Lizzo Recorded 50 Versions of ‘About Damn Time’
Grammy-winning musician Lizzo first rose to the top of the charts in 2019 with her breakout single “Truth Hurts.” Her second No. 1 single, 2022’s “About Damn Time,” was a long time coming — so much so that the song itself underwent dozens of iterations.
Lizzo returned to music with her album ‘Special’ in 2022
Lizzo’s 2019 album Cuz I Love You made the singer and rapper into a household name. The album earned her three Grammy Awards and validated nearly a decade’s worth of work as an independent artist.
After the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Lizzo fans were eager to hear what the “Juice” singer would deliver to get people dancing after such a difficult time. The Cardi B collab “Rumors,” her first single since Cuz I Love You, was released in 2021.
Lizzo reflected on the difficulties of the pandemic in a 2022 interview with Elle UK. “It was hard for me to find meaning, being an entertainer, while people were dying at a high rate,” she said. “I had to remember, when we come out of lockdown, people are going to be coming out of a depression. And the end of lockdown does not signify the end of their mental-health struggles. So I wanted to make music that people can use as a soundtrack to survive. That was the driver for this album.”
She recorded ’50 versions’ of ‘About Damn Time’
In early 2022, Lizzo kicked off the rollout of her fourth album Special with the hit single “About Damn Time.” The song would receive a boost in popularity thanks to a popular TikTok dance challenge, and went on to reach No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Lizzo is a meticulous artist, and everything she does is with intention. Like other artists, her songs have undergone various lives before they’re released. When crafting her album Special, she wanted to make sure that it turned out exactly how she wanted.
Her perfectionism applied to the album’s lead single: she revealed on TikTok that “About Damn Time” went through 50 versions before she settled on the one that we hear today.
“We literally had 50 versions of this damn song i thought we’d never finish it,” she said. “BUT IT WAS WORTH IT!!!”
She wanted to ‘rush’ the album at certain points
Lizzo is passionate about her work — so much so that she was tempted at many points to release what music she’d already recorded just for the sake of releasing music.
“I wanted to rush it so many times; there were so many points,” she admitted to Zane Lowe in an Apple Music interview.
She went through countless songs before narrowing it down to the final tracklist, and is ultimately happy with how the project turned out. “I’m just proud with how patient I was with myself and with my art, and I took the time to write the songs that need to come out. The stories that I wanted to share that people should hear.”
