Lizzo Reveals She Came Up With 'Truth Hurts' After She Got This Heartbreaking Voicemail
From heartbreak comes self-discovery and for Lizzo, it took a brutal breakup for her realize that she’s indeed "100% that b**ch."
During a recent cover story interview with Billboard, the Michigan-born, Houston-raised artist opened up about the moment that inspired her to write her Hot 100 chart-topping hit, “Truth Hurts.” The empowering self-love anthem made rap history this week when it pulled off the feat of becoming the third longestrunning No. 1 single by a female rapper.
And Lizzo almost didn’t even record the track!
The rapstress recalled that she was at a low point emotionally two years ago after a guy she was seeing at the time abruptly called it quits on their relationship. The guy in question left her a voicemail where he requested that she not call him anymore because he was getting back with his ex. Distraught and heartbroken, the 30-year-old wasn’t mentally ready to get back into the studio so soon.
'I didn't want to go to the studio, I was so upset and depressed and sad,' Liz recollected, adding that she '[had] been crying [her]self to sleep.'
But her producer, Ricky Reed, saw a way to help Lizzo through her funk. While the Coconut Oil songbird was airing out her frustrations, Reed jotted down some notes. “He’s listening to me talk….So, I’m talking all this sh** and he’s scribbling.” At first Lizzo thought he wasn’t paying attention until the producer showed her his notes.
“It’s everything and I’d been saying. He said, ‘I hope you know you just wrote a song.’”
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The two went back to the booth. Reed queued up a beat with some piano chords that he played for Lizzo, who confessed she initially hated it until they developed the sound into something she could vibe with. Fired up, Lizzo poured her heart out through lyrics.
“I went into the studio and laid down everything verbatim that I said about this person who had hurt me,” Lizzo explained. Surprisingly, the most memorable part of the song, the opening verses, came about randomly.
“The ‘Why are men great until they gotta be great?’ was something that I had texted him,” Lizzo shared, elaborating she came up with the verse during a venting session on a girl nights out with her close friends. Likewise, the title for the track was another happenstance that occured during a playback session.
“I was listening through it [and] I was like ‘Truth hurts, boy. Truth hurts.’ And [Reed] was like, ‘that’s the song right there,’”she said.
"I don't know what type of magical honey was in my throat when I woke up that morning,” Lizzo laughed.
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'But s**t, everything I said was the goddamn song!'
Let that be a lesson to us all!
