Lizzo was not so long ago the biggest music star.

She sold millions of records, and ruled the charts. She played her flute on “Saturday Night Live.” Everyone was in love with her.

Lizzo won four Grammy Awards in 2023, including Record of the Year. Her career should have been assured.

But fame is fleeting. And now Lizzo is having serious problems.

Her perfectly good album, called “Bitch,” sold just 585 copies in its this week. Of those, 210 were downloads or CDs. This was the third week of release.

Total sales, including streaming, over the last three weeks come to 7,500.

Lizzo was banking on “Bitch” being a comeback after lawsuits and scandals over weight-shaming dancers and being otherwise unpleasant to everyone around her. When her congenial facade was broken, fans just walked away.

Arrogance plays a big part here. And hubris. Instead of making amends with the public through charitable work and other signs that she was mistreated, Lizzo took the offensive. Singing “Bitch” is not the way to wiggle your way back into anyone’s hearts.

The sad part is, the songs on the album are not bad. If she’d had a real producer and A&R person who listened to, this might have gone differently.

Listen, time heals all wounds, but you have use a bandaid. She’s learning that the hard way.

I’m late to this story.

But I’m very surprised that Oprah Winfrey is declaring negative things about Whitney Houston.

Oprah made the remarks in her speech at Cannes Lion — the advertising festival in Cannes that has nothing to do with the Cannes Film Festival.

Winfrey told the crowd that Whitney was high on drugs when she fell off the stage at Oprah’s TV show in 2009.

This has set off wild arguing, with Whitney’s sister-in-law and manager, Pat Houston, saying Oprah is lying. Or perhaps, misremembering for effect.

More importantly, I can tell you definitively and exclusively that this is a far different story than Oprah told in 2021.

Oprah was the guest of the now late and beloved Clive Davis during a Zoom call to raise money for the Grammy Museum. I watched it live and reported on it in real time.

Clive had brought Whitney to the Oprah show for the taping. He was with her, as were several of her close associates.

Gossips had always surmised that the cause of Whitney’s fall was drugs.

But on May 15, 2021, Oprah agreed with Clive, on video, live, that was not the case.

Watching the live feed, I wrote: “It was not drugs,” Oprah said, and Clive agreed. She slipped, but it unnerved Whitney so that she took a break to regroup. During the break Oprah begged the audience to keep it a secret.

I continued: “To this day I’ve never read or heard anyone say it,” said Oprah. Whitney, by the way, returned to the stage and got a standing ovation. She triumphed over the accident.

So what the heck is going on here? Oprah knows her Cannes Lion statement is not true. I know where the video is, and will produce it if necessary. But every person who was on that Zoom heard it, too. She wasn’t saying it to appease Clive. They’d obviously discussed this in advance. There was no reason to make it up in 2021. And there’s no reason to lie about it now except to make headlines.

I want to say that I was close enough to Whitney and Clive during her entire career. Clive Davis did everything in his power to help Whitney. He guided her, and helped with rehab. For a long time, I had the number of Whitney’s drug counselor — provided by Clive — in my Blackberry. He really was like a father to her. But you can’t make an addict stop unless they want to do it.

As for Oprah, her reputation has mutated since she left her talk show. Her participation in showcasing the “Leaving Neverland” documentary on HBO was a fiasco. Getting involved with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle also dimmed her legacy. She’s done herself no favors by exploiting Whitney Houston in Cannes just to get headlines.

I’m very disappointed.

You can see Whitney’s performance below. She looked great at the time, and was actually ‘clean.’ This was far different than her nadir, in 2001, when she seemed like she might perish on stage at Michael Jackson’s 30th anniversary concert. In the video, she looks beautiful and her voice is outstanding.

Tributes will be pouring in today for Clive Davis, the mega music mogul who has passed away at age 94.

Vital til the end, Clive leaves an incredible legacy in the culture of pop music from discovering Janis Joplin at the Monterey Music Festival to working with jazz greats like Miles Davis, putting Santana and Earth Wind & Fire on the map, not to mention successes with Simon & Garfunkel, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Dylan — to name a few.

Of course, Clive will be remembered for reviving the careers of Aretha Franklin and Dionne Warwick at his Arista Records, where his successes also included Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart singing the classic American songbook, and his first star at that label, Barry Manilow.

My time with Clive personally goes back forty years, just before Whitney Houston took off and just as Carly Simon had her comeback with him with “Coming Around Again.” I used to pop over to his Arista office on West 57th St, where’d be sitting in his cramped office with stacks of cassettes. He played the music LOUD, and you’d have ask to him to turn it down. He would, if he could stop dancing around the room.

The same thing happened to us in 2015, when he summoned me to his offices high above Sony Music to listen to what would be Aretha Franklin’s final record, “Aretha Sings the Great Diva Classics.” We shared a mutual friendship and love of Aretha, and he wanted me to be among the first to hear what he’d made with her. Only Clive, who had the gift of golden ears, would have though to give Aretha the Adele song, “Rolling in the Deep,” which remains an unheralded gem. It was a highlight of our friendship.

Clive was a family man, almost more than my own dad or anyone I’ve ever known. He was devoted to his four children, and many grandchildren, his partner, Greg, their cocker spaniel Charlie, and beloved cousin Jo from San Francisco. He loved his friends enormously, and delighted in having big groups around for holidays, all kinds of events, and especially his Grammy parties. I’d ask, “How many people are coming to dinner tonight, Clive?” You thought he was going to say, “20, 25” but by the time you got there, there was a valet, seating cards, and 100 of his best friends.

And they were. Just since the first of this year, Clive — who was unwell — persevered. In Miami, New York, Westchester. There was the Grammy party in late January, which was itself preceded by a dinner for 120 at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Then he was off to Miami, where there were stories about dinners, and so on, one with the Bee Gees’ Barry Gibb. Back in New York, he took over the private dining room at Le Bernardin, the best restaurant in America, for a 94th birthday party. And then, three weeks ago, a last hurrah seated, catered dinner for Memorial Day at which he pushed his pal, Motown great Valerie Simpson, into singing “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing.” The title meant a lot.

Clive’s last decade was lived like a grand pasha, with lots of love and fun anecdotes. But he wasn’t always a pussycat. You couldn’t be to have had that career. When he saw a fellow entrepreneur, he made a deal. Such was the case with Sean Diddy Combs, now Public Enemy number 1 but back then, just Puffy or Puff Daddy. Overnight, Puffy created a tsunami of hits, which for Clive was like catnip. He didn’t hang with him socially, or get into personal discussions. If you knew Clive, his main passion was presenting gold and platinum records to his artists. With Puffy, for a stretch, that was everything.

You have to realize the depth and range of Clive Davis. In 1974, he signed Barry Manilow — soft pop king — and Patti Smith, the edgiest ever princess of punk. Who else could see the value in each of them? And how they would last 50 years? We went to see Patti this past November at the Beacon Theater. Clive could barely walk, but he wouldn’t miss going backstage. He was overwhelmed. She was in tears. It was a crowning moment.

So much more to say, and remember, about a person who has been so important to so many people. A great life.