Lizzo's success once felt radical.Can she capture the Zeitgeist again?

Fish Out of Water

- Allison P. Davis

When the world drops out from under us, we turn to intangible sources of certainty: God, if you believe, or the universe, or tarot cards, or some high-vibrational being who can divine a murky future. For Lizzo, that’s Wendy, a psychic medium who works out of a squat lavender-painted building in the Valley. Lizzo started getting regular readings from her five years ago, just as her career exploded. There’s no negativity in Wendy’s sessions, Lizzo explains as we make our way through the sage-scented, labyrinthine hallways of Pure Heart Collective psychic salon, pausing so two “angel assistants” can show off the Sailor Moon knee socks they’re wearing in her honor. “It’s all love and light,” she says.

Today, on a perfect late-April afternoon in the backyard of Wendy’s salon, it really is all love and light. The sun streams so fiercely on Lizzo’s face that beads of sweat collect on her upper lip. Wendy, an ageless blue-eyed platinum-blonde “baddie angel,” as Lizzo calls her, flits around the salon’s backyard café plying us with herbal tea and compliments.

“Sweetie! You look gorgeous,” she exclaims, appreciating Lizzo’s glowing skin and the way her copper-colored Afro frames her like a halo. Then, upon taking in Lizzo’s Valentino kitten heels and pristine white Capri pants: “You look rich!”

“You look so good, Wendy. Stop it! This fit, honey!” she says, gesturing to Wendy’s cream tweed skirt suit. “Is that Chanel?”

Cost-prohibitive for a psychic medium. “I wish,” Wendy says, her laugh tinkling in harmony with her many silver bracelets. As she moves around the bar to make us tea, Lizzo fills Wendy in on her past few days. Over the weekend, she celebrated her 37th birthday at an intimate dinner with her close friends, her mother, her sister, and a Sailor Moon cake. She attended a meditation gathering at Jay Shetty’s house (she was a guest on his motivational podcast,