Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” got a second chance at becoming a hit after it was featured in Netflix’s Someone Great. Now, it just went viral again for a different reason: a second-grade class reworked the hit for the classroom.
Their teacher, DorothyHoney Mallari, flipped the pop star’s anthem about boy problems into an empowerment jingle for her class. The kids at Los Medanos Elementary School in Pittsburg, California sang:
Let’s be great
‘Cause I know we are great
It’s a far cry from the original:
Why’re men great ‘til they gotta be great?
In the video, the students continue twisting the lyrics into the school-related theme:
I just took an ELA test
Turns out I’m 100 percent that smart
Yeah I got math problems, that’s the student in me
In Lizzo’s version, this is the most heavily memed part of the song:
I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 percent that bitch
Even when I’m crying crazy
Yeah, I got boy problems, that’s the human in me
Lizzo reacted to the viral remix on Good Morning America. “Hey kids, It’s Lizzo. I saw the wonderful video that y'all made. Your teacher is very cool,” she said in a message. “You’re so bright and so beautiful and so talented so keep it up and I hope to see y'all one day,” she said. “I wanna drop in on your class so hopefully we can make that happen. In the meantime, stay bright.”
Mallari wrote the remix after she saw her students’ reaction to the Kidz Bop version of the sleeper hit, which put its own childproofed spin on the lyrics:
I just took a DNA test, turns out I’m 100 percent that kid
Even when I’m crying crazy
Yeah, I got some problems, that’s the human in me
“It’s really important that I find a song that the kids know, they’re engaged in, they get hype on,” Mallari said on GMA. “As soon as I saw them dancing to it I was like, ‘Ah, I’m going to do this song.’”
Kidz Bop recently went viral as a search term on Twitter after a mother nicknamed “Kidz Bop Karen” went on an on-camera rampage.
KTVU reported that the teacher chooses a new song every year, and Drake got the remix treatment last year.
The new rendition circulated after the Pittsburg Unified School District shared the video on Facebook, amassing over 7,000 likes since Nov. 5.
Last month, “Truth Hurts” tied Iggy Azalea and Charli XCX’s “Fancy” as the longest-running No. 1 by a female rapper on the Hot 100.
Watch the remix above, and read all the lyrics to Lizzo’s “Truth Hurts” on Genius now.
