20. Pink (2023)
Lizzo’s contribution to the Barbie soundtrack fitted the film’s opening scene perfectly: fluffy, wilfully lightweight disco-pop, with lyrics that split the difference between being knowingly daft and offering a self-empowerment message. If you’re not in the market for high-camp positivity, try the Pink (Bad Day) version, which flips the track’s mood on its head.
19. IRL (ft SZA) (2025)
Lizzo’s recent singles haven’t clicked, and it’s debatable whether that’s because of allegations about her behaviour or because they aren’t very good. But her 2025 mixtape, My Face Hurts from Smiling, shows she hasn’t completely lost her touch, as this tough rap cut complete with a sweet SZA-sung hook proves.
18. Coldplay (2022)Lizzo rakes in the trophies at the 62nd Grammy awards, 2020. Photograph: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images
The titular band’s breakthrough hit, Yellow, gets sped up on the happy ending closer from her 2022 album, Special. They get a mention in the lyrics too, albeit as a soundtrack to the misery the singer has left behind: the real meat of the track is in its description of blossoming new love and its lovely 70s soul strings.
17. Boys (2018)
The backing of Boys sounds like a taut, loving tribute to prime-time Neptunes with a house beat added, and the lyrics are a marvellous enumeration of Lizzo’s nondiscriminatory approach to dating: bearded or clean-shaven, hick or city-dweller, straight or homosexual, you’re apparently in with a chance. A joy.
16. Like a Girl (2019)
“Only exes that I care about are in my fuckin’ chromosomes / I don’t really need you, I’m Macaulay Culkin, home alone” is a fabulous couplet, but Like a Girl swiftly moves from broken relationships to gleeful female empowerment, complete with shout-outs to Serena Williams and Lauryn Hill, and a killer pop chorus.
15. Break Up Twice (2022)
Lizzo once described Mark Ronson as her “dream collab”. Here, he turns out a perfect classic-soul-influenced production that samples Judy Clay and William Bell’s awesome 1968 hit Private Number – while, in a distinct turnaround from Like a Girl, the lyrics hymn the benefits of staying on good terms with your ex.
14. Fitness (2018)
Minimal in every sense, Fitness does a lot with a little. The music is essentially just a drum track and a hook line that sounds as though it’s being played on a xylophone; the lyrics spend two and half minutes discussing the virtues of Lizzo’s “bootyvicious” bum.
13. Water Me (2017)
There’s a tendency among journalists to describe Lizzo’s music in a way that makes it seem unbearably worthy: empowerment, self-love, body positivity. In fairness, Water Me is a track about all those things, but, perhaps more importantly, it’s an irresistible explosion of dancefloor-focused musical joy, equipped with a total earworm of a chorus.
Statement dressing … a publicity photo for Lizzo’s new album, Bitch. Photograph: Jason Renaud12. Everybody’s Gay (2022)
Superior disco-infused club-pop – complete with blasting horns and an unexpected hair metal guitar solo – that plays on both meanings of the word “gay”, in order to hymn the dancefloor as an everyone-welcome safe space in which you can reinvent yourself. Or, indeed, simply be yourself.
11. Ride (2015)
Lizzo’s second album, Big Grrrl Small World, tends to get overlooked, but it’s a fascinating bridge between her hip-hop origins and pop success. Standout track Ride is a little tougher than the songs that made her famous, but it still packs a major hook. It could easily have been a hit.
10. Yitty on Yo Tittys (2025)
The best track from her My Face Hurts from Smiling mixtape takes Lizzo back to her hip-hop roots: a dextrous, chorus-free freestyle that comes out swinging against negative press and online gossip (“Can’t even outdress my Labubu!”), shouts out Kendrick Lamar and plugs her swimwear range.
9. Cuz I Love You (2019)
Lizzo was once apparently reluctant about singing in the studio, believing that her voice wasn’t strong enough. From its racked a cappella opening to its grandstanding, emotive finale, the title track of Cuz I Love You underlines how wrong she was. It’s a song that gets its raw power entirely from her vocal.
8. Batches & Cookies (ft Sophia Eris) (2013)A thing for the flute … Lizzo in 2019. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
The first sign that Lizzo might be more than an underground rapper with a social conscience, a penchant for 90s hip-hop and a thing for the flute, Batches & Cookies is just fantastic: a massive breakbeat, some warp-speed rapping, and a hook that drills its way into your brain and refuses to leave.
7. Tempo (ft Missy Elliott) (2019)
Lizzo’s collaboration with the great Missy Elliott pays homage to the latter’s sparse late 90s/early 00s sound. But it still has disco, hair metal guitar and a flute solo in the mix, and comes with a video featuring Lizzo twerking and Missy emerging from under the bonnet of a car: there is nothing not to like about Tempo.
6. 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) (2022)
You somehow get the feeling that everyone involved in the making of 2 Be Loved (Am I Ready) – including pop super-producer Max Martin – was having the time of their lives creating a pitch-perfect early 80s pop-R&B homage, like something that fell off a Pointer Sisters album. The sense of fun is deliriously infectious.
5. Juice (2019)
The kind of single you just knew on first listen was destined to become a huge, inescapable smash hit, which of course it duly was. Juice is a call to cast off your inhibitions, set to gleeful retro synth-funk – the perfect example of Lizzo’s ability to make a point and start a party at the same time.
4. Truth Hurts (2017)
Truth Hurts took two years to reach No 1 in the US, gradually gaining traction thanks to TikTok virality and a slot on the soundtrack of the hit Netflix romcom Someone Great. Given its sharp, witty lyrics (“I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100% that bitch”) and sparkling piano loop, it’s a case of the good will out.
Raw power … Lizzo in Philadelphia, 2019. Photograph: Arik McArthur/WireImage3. About Damn Time (2022)
Imperial phase Lizzo at her height, About Damn Time’s delirious disco pop perfectly captured a post-Covid, post-first-Trump-term mood of relief that now seems a little quaint. Pub quiz fact: Malcolm McLaren gets a co-writing credit thanks to a sample from the World’s Famous Supreme Team’s 1984 hit, Hey DJ.
2. Jerome (2019)
Amid the party bangers of Cuz I Love You, Jerome unexpectedly calls back to 50s and 60s R&B ballads, albeit in a warped electronic variant. It’s all about Lizzo’s emotive vocal, which manages to convey empathy for the song’s titular subject, even while telling him to sling his hook in no uncertain terms.
1. Good As Hell (2016)
If you had to pinpoint a moment when Lizzo’s career dramatically shifted gear, it would be the release of the lead track from her EP Coconut Oil. Good As Hell amped up the pop aspects of her second album, Big Grrrl Small World, until they became inarguable, making the inspirational/motivational themes in her lyrics the focus – and that leap was made with confidence and panache. Good As Hell – which eventually became a chart hit in 2019 – is just a preposterously well-made pop song that simultaneously works as a peak-time anthem and a soundtrack to the anticipation of a night out.