Worshiping at the altar of Lizzo

Rat­ing: ⁴⁄₅

When Lizzo appeared in a gold choir robe at the pulpit of her love-branded church, a reverent hush fell over the 5000-strong crowd… jks! Everyone went fucking wild. ​“I’ve never heard anything like it,” said my friend, who alongside Beyonce and Obama, is a long-time Lizzo fan.

2019 has been the year of Lizzo. Fuelled by Netflix’s break-up comedy Someone Great (for which it was the title track) Truth Hurts, spent seven weeks at number one in the US, and made us all ​“100% that bitch”.

Last night was the first of the UK leg of the Detroit singer’s Cuz I Love You Too tour and the crowd was primed. There were girls with healthy hair drinking white wine out of plastic pint glasses, ​“gay boys and big girls” (who got a lot of love from the singer – ​“where my thicc bitches at”, she asked at one point, before following up with, ​“for one night everyone in this place is a thicc bitch”), many groups in full Lizzo regalia (leotards, capes, sequins, glitter etc) and the odd straight, white bearded man trying to bop in a respectful, not-taking-too-much-space kind of way.

“Let’s go get this love fest,” she beamed into the mic as she stepped down from the pulpit and threw off the robe to reveal a gold, Wonder Woman-style bodysuit. Instead of a lasso she used her streaming hair to whip the crowd into a frenzy of self-love and positivity. From a hymnal rendition of Cuz I Love You, she launched into Scuse Me, imploring the crowd to sing that uplifting central refrain (“scuse me while I feel myself”) to themselves. Because, y’know, #selflove.

Between the bangers (Water Me came next), she paused to chat to the partying crowd, ​“How many of y’all are here in the name of self care?” she asked, mopping her brow – 4,000 plastic pints of white wine charged into the air. ​“I feel like I can tell y’all anything…. The person I wrote the whole album about hit me up recently,” she said; boos ensued. ​“He contacted me after 365 days…you know who else contacted me? His side bitch! So you know what I did? Delete, delete, delete!” After telling us all that ​“fuckbois don’t love themselves” enough to love anyone else, she launched into a bold, gospel-tinged rendition of Jerome. And though she finished off the slow section of the night with a rousing call to let go of the bullshit from the 2010s, the crowd were so enthralled by Lizzo herself that there was a sense of disappointment when she picked up the tempo again.

Nevertheless, she closed the show with a Truth Hurts then Juice in a pair of gold flares which read ​“100% THAT BITCH”, and as the crowd filed out afterwards there wasn’t a single person who wasn’t beaming from Lizzo’s good vibes.