- Hi, I'm Lizzo
and this is How It Went Down with my song, "Truth Hurts".
I wrote "Truth Hurts" two years ago
and I remember I was in the studio.
Wait, let me rewind, 'cause first of all, bitch,
I didn't wanna go to the studio.
I was so upset and depressed and sad,
'cause I had gotten this voicemail
from this motherfucker who, you know what I'm sayin',
I really cared about, whatever, who cares?
I do care, my heart got broken.
But anyway, in the voicemail,
which I guess at the time, his ex made him leave me,
he said, "Hey, don't call me anymore.
"Don't hit me up, I'm getting back with my ex."
And I didn't, I was like, "Okay, fuck off."
Blocked him on everything.
Anyways, I walk into the studio
and I'm all depressed and shit.
I have been crying, cry myself to sleep,
cry myself to wake up.
And I walk in the bitch and I was like,
"I don't wanna do anything today, I'm just sad."
And so Ricky's like, "What's wrong?"
And I just go in and just tell him about how,
and he knows about this motherfucker,
he knows the saga of this dude.
And he's like, "Damn, that sucks."
He's listening to me talk and I was like,
"And you know, I just had, I prepared myself,
"I knew what I was gonna say to him.
"If I could say what I wanted to say to him,
"I would say, good luck with the person
"who's supposed to hold you down but holds you back."
And then I kept talking and I was like,
"And I have to go see my friend, my friend Mari."
She would wash my hair
and she would do treatments to my hair.
So I was like, "I'll just go see Mari
"and get a new hairstyle, I have to wash him out of my hair.
"And you know what?
"I don't give a fuck, 'cause I'm a bad bitch
"and I got this Minnesota Viking in my DM's
"and I'm about to go on a date with him,
"so I don't need him."
Blasé, blasé, blasé, blasé.
So I'm talkin' all this shit and he's scribblin'.
I'm like, "Why the fuck you scribblin'?"
Like men never really pay attention,
you know what I'm sayin', I be like,
"Damn, why aren't you paying attention to me?"
(laughing)
But I look up and he shows me what he's scribbling
and it's everything I'd been saying
and he said, "I hope you know you just wrote a song."
And I was like, "I did?"
And so he played this weird ass piano beat that I hated.
He was like.
♪ Doon doon doon doon doon doon doon doon ♪
It was a sample from this kid named Tele.
And I was like, "I hate this shit."
But he was like, "Trust me, this is gonna be fire."
I was like, "All right."
So I let him lay it down.
And then he put some drums on it
and I was like, "Okay, this is actually
"kinda turnin' up a little bit."
The why are men great til they gotta be great line
was something that I had texted him,
because I was out with my girls,
we were playin' a show in Idaho
and on the rider, we all had a bottle of wine.
Like my dancers, my tour manager, my creative director,
my DJ, we all had a bottle of wine to ourselves.
So we all just chugged those shits.
And we started all breaking up into different groups
and just crying and talking about the men
who have let us down in our lives.
And then we were just like,
"Why are men great til they gotta be great?"
And we were like, "Yes!"
So I texted him that and he was like,
"Why don't you talk about that on this song?"
I was like, "All right."
And so I literally just kinda went in the booth
and laid down everything verbatim
that I had said about this person
who had hurt me.
And I just said it to music and we had the chorus,
we didn't have the last part of the chorus
so we were just like.
♪ Bom bom bi dom bi dum bum bay ♪
Let's just put that there for now.
And I was like, "Yeah, it'll go somethin' like that."
I was going through the chorus and I was like.
♪ New man on the Minnesota Vikings haha ♪
And it was like, something more exciting.
You know that rhymes with Vikings,
I needed something more exciting,
and I was like, "Damn."
I was listenin' through it, I was like truth hurts, boy.
Truth hurts.
And he was like, "Yeah, that's the song right there.
"That's the name of the song, that's the line.
"That's what you throw in there."
And I was like, "Fuck, everything that's coming out
"of my mouth is the song today.
"I don't know what type of magical honey
"was in my throat when I woke up that morning, but shit.
"Every mother fucking thing I said was the goddamn song."
It was literally, imagine,
I'm sittin' in the control room
and I'm sittin', we listenin' back, and then I say something
and he's like, "Say that."
And I run back in and say it.
It was literally like playing tag with myself,
just runnin' in droppin' lines in the booth.
So yeah, we put the hoe out two years ago,
and it did good, a lot of people liked it.
It was a cult classic.
But you know, two years later,
they put that shit in a Netflix movie.
You know, now the whole world found it.
It's a hit record, baby.
That's how hit records are made.
They're made from the heart.
They're made from tears.
They're made from fears.
And they're made from happy endings.