Lizzo Chili's
Lizzo is clearing the air about Love in Real Life, the album she was originally supposed to release last year but ended up delaying to release the mixtape My Face Hurts From Smiling in June instead.
At the time, the singer told Vulture that the first project “just wasn’t what I was feeling right now,” leading many to believe that she’d scrapped Love in Real Life entirely and created a brand new album in the form of Bitch, her LP dropping on June 5. But in a recent interview with Billboard about her new partnership with Chili’s, Lizzo explains, “I think the biggest misconception about my album is that I shelved Love in Real Life when I didn’t.”
“[Bitch] is technically the same album,” she continues over Zoom. “I just changed the name. The music is the same.”
The biggest difference between the original version of the album and its final form, the Grammy winner says, is that she removed what was previously its title track from the tracklist, prompting her to rename the LP as well. “When you change the name of something, it changes its destiny,” Lizzo says. “Like, when I went from Melissa to Lizzo, it changed my destiny.”
“When this album went from Love in Real Life to Bitch, it changed the trajectory of its past,” she elaborates. “I do think that I feel like I can express myself the way that I want to express myself right now through Bitch. I think Love in Real Life was really somber and a little bit more introspective, and I think Bitch is a little bit more empowered and self-actualized and bold.”
Ahead of Bitch, Lizzo has released singles “Don’t Make Me Love U” and “Bitch.” Before that, she’d dropped the songs “Love in Real Life” and “Still Bad” in spring 2025 to usher in what would have been the Love in Real Life era, but shortly afterward, she decided to press pause and release My Face Hurts From Smiling first.
“By 2025, I’ve changed, the world has changed so much, and so much has happened,” she also told Vulture last year, noting she wrote most of her upcoming album in 2022. “I was like, ‘I need to do s–t differently, and I don’t know what it is, but I’m going to just start following my instincts.’”
The detours before Lizzo’s next album aren’t done quite yet. In the weeks ahead of Bitch‘s release, the hitmaker also unveiled another project that has nothing to do with the LP: her recreation of Chili’s iconic “Baby Back Ribs” jingle. Lizzo added some of her own lyrics, and flute playing, to the recognizable tune, which she performs in a theatrical ad spot for Chili’s featuring scenes recreated from the original 1996 commercial and ribs galore. The video, as well as Lizzo’s a cappella version of the jingle, are available now on YouTube.
Speaking of My Face Hurts From Smiling, Lizzo also tells Billboard that she foresees the mixtape growing in popularity retroactively. Sharing her “hottest pop-culture take” at the moment, she begins, “Everybody hates everything right now. We’re in a nostalgia-based society right now, where, like, nostalgia is the hottest commodity.”
“So no one’s gonna like anything that comes out immediately,” she adds. “You gotta let things cook, because we’re just so obsessed with nostalgia. You drop a song, and it’s like, ‘I can’t wait until you guys love it next year.’ When I dropped my mixtape last year, I was like, ‘This is going to appreciate in value.’ Like, five years from now, people are gonna be like, ‘Oh, my gosh, My Face Hurts From Smiling is a classic.'”
Check out Lizzo’s version of the Chili’s “Baby Back Ribs” jingle below.
