Bitch moved just 2,649 copies—a stark contrast to her 2022 Grammy-winning album Special, which debuted with 39,000 copies and peaked at No. 2. The new singles “Don’t Make Me Love U” and the title track also missed the mark chart-wise, making Bitch her first album to miss the Billboard 200 entirely since her 2015 sophomore effort Big Grrrl Small World. After years of wins—including “About Damn Time” hitting No. 1 on the Hot 100 and taking home Record of the Year at the Grammys—this felt different. It felt like failure.
But here’s where Lizzo’s story gets interesting: she caught herself. She was genuinely proud of the work. She was excited about these songs. Her real fans would find them. So she reframed the whole thing. Not because the disappointment vanished, but because she refused to let a metric define her. That internal argument—”Aren’t you proud of yourself?”—isn’t just feel-good talk. It’s the difference between resilience and recovery.
Part of her frustration also points to something bigger than one album’s performance. In a May 12 TikTok that preceded the release, Lizzo called out how social media algorithms have fundamentally broken music marketing. The algorithm-based way that social media functions now is destroying the music industry, she said, because when feeds stop showing content chronologically, nobody actually knows when music is coming out. It’s harder to build momentum when the general public isn’t getting timely signals about a release. That’s not an excuse—it’s context. And context matters.
Lizzo hasn’t given up the fight, either. She’s leaning into what she does control: building a devoted core fanbase of “Lizzies” inspired by Taylor Swift’s organic army-building approach, and focusing her energy on reaching her day ones and her core lesbian audience. She even got a supportive call from SZA during the rough patch, a reminder that other artists understand the sting of being held to standards set by previous successes.
With just one show booked this summer—a July 7 gig at the Filene Center in Vienna, Va.—Lizzo’s taking time to let things breathe. She’s not competing with the Beatles or chasing her own records anymore. She’s competing with herself, and that’s a much harder, much more honest game to play. That shift in perspective? That’s the real chart performance that matters.
