The 20-year-old dancer and musician JoJo Siwa has just reinvented herself once again. A former Dance Moms child star, Siwa grew up surrounded by cameras, sparkles, and big bows on her side ponytail — a signature look that she maintained for the first 18 years of her life. In early 2021, deep into the pandemic, Siwa became more personal on her social media. She came out to her fans and the public as a pansexual woman, and began her first style change since being in the spotlight.
After coming out, she began rocking full pride outfits, decorated with rainbows while still maintaining her sparkly aesthetic. Throughout the next year, she began branching out more with dynamic outfits — some less colorful, exploring darker tones — and she even chopped her hair to a short pixie, ditching the bow.
In early April of 2024, Siwa released the single she’d been hinting at for months: “Karma.” In interviews, Siwa claimed she was in the process of creating a new sub-genre of music called “gay pop.” Many viewers and fans responded negatively to this statement, saying that the artists she named as her “musical inspiration,” including David Bowie, Elton John, Lady Gaga, and more, are iconic queer musicians from before her time, and that “gay pop” is not a new genre, certainly not one of her creation.
A long time JoJo Siwa follower, Franklin Post alumna, and college student at the University of Puget Sound, Sophia Goble, remarked that the artist is unique “in the sense that she is trying to have this ‘rebel’ or ‘bad girl’ phase,” although Goble noted that while this is a common theme for artists to explore — think Taylor Swift or Miley Cyrus — it usually occurs much later in the artists’ career. Siwa has continued her stylistic exploration with her new look, which accompanied the release of Siwa’s new single, resembling a remake of KISS’s hard rock facial makeup from the 1970s, with black decals covering the eyes, going up the neck to the chin, and on the forehead.
This attempt at maturing her style with edgy makeup and attire does make sense considering her aging fan base. Many of Siwa’s fans are her age or slightly older, having grown up watching Dance Moms or Siwa’s YouTube channel. This means that when she was making music at 12-years-old, lots of her audience members were also tweens and teens. Now that she’s 20, her fans are grown-ups too.
Even around five years ago, many young kids still knew who JoJo Siwa was, but today it seems elementary aged kids know of her less and less. A third grader at Arleta Elementary School named Ollie reported that he has “heard her name but [doesn’t] know what she looks like or why she’s famous.” Several other Kellogg Middle School sixth graders didn’t recognize her name at all.
Critics of Siwa are plentiful, arguing that her music and style are largely unoriginal despite the attitude she projects to the press of total ingenuity and hubris, while others wonder if her behavior is merely a publicity stunt.
Her performance critiques are also numerous, as her music is largely autotuned and her live vocals sound pretty different from the tracks — she brings high energy and her advanced dancing background to help distract from her off-key singing. Goble agreed that Siwa is not a singer at heart, while crediting that “She is multitalented, but it’s her marketing team that has gotten her to where [she] is today.”
In another viewpoint, Siwa’s KISS-inspired look could be an intentional allusion to how the 70s band horrified Hollywood elites and other high class celebrities with their outrageous look. This could be a deliberate commentary on Siwa’s aim to differentiate herself from the rest of the industry, or perhaps just show maturity from her previous, more childlike appearance. Gene Simmons himself, the 74-year-old KISS bassist and singer, defended Siwa’s look at iHeartRadio Music Awards Festival.
In any case, the song “Karma” has had a lot of controversy since its release. Most notably, an identical song was recorded by Brit Smith in 2012, but was never released until after Siwa’s song came out and the public discovered the song did not belong to Siwa originally. While the song is a legal remake, many fans felt tricked that Siwa was marketing this song as her own. In response, Siwa removed her writing credits to avoid further conflicts.
The only significant lyrical distinction between the Smith track and Siwa’s rendition is that Siwa switched the lyric “If I had a wish/I would have never messed around” to “I would’ve never effed around.” In interviews, she explained this song was her attempt at being more adult and reaching a more mature audience, though many reviews found this “effing” lyrical change to be the opposite — showing immaturity in choosing the in-between: not swearing, yet implying swearing. As of late April, Brit Smith’s released version of “Karma” reached No. 8 on the iTunes chart, while Siwa’s “Karma” fell off the list.
In an interview with Page Six, a celebrity news network, Smith stated that she wasn’t upset with Siwa’s version of her song, saying that it was nice to hear different interpretations of the same record, though she still prefers her own version. Siwa has yet to comment on social media about the song and Brit Smith’s involvement.
While the backlash on Siwa’s social media following the release of “Karma” was intense, she is still profiting immensely from the media attention. Additionally, Goble empathized with the artist and her upbringing in the spotlight, being thrust into the industry so early and having her privacy taken away as a child. “It just makes me think about the burden and probably trauma that was placed on her at such a young age. I feel like she’s in a child star cult and one day she will break free.”
Ultimately, Jojo is a young and resilient artist that many people in our generation have grown up alongside. She has a large marketing team and a wide outreach: whether people are fans of the new song or not, she has a long career ahead of her and we will just have to wait to see what she does going forward.
