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An enormous glow-up -

Not too long ago, Melissa Jefferson was studying the classical flute at the University of Houston. Now, she's playing flute in front of worldwide audiences, while also twerking, rapping, and being hailed as the next Beyoncé.

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"Anything can happen in a decade" - Lizzo tweeted on New Year's Eve, "2009 was the year my daddy died," adding that in 2009 she lived in her car. Fast forward to 2019, when she could buy her mother a house.

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She was broke -

She was homeless for two years in her twenties, which she said "was very lonely. It was very hard, and I think that I had risked it all for music."

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The opposite of overnight success -

Lizzo tweeted that it took eight years of touring, giving out free tickets to her shows, sleeping in her car, playing shows for free beer and food, constantly writing, and hearing "no" but always saying "yes" until she made it. "Glad I never gave up," she added.

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She only went solo in 2013 -

Before she had the confidence to go solo, she was in an all-female rap group, the Chalice, who appeared on a 2014 Prince song called 'Boytrouble.'

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The song that made her famous was two years old -

'Truth Hurts' was released in 2017, and was relatively invisible back then as compared to the international hit it is now.

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She nearly quit after its release -

When the song didn't reach as many people as she'd hoped, Lizzo wanted to quit. "The day I released 'Truth Hurts' was probably one of the darkest days I've had ever in my career," she told People. "I remember thinking, 'If I quit music now, nobody would notice. This is my best song ever, and nobody cares.'"

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Perseverance is the message -

"Now the song that made me want to quit is the song that everyone's falling in love with me for," she continued. "[It's] such a testament to journeys: Your darkest day turns into your brightest triumph."

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'Truth Hurts' charted two years after its release -

The song became a viral sleeper hit in 2019 after gaining popularity on the TikTok video sharing app and being featured in the Netflix film 'Someone Great.' It was her first song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

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Wrapping up the decade -

Billboard named 'Truth Hurts' as a defining song of the decade, as it delivered the empowering message of self-love in a decade where the term became most necessary.

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A defining moment for the Internet's influence on music - The "I just took a DNA test" lyric went viral on social media, and it actually originated from a meme Lizzo saw, a meme that came from a tweet whose author now has a songwriting credit.

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'Cuz I Love You' -

Released in April 2019, Lizzo's third studio album featured guest appearances from rappers Missy Elliott and Gucci Mane. Lizzo re-released 'Truth Hurts' on the deluxe version.

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Grammy domination -

Lizzo received the most nominations of all artists for 2020, with eight in total. She ended up taking home a total of three!

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Not just influential in music -

Fashion search engine Lyst's Year in Fashion report looked at data across six million fashion products to determine the 10 celebs whose style drove the biggest spikes in searches, sales, news coverage, and social media mentions in 2019. Lizzo was number eight on the list.

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Rise of the leotard -

As people finally caught on to the magic of Lizzo, demand for her signature leotards reportedly rose 28%.

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The VMAs were a pivotal fashion moment for her -

August 2019 saw the MTV VMAs, which included Lizzo's now-famous '80s lilac off-the-shoulder dress.

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It kicked off her fashion fame -

The singer's fashion has been a breakout search term since September 2019, and she's made great strides for underrepresented body types in Hollywood.

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The tiny purse moment -

At the 2019 American Music Awards, she carried this super tiny Valentino purse down the red carpet, which turned out to be the biggest event of the night, spawning thousands of memes.

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The airport fashion moment -

She also went viral after turning up to the airport still in the extravagant, fluffy, hot pink Marc Jacobs coat she wore to New York's Met Gala the night before.

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Obama named 'Juice' one of the best songs of 2019 -

Her catchy hit 'Juice' has become another self-love anthem, and earned her a tear-jerking career moment when Barack Obama named it one of his favorites.

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The rise of a new diva -

The body confident star also posed for Playboy in 2019, becoming only the second plus-size model to do so in its 66-year history.

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She didn't change, the times did -

While it seems Lizzo surfaced at the right time with the right content, she has been pushing positivity for a long time. "Then the culture changed," she told Time magazine. "There were a lot of things that weren't popular but existed, like body positivity, which at first was a form of protest for fat bodies and black women and has now become a trendy, commercialized thing ... Suddenly I'm mainstream!"

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She doesn't mind what she represents to you -

Lizzo made a decision to love herself, which some call brave, but was really just her choosing life. "If that's body-positive to you, amen. That's feminist to you, amen. If that's pro-black to you, amen. Because ma'am, I'm all of those things," she told Allure.

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She's not fading like a trend -

Lizzo spoke to The Cut about the passing hashtags for body positivity and said, "That's just hopping on a trend and expecting people to blindly love themselves. That's fake love. I'm trying to figure out how to actually live it."

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Much needed light in dark times -

In a time rife with artifice, hatred, and insincerity, Lizzo's honesty and relatability makes her the perfect star, as she truly just makes people feel good.

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She gives people her mantra at live shows -

If you see her perform live, she may start out the show asking you to repeat her mantra: "I love you. You are beautiful. And you can do anything."

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It's not all smooth sailing -

"I have to bite my tongue on certain things," she says, referring to online comments."When people challenge my talent, they challenge whether I deserve to be here. They challenge my blackness."

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She wasn't always confident -

She even said that in March 2019, right before hitting her stride, "I didn't feel sexy, and I didn't know when it was going to end. There were times when I would go onstage and be like, 'Y'all, I'm not going to lie. I'm not feeling myself.' Sometimes I'd break down and cry."

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She's real -

One thing that sets Lizzo apart from the commercial self-love movement, which she has criticized before, is that she knows that part of being enough means acknowledging and respecting your imperfections.

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'Special' -

In 2022, Lizzo dropped her fourth album. 'Special' includes 12 songs, such as the summer anthem 'About Damn Time,' as well as 'Break Up Twice' and 'Everybody's Gay.'  Her previous album was released in 2019, and the star revealed that she had to pick her 12 album tracks from a selection of more than 200 that she's written in the past three years. 'I had a lot happen interpersonally, a lot has happened globally and I think I needed to process that. The way that I process things is through writing music. So I was writing these songs, but then I just needed to keep going until I found my sweet spot and what the world needed to hear."

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Her first Emmy -

Having already conquered the Grammys, Lizzo moved on to the Emmys in 2022, where she took home the award for Outstanding Competition Program for her show 'Watch Out For The Big Grrrls.' The Amazon reality TV series bested 'The Amazing Race,' 'Nailed It!,' 'Top Chef,' 'The Voice,' and 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' the latter of which previously won the award every year since 2018. During her speech, a teary-eyed Lizzo shared her reason for creating the show, which follows her search for a group of backup dancers to accompany her on tour.

"When I was a little girl, all I wanted to see was me in the media. Someone fat like me, black like me, beautiful like me," she said onstage. "If I could go back and tell little Lizzo something, I'd be like, 'You're going to see that person, but b—h it's going to have to be you.' This is for my big girls." 

See also: Celebrities who have given up social media

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