MY FACE HURTS FROM SMILING
Genre: HipHop/Rap By: Lizzo Released: June 27, 2025 Label: Atlantic
Lizzy Lizzy scrapped her album for… this? It begs the question, just how bad was the album really?
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Photograph by B.K. Barone
If all the rumors are true (yeah), the now-shelved Love in Real Life album was projected to fall short of Lizzo’s previous commercial success based on the lukewarm reception of its lead singles. “Still Bad” and “Love in Real Life” failed to resonate with the general public, their release being overshadowed by a character-assassinating lawsuit that dominated headlines in 2023. As it turns out, Lizzo’s formulaic, self-love infused anthems aren’t enough to win back public favor after serious allegations of workplace harassment and discrimination.
Accordingly, it’s been a while since Lizzo’s name trended for the right reasons. So when clips of her rapping resurfaced online and garnered cautious praise, she seized upon the moment, dropping a mixtape she claimed to have written in three days. Unfortunately, it shows.
Enter MY FACE HURTS FROM SMILING, Lizzo's hard pivot and attempt to regain control of her narrative. Lizzo submits a completely unexpected and off-brand project, proving she is capable of creating something out of thin air. Emphasis on thin, because the mixtape is starved of substance and rife with mentions of how much slimmer she’s gotten since releasing her career-defining albums. Lizzo would like everybody to know that she has shed the extra pounds just as heroin chic has made its way back into fashion. After all, “[she’s] getting slim, don’t ask [her] to be the bigger person.”
While Lizzo’s body – or Lizzy’s, for the time being – is no one’s business but her own, it’s an awfully bold choice to brag about how much weight she’s lost after building an entire multi-million dollar empire, including a shapewear brand, capitalizing on the body positive movement for which she once advocated. A 71 million dollar empire to be exact. How do we know the exact figure? Because she tells us on the tape, silly! How fun is that?
Lizzy now flaunts thinness as the ultimate clapback to haters, willing to alienate her core fanbase as if they were the final pounds weighing her down and plunging her into irrelevance. Let’s just say this mixtape does not help to clear her in the court of public opinion, even if the official lawsuit was dropped.
Your honor, if the shapewear no longer fits, you cannot acquit.
MY FACE HURTS FROM SMILING is, at best, a rebrand crisis and, at worst, a rather desperate attempt to flip outrage into a marketing strategy. Features from powerhouses like SZA and Doja Cat can’t save the project from its glaring weaknesses: undercooked bars, recycled themes, and rampant insecurity disguised as braggadocio.
Rather than evolving her craft, Lizzy opts to serve controversy as if it were a substitute for vision. The result is a collection of songs that feel rushed, defensive, and eerily disconnected from every community that once lifted her to stardom. If Lizzo truly wants to bring herself back into relevance, it won’t be through viral freestyles, paint-by-numbers pop, or crash-diet flexes. It will be through the one thing this mixtape sorely lacks: real substance.