In 2019, Lizzo played the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Now, she would be one of the bold-name headliners, but she was booked before her positivity anthems like “Truth Hurts” and “Juice” made her famous enough to , so she was scheduled for an early evening set on one of the festival’s mid-sized stages. This proved to be a miscalculation of her popularity.
By the time her set neared, Lizzo’s crowd was big enough that it swelled into the small-by-comparison camp (including me) waiting for iconoclast Robyn’s headlining performance at an adjoining stage. The mass of people was so large, there were genuine . Something similar is happening with .
The “Red Wine Supernova” singer and burgeoning queer-pop icon reportedly pulled in larger crowds than headliner Ed Sheeran at last month’s Boston Calling. She was also at New York’s Governors Ball, where she came out dressed as the Statue of Liberty. To prevent a Lizzo-like incident, Bonnaroo — arguably the second most influential music festival in the country, after Coachella — moved Roan from a tent to the much-larger Which stage.
She’s gotten so big, so fast, that she’s turning down invitations to perform at the White House (although that was also against the Biden administration for failing women, trans folks, and “all oppressed people in occupied territories”) and publicly expressing her struggles with her fame. “I guess I just want to be honest with the crowd,” she said at in Raleigh, North .
