Stop me if you’ve heard this one before, it’s the story of a talented young artist with a singular vision who battles adversity (bullying, rejection, and tragedy) to achieve success. But with the sweet comes the tart. They struggle with exhaustion and insecurity, exacerbated by the expectations of their adoring public and the music industrial complex’s thirst for more. Somehow, they reach inside themselves and find…even greater success! Add a Grammy win or loss along the way and if you’re telling the story after March 2020 there’s probably a COVID-19 subplot and you have the modern music bio-doc.

Love, Lizzo is the latest version of the above. Directed by Doug Pray, whose resume includes the documentary Hype! and worked on The Defiant Ones docu-series, it premiered in November 2022 and is available for streaming on HBO Max. Beautifully shot and including candid behind the scenes moments, archival footage, and live performances, it travels backwards and forwards in time as Lizzo documents the many roadblocks she encountered on her journey to becoming one of the most important and interesting artists in recent memory. 

Musically and personally, Lizzo’s story is one of geography. Born Melissa Jefferson in Detroit, Michigan, she drew on the city’s rich tradition of black self-empowerment, as taught by her father, and gospel music, learned at her family church. After the Jeffersons moved to Houston, Texas, she began playing flute in a marching band and soaked up Southern hip hop. She launched her career in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which she credits for accepting her as she was, before moving to Los Angeles, which brought both opportunity and unsteadiness. 

“I’ve always been a little quote-unquote different,” Lizzo tells us. As a child she felt her singing wasn’t good enough. As a teenager she was bullied for being nerdy and overweight. She started rapping to be one of the cool kids and found she enjoyed playing live. She also excelled at playing the flute, which earned her a college scholarship. She talks about music in romantic terms and says she loses herself in performance. 

Growing up, Lizzo struggled with self-confidence due to her body image. “Like a lot of people I grew up learning how to hate my body. And it worked,” she says. She wore girdles to appear thinner and took weight loss drugs. Her father’s failing health and financial stress at home led to her dropping out of college. Following his death, she suffered “some weird psychotic break,” losing the will to make music. After recharging her batteries and finding a receptive audience in Minneapolis, she still couldn’t get signed. “Nobody wanted to fuck with me,” she says. “Nobody was trying to sign a fat black girl that rapped and sang and played the flute.” 

Upon finding somebody that, indeed, wanted to fuck with her, Lizzo’s mix of attitude and aptitude attracted media attention and increasing fandom. By the time of her major label debut, 2019’s Cuz I Love You, she would find commercial success and a sense of purpose, proselytizing for body positivity and self love. But success brought scrutiny over her appearance, her image and her music. Accusations that she made “music for white people” hurt most. Amidst other problems, the COVID-19 lockdown threatened her livelihood and her love life failed to satisfy. 

By Love, Lizzo’s final act, all wrongs have been righted and reversed. She wins a grip of Grammys, releases another hit record, returns to the road and finds love with comedian Myke Wright. Off stage, she marches with Black Lives Matter to protest the acquittal of Breonna Taylor’s killers and counsels her backup dancers in tear-laden practice sessions where they discuss the challenges of life in America as a plus-size black woman. On the eve of the 2022 Met Gala, she handles a $55,000 gold flute and thinks back to being a high school student who dreamed of being a famous flute player only to realize, “Bitch, you are a famous flautist.” 

Following in the wake of Travis Scott: Look Mom I Can Fly and Charli XCX: Alone Together aaand Machine Gun Kelly’s Life In Pink aaaaaand Selena Gomez: My Mind And Me and probably some others I haven’t seen yet, Love, Lizzo is the latest bio-doc of a pop star in the middle of their career, not the end, and hits all the same notes (to an almost comic degree), from scenes of them crying in bed to excitedly watching the Grammy announcements. If every music doc about a past music legend feels like a rerun of VH1’s Behind The Music, the now de rigueur realtime bio-doc feels like a rehash of MTV’s Diary with its corny slogan, “You think you know … but you have no idea.” The problem isn’t that any of the above aren’t well made or that Lizzo and any of the other artists don’t deserve the attention, accolades or understanding, the problem is we’ve heard it all before and they deserve better.  

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.