Lizzo‘s life lacked “purpose” following the death of her father.
The “Juice” hitmaker’s father passed away when she was a student on a music scholarship at the University of Houston, and she has said that the pain of his passing caused her to drop out of college because she was “depressed.”
She explained: “I kind of really gave up. Just because I was depressed. I didn’t have a purpose; like I didn’t feel like I had a purpose for being a musician or anything. So that turned into, ‘Oh can I sleep on your couch,’ and that eventually, I got really guilt-ridden. So all I had was this car. It was a Subaru. That was my home for a little. I spent Thanksgiving in that car, and I remember I cried myself to sleep.”
But surviving those rough times motivated the 31-year-old singer — who had originally been trying to make it as a contemporary flutist — to make music again, and she turned to a Craigslist advertisement for a band that wanted a singer.
She said: “It was this band looking for a singer. And I was going to be like, ‘OK I’m going to say that I’m a singer.'”
Lizzo was worried she wouldn’t be able to pull it off, but now can’t believe it when people say she’s “a singer, not a rapper.”
The “Truth Hurts” singer told “CBS This Morning” in an interview which airs Thursday, Jan. 23, 2020: “People now are like, ‘You’re a singer. You’re not a rapper,’ and I’m like, ‘Thanks’ because honey, I could not sing. So I just went for it. They were playing and I was like, ‘Ahhh,’ just singing full throttle. No technique. No intonation. No control. By the end of it, I remember I was like, ‘Ahh,’ and I was looking around at them and they were like, ‘We don’t know what you did or said, but you felt it and we like it.’ From then on I had to learn how to balance and refine my tools, my instrument.”
