JoJo was 12 years old when she recorded the noughties heartbreak anthem, ‘Leave (Get Out)’. She hadn’t had her first kiss when she sang, ‘You said that you would treat me right, but you were just a waste of time.’ She left her school in Massachusetts, moved to California and signed to a record label when most people her age were buying their first bras.
The song charted at number one on Billboard’s Pop Songs and marked the birth of a child star. One who would go on to release six studio albums, star in films like Aquamarine and RV, appear on the US version of The Masked Singer and play the lead in Moulin Rouge on Broadway.
However, like many artists before her and countless since, her career ground almost to a halt after her second album when her label essentially became defunct, and she didn’t own the rights to her own voice.
The child prodigy swiftly became an emblem of unfulfilled potential – tied up in contracts which denied her control over her image or her work. Nearly 20 years after that first self-titled album, JoJo, or rather Joanna Levesque, now 33, has put her story in her own words in her memoir, Over the Influence.
‘I started putting out music so young,’ she tells me over Zoom, ‘I wanted to try to make sense of what the past 20 years of my life and career have been and share some of the stories, the hard times, the weird times and the things that I’ve learned along the way.’
From awkward interactions at Taylor Swift's house, reluctant reality show appearances and being mixed up with Jojo Siwa, to filing for bankruptcy, her parents' battles with addiction and toxic romantic relationships – the book is ripe with stories of an intimate and vulnerable nature, ones that Levesque has not shared before.
Hers was a childhood spent performing. Levesque was spotted on the TV competition, America’s Most Talented Kids, in 2003 and was signed by Vincent Herbert of Blackground Records that same year. She has learned to look back at her younger self ‘with compassion’ or ‘more like a big sister looking at someone who was going through something’ without patronising her ambition.
For the first few years, her mum Diana was her manager, meaning she also uprooted her life to support her daughter’s dreams and was learning as they both went along. ‘My mum was really just trying to make her daughter happy by letting me pursue this thing with my gifts and it was a tough time for her, and for me, but simultaneously the most exciting time – and exactly what I wanted.’
Slowly they came to realise they were out of their depth. The first single, the creative direction of the album, even the name ‘JoJo’, were all decided at the whims of Herbert, who in turn controlled the trajectory of Levesque’s career.
‘I think it’s very normal when somebody starts out super young for other people to be in the driver’s seat,’ she reflects. ‘It’s not something that I felt was wrong at the time, but I just never learned how to really take the wheel.’
At the beginning, listening to other people’s opinions paid off. Levesque was not keen on ‘Leave (Get Out)’ as a debut single, thinking it was more pop than R&B, and it’s the song that made her a name. By the time she released her first single from her second album, ‘Too Little Too Late’, she says she ‘understood how to play the game a little bit’ and had trust in those around her. Bounding ahead to her third studio album, with two back-to-back platinum albums under her belt, she was met by an unexpected block; following a series of ‘bad business deals’, Blackground Records had lost their distribution rights and were no longer a functioning label.
Levesque had hundreds of songs that she’d recorded between the ages of 17 and 21 that she wasn’t able to release. 'I didn’t own my voice,' she laments.
'Then I filed a lawsuit, and I was caught up in that for a long time, many years, and then the lawsuit ended. I didn’t even ask for money, I just wanted to be able to move forward.’ She then signed to Atlantic Records in 2014 before leaving in 2017 to start her own label Clover Music through a joint venture with Warner Records. It wasn't until December 2018, the day after her 28th birthday, that she released re-recorded versions of her first two albums under her own label.
‘That period was like industry musical chairs, a lot of politics behind the scenes, people leaving labels and me not having an advocate at that particular label, boring industry stuff,’ as Levesque puts it, ‘but unfortunately that’s my story. I was deeply, deeply confused and I felt really shovelled around. I was angry. I was making so much music and fans were like “why aren’t you putting anything out?” I felt embarrassment and shame in ways that I had learned from childhood – numbing the pain with substances and feeling like I was doing a really good job of holding on.’
