Detriot-born singer-songwriter Lizzo has debuted new visuals for the year for the song ‘Special’, which was officially commissioned as the third single for Special (2022) last month.
The four-time Grammy winner enlisted the help of South Florida director Christian Breslauer, with ‘Special’ being her first music video since ‘2 Be Loved (Am I Ready)’. The superhero-themed music video plays around the singer’s controversial public image as a Black and plus-sized woman, and the dichotomy of being loved and hated by the same people she serves with her artistry.
The music video begins with the thirty-four-year-old musician flying above skyscrapers, smiling in her purple superhero attire and matching masquerade. Upon landing back at her apartment, and shedding her hero’s outfit, she slips into bed only for her bedside alarm clock to break her slumber a minute later.
“Woke up this morning to somebody in a video / Talking about something I posted in a video / If it wasn’t me then would you even get offended? Or / Is it just because I’m Black and heavy? Y’all don’t hear me though,” Lizzo sings while she eats her cereal, watching a live news report on her superhero escapades with the headline: “Lizzo: Hero or Women-ance”.
Apart from playing the demonised protagonist, the ‘Truth Hurts’ hit-maker also portrays an abused bartender bullied by patrons who shoots spitballs at her and make fatphobic remarks.
The resilience as shown in her lyrics (“That’s why I move the way I move and why I’m so in love with me / I’m used to feeling alone, oh / So I thought that I’d let you know”) comes to the fore just as a young girl, who dropped a superhero Lizzo doll as she was playing with it in the streets, almost gets hit by an oncoming car.
The singer zooms from the counter and puts herself between the girl and the car, saving her. Lizzo caresses the chubby child’s cheek and croons for her: “In case nobody made you believe, you’re special.”
Amid a picket formed against her superhero persona, Lizzo strolls past the heated mob and sings, “How could you throw fucking stones, if you ain’t been through her pain?”
Unbeknownst to them, a woman struggles for her handbag against a pair of thugs deep in the alley before Lizzo staves them off. The visuals transition from scene to scene depicting the superhero Lizzo performing noble acts at night for the same public that conversely mistreats her by day.
The closing scene is of the same girl she’d saved earlier, now wearing an imitation of her purple Zorro-style mask as though inspired by the hero. A humbled Lizzo smiles down at her as she lifts the mask to her face.
Watch ‘Special” here:
