Lizzo Opens Up About Viral Fame on ‘Therapuss’: ‘I Have an Anxiety Attack’

On the latest episode of Therapuss, Lizzo joined host Jake Shane for a deeply personal and often hilarious conversation about her upcoming album Love in Real Life, her complex relationship with fame, and the viral moment that launched her 2017 single “Truth Hurts” to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“The sync changed my f—ing life,” Lizzo recalled of the track’s inclusion in the 2019 Netflix rom-com Someone Great. “I dropped ‘Truth Hurts’ in 2017. I think they put it in Someone Great in 2018 or 2019. I was like, ‘Okay, cool.’ That s— went so crazy — it launched ‘Truth Hurts’ to the No. 1 song. A song that had been out for three years. From that one sync.”

The hit marked her first Billboard Hot 100 entry and eventually became the longest-running solo No. 1 by a female rapper.

Elsewhere in the episode, Lizzo spoke about writing music from pain, particularly her song “Soulmate.” “I was crying in the studio when I wrote it,” she said. “When I sing this song in a year, this will be me. I will believe these words, but b—-, I did not believe these words when I was writing it.”

As for her new project Love in Real Life, Lizzo described it as “a diary of October 2023 to November 2024.” She added, “There’s not one album that wasn’t directly impacting my personal life… This time I wrote a song that doesn’t have a happy ending.”

She also addressed the emotional toll of viral fame. “All viral aint good viral. The internet don’t know that they think all viral is good viral. It’s not.” Jake added, “It’s like all press is good press, it’s like no.”

Lizzo added, “Sometimes when my videos going viral, I have an anxiety attack… And I’ll be like ‘oh f—, what did I do wrong. I did something wrong, because I don’t read comments anymore.”

Noting it had been “two years” since she had read social media comments, she continued, “I never scrolled through my comments because that’s hell, but I saw TikTok comments got so mean. You know when I really stopped after the very backhanded compliments trend.”

The Therapuss interview also touched on Lizzo’s decision to stop using dating apps (“I got kicked off Hinge for impersonating a celebrity — it was me”) and the heartbreak of disappointing a fan during a meet-and-greet while exhausted on tour. “That was my first time realizing: Oh wow, there can be misconceptions and you’re not in control of it.”

Lizzo’s Love in Real Life is expected later this year.