a good person” throughout her life, she continued, she soon realised that when in the public eye, none of that “matters to the internet”.
She went on to describe all the instances that saw her get backlash from people online, including her comments that she “makes music for black women”, and her experience of doing “a smoothie detox”.
She has also previously faced a lawsuit from three former backup dancers, who alleged in 2023 that she created a hostile work environment and engaged in sexual harassment, and from a former wardrobe assistant, who claimed that the environment subjected her to disability discrimination, sexual harassment and “racist and fatphobic comments”.
At the time, Lizzo’s attorneys described Daniels as a “disgruntled” employee with “meritless and salacious” accusations. The singer also denied the claims made by the three dancers, and said that the situation had left her contemplating quitting the music industry. In December 2024, she was dismissed from the lawsuit raised by her former wardrobe assistant.
Taking to Substack to say what she learned from the hardships she faced over the years, Lizzo wrote: “Fuck it. You aren’t getting out of this thing without unintentionally hurting someone’s feelings. Sensitivity is at an all time high and because of personalized algorithms, any content you see that doesn’t cater to you personally feels like an attack on your identity.”
Explaining how it impacted her, she continued: “It left us in a state of paralysis, unable to make mistakes because the court of public opinion is always ready to be judge, jury and executioner.
“As the qualifications of being deemed a ‘good person’ narrow while the sudden increase in conservative morals skyrocket, who has lived a real life and is still considered ‘good’?”
The comments on the post echo what Lizzo told Billboard earlier this year, when she came back from a hiatus and said that the intense public scrutiny over the past couple of years meant that she “lost trust in myself for awhile”.
“I’m so confident, and I think the thing that I’m most confident in now is me, my vision and my creativity,” she told the outlet. “There are a lot of people that come in and think they’re the experts.
“I think when you’re seeing that glow, it’s that confidence that’s truly being proud of who I am and not hiding who I am in all the aspects of it.”
Earlier this year, Lizzo was sued for an uncleared sample used in her unreleased song referencing Sydney Sweeney’s controversial ad, and she also made headlines when she said that there’s no “song of the summer” this year because artists are struggling to break through social media algorithms.
Before then, she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and played a medley of ‘Still Bad’ and ‘Love In Real Life’.
