Beloved child star Joelle Joanie Siwa, more commonly known as JoJo, released a shocking single that pushed her into a new era of her career.
The single Karma is an upbeat pop song with a catchy beat. Different from Siwa’s normal aesthetic of pink bows and rainbows, this new era is more mature and paints Siwa in a new light.
Though Siwa has historically marketed herself towards young children and has collaborated with children’s brands in the past, her new style is very explicit. It can be compared to how child Disney stars like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato had a pseudo ‘bad girl’ era after their Disney careers, especially when considering Siwa’s years as a child starring in the show Dance Moms.
The song is not the worst anyone’s heard and does include some catchy lyrics—the music video is where a majority of people have expressed discomfort or disgust.
In the music video, Siwa performs suggestive dance moves that can be described as overall awkward and cringey. Because Siwa’s past music has always been marketed towards children, viewers were shocked to see such a change of pace.
TikTok creators have started to create comedic remakes of the song, often viewed as better than the original. These remakes include classical and country versions as well as making it sound as if it was sung by artists like Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift.
Because of the growing popularity of these parodies, TikTok users are speculating that Siwa is the problem and the song itself would be good without her singing it. Siwa’s version is heavily autotuned and has voice cracks that make listening to Karma a horrible experience.
Overall the song has potential but Siwa’s attitude while promoting the song has become a problem.
Siwa has claimed to be creating a new genre of music called ‘gay pop’ and has completely disregarded many other LGBTQ+ artists, like David Bowie or Troye Sivan, who have been making music longer than she’s been alive. Not only is the definition of ‘gay pop’ not defined by an actual style of music and instead just by who is singing it. Siwa should have no claim on this ‘new genre.’
Not only does Siwa have no claim on this genre but she has no claim on the song. That’s right. Siwa’s Karma is a replica of Brit Smith’s Karmas a Bitch released in 2012.
Ignoring that the whole song is stolen, Karma could have been a hit, but with cringey lyrics, autotune, overly explicit choreography and the ignorance of LGBTQ+ artists, JoJo Siwa has gone bad.