By this, the ‘Baby It’s You’ singer is referring to her parents’ ongoing battle with addiction – they met in AA – with their harmful cycles of behaviour, particularly in the instance of her dad Joel who died from substance abuse just before Levesque turned 25, peppering her memories as a child and later informing her own behaviour as an adult. Set against a backdrop of career stagnation and crippling self-doubt, Levesque describes her relationship with drugs and alcohol as ‘self-soothing’. A series of unhealthy relationships followed – she was cheated on and she cheated, she was taken advantage of and she took people for granted. ‘Hurt people hurt people,’ she suggests, never shying away from accountability.
Around this time, Levesque was watching her contemporaries, Taylor Swift, Selena Gomez and Emma Roberts, steadily climb the ranks. She was invited to spend 'Galentines Day' with Swift and Gomez in 2010 and recalls Swift offering her support and saying how 'f*cked up' the lawsuit was. Even still, in her book she writes: 'I could see in the eyes of everyone else at the party that they felt bad for me.'
Remembering this period she says, ‘I was able to be like wow, these people are super talented, while simultaneously feeling devastated. It was a feeling of being happy for them while counting myself out and thinking, if they occupy this space, where’s the room for me?’ It’s a big question to contemplate, especially in your early 20s when most people are just finding their feet in their careers. Coming from a working class background, Levesque recalls the very real fear of having to abandon her music career altogether.
Despite these experiences, she wouldn’t change anything. ‘The only thing I would change about my life is any time that I’ve hurt anybody. I feel supremely fortunate to have the life and experiences that I’ve had.’ Saying that, Levesque is unequivocal that she would ‘never recommend a child get involved in the music industry from a young age’ and describes child stardom ‘like injecting heroine into your system – when you’re doing that to someone who is prepubescent you can really see how irresponsible or dangerous that is’.
She fears it can ‘skew your world view’ and ‘create narcissistic behaviours’ – something she has worked hard to avoid where possible and unlearn over the past decade, finding comfort in spiritual practises and extensive therapy.
In recent years, life feels a little bit lighter. Levesque has enjoyed success on Broadway as Satine in Moulin Rouge, she’s released her first book, and she has new music coming. Her relationship with drugs and alcohol has also transformed. ‘I don’t have any desire to be out of my mind or out of the moment anymore. I think when my father passed away, his body just said, “I’m done supporting this”. That changed a lot of things for me,’ she admits. ‘I had to take a cold hard look at myself and say what is your life going to be about? Is it going to be about wasted potential? Is it going to be about following in the footsteps of what your genetics have planned for you? Or is it going to be a story of redemption and triumph and intention?’
She’s even learned to love ‘Leave (Get Out)’. ‘I love it more now than I did when I was a kid because it’s nostalgic for me too. Without that song, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to have the 20-year career that I’ve had. It’s the most amazing foundation for me to spring off from.’ She jokes, ‘I’ve also had to tell multiple people to get out of my life.’
It may have taken 20 years, but Levesque is equipped with a new perspective – one that affords her younger, vulnerable self some compassion, and her future self the confidence to keep trying.
For now, she enjoys the juxtaposition of being able to sell out tours, publish a memoir and have fans around the world, but also ‘walk around with relative anonymity' and 'go to the grocery store'. ‘My relationship with fame is that it doesn’t motivate my decision-making process,' Levesque calmly concludes. 'I am seeking peace and fulfilment and experiences that make me feel alive. I really enjoy this moment in my life.’
Over the Influence by Joanna 'JoJo' Levesque is published by Pan Macmillan in Hardback, audio and eBook, £22
Nikki Peach is news and entertainment writer at Grazia UK, working across pop culture, TV and current affairs. She has also written for the i, i-D and the New Statesman Media Group and covers all things TV for Grazia (treating high and lowbrow shows with equal respect).