Give or take a few penalty pennies dropped into the Slap-bass Embargo Infringement Box (every studio should have one), this is a bass part to die for, not just in terms of sheer stylistic panache, but also on account of the way it combines such rich, deep low end with tremendous small-speaker translation – essential for a production that wants to cater equally to both clubbers and joggers. My favourite aspect of the part, though, is the way it flits between its disco stomp foundation (eg. the first six beats of the chorus at 0:45-048), various melodic fills (eg. the upper-register interjection at 0:49), and the occasional quasi-doubling of the lead vocal (the most extended being at 1:05-1:11, under “I’m gon’ be OK… it’s about damn time”).

Structurally, the song’s a little unusual in that what initially appears to be a middle section starting at 2:14 (after the second set of choruses) actually ends up turning into an extended outro jam that never fully returns to the chorus material – just a couple of restatements of the central “OK, alright, it’s about damn time” hook. Rewind a decade or two, and this would have been a fairly bold move, gambling with your final opportunity to hammer the chorus into the listener’s memory within the space of a radio play. But I wonder whether this structure is much of a risk at all these days. After all, many current pop songs come in around the two-minute mark, and Lizzo has already delivered two double-choruses during that time-span. Furthermore, might the new musical developments within the extended outro actually encourage listeners with shorter attention spans to stay engaged beyond the point when they’d otherwise hit Skip?