Lizzo’s “Good as Hell” was first released in the spring of 2016, ahead of the rapper and singer’s stellar EP Coconut Oil. It is the kind of song that crawls into the body, becoming one with all its good joints and best nerves, and by now it has found a life of its own — not only in film but in clubs, jukeboxes, house parties, road trips, RuPaul’s Drag Race, anywhere that signifies escape.
Like most great anthems, it is a communal exercise. In place of a hand over her heart, Lizzo opens with, “I do my hair toss.” The line will return over and over, eventually shifting into a direct invitation to the listener: “And do your hair toss.” Then comes the central thesis, issued in the chorus as a call and response. Marching through the wreckage wrought by shaky self-confidence, Lizzo shouts a question into the void — “Baby, how you feelin’?” — and waits as a choir of voices replies, “Feelin’ good as hell.”
The choir lives inside the song, but the response is loud enough to echo into the world beyond it: in a car after a breakup or bad date, or in a bedroom with no one but you and the isolation you’ve built for yourself, reminding you that you are not alone and not invisible. Like the dirt on Jay-Z’s shoulder before it, the collective hair toss is a shaking off of weight, emotional or mental, the action that allows a recontextualizing of the self before the night ahead calls to us.
I believe the night to be sacred. I believe it grows more so as a person ages, takes on more responsibilities, loses the freedom to revel with the same devil-may-care energy as in their younger moments. When a night out becomes a rarity, it has to remain sacred, and so the moments that soundtrack it must be sacred.
“Good as Hell” is the rare song that can play at any point in a night out and resonate in each: the getting ready, the going out, the rallying while the hours dwindle, the affirmation in a car home. It is the song that first says, “We’re going to do it,” and then says, “You are doing it better than anyone ever has,” and then, “You did it. Thank you.”
In Praise Of ‘Good As Hell,’ The Song That Believes In You Even When You Don’t
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Refinery29
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