The Surprising Reason Lizzo Wants to Be Like Incubus Singer Brandon Boyd
Lizzo is having one heck of a year. The “Truth Hurts” singer has become a household name, seemingly, in a matter of months. Time Magazine and Entertainment Weekly both recently deemed Lizzo “Entertainer of the Year,” but even with all her success, there’s someone else she once wanted to be like.
Lizzo is ‘Entertainer of the Year’
Though it seems as though Lizzo came out of nowhere, her “overnight success” actually took over a decade of touring for next-to-nothing. Her hit singles, “Truth Hurts” and “Good as Hell” came out two and three years ago. Once her album, Cuz I Love You, dropped, everything changed.
As the most-nominated Grammy artist for 2020, it’s no wonder Lizzo made two lists, including Time. In the profile by Samantha Irby, Lizzo explained why her time is now.
“I’ve been doing positive music for a long-a** time,” she said. “Then the culture changed. 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.”
Who is Brandon Boyd from Incubus?
Back in 1999, the alternative rock band, Incubus, made their names known with the album Make Yourself. They’d had other albums before, but none that reached the same level of success as Make Yourself.
Multi-platinum Incubus slipped in their contribution to music with hits like “Drive,” “Steller,” and “Pardon Me,” at a time when grunge had taken over and pop began to creep in.
Brandon Boyd is the band’s frontman and visionary. He finds himself most inspired while creating art in a 600-square-foot yurt located in the Santa Monica Mountains, according to Los Angeles Times.
Boyd, who played Judas Iscariot in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar, said he goes there to “let go into the process.” He added, “if something beautiful comes of it, that’s an amazing reward — like you’ve been given a gem from your expedition, but the search for the gem is not necessarily the point.”
As an artist, philanthropist, and singer of a band that’s sustained for over 20 years, Boyd still manages to remain low-key, humble, and approachable. His celebrity isn’t the mass hysteria kind that Lizzo might experience these days, but they seem to have the same dedication to their respective crafts.
“Songwriting is the most effective therapy I have ever encountered, more so than any New Age technique or actual therapy or medicating,” Boyd previously told Sharp Magazine.
“Writing a song and seeing your way through a lyric and letting it channel through a more non-linear process allows you to emote in that kind of more primal way.”
Why does Lizzo want to be more like Boyd?
Lizzo carries herself with a level of confidence that garners some heat from critics, but she won’t let it stop her.
“I have to bite my tongue on certain things,” she told Time. “When people challenge my talent, they challenge whether I deserve to be here. They challenge my blackness. I’m like, ‘Oh! I can easily just let your a** know right now in 132 characters why you’re f—ing wrong.’”
Even with her success, the classicly-trained flutist admitted fame itself wasn’t endgame.
“I wanted to be like Brandon Boyd from Incubus! I just want to go to the farmers’ market.”
When you’re “Entertainer of the Year,” shopping for produce in obscurity isn’t really an option. It’s a good reminder that we’re all human. However, does this mean Lizzo and Incubus will team up at some point? Hey, we can dream.
