In 2004, Joanna “JoJo” Levesque was 13 years old and already making history. Off of her self-titled debut album, her breakout single “Leave (Get Out)” had claimed the number one spot on Billboard’s Pop Songs chart for five weeks in a row — making her the youngest ever artist to do so. By 14, the Boston native was a household name, splitting her time between coasts to work on her second album and learning how to navigate an industry eager to cash in on young talent (she cried when her label picked “Leave” for the single because she couldn’t relate to the song’s mature themes, and much preferred RnB over pop). She was also falling fast into her first-ever relationship with soccer prodigy Freddy Adu, teen royalty in his own right.
Needing a safe space to process, JoJo turned to a tradition time-honored by generations of teenage girls just trying to cope: She started journaling. Two decades later, those journals are now the backbone of the singer’s New York Times bestselling memoir Over The Influence.
“When I started journaling, I had just come off of my life completely changing and my dreams coming true,” JoJo tells me at a Manhattan party celebrating the Spotify audiobook of her memoir, which she also self-narrated. “It was kind of sad going through some of [the journals] because I saw these recurring patterns of insecurity, of not feeling good enough, or feeling hung up on boys and just wanting to distract myself from the instability that I felt in my career and my family. I can see that that pattern started when I was really young.”
Tracing her inner world, relationships, and career, Over The Influence gives an unfiltered look into JoJo’s decade-long legal battle with her record label Blackground, which she says stifled her ability to release new music at the height of her fame. It also explores the complex dynamics of her relationship with her parents who both struggled with addiction, and lays bare her own experiences searching for control and solace through substances, relationships, and an unhealthy relationship to work. It’s a story that is all the more powerful when heard in JoJo’s voice in the Spotify audiobook, a decision she insisted on.
“Owning my narrative is something I really feel like I needed for myself because for so long I allowed other people to tell me how I should feel about my own life and career,” JoJo says. “I couldn’t have had anyone else do it. … It was a whole other level of catharsis in knowing that people would be hearing me share my own story.”
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Freedom of the spiritual, creative, and legal varieties is a big theme in JoJo’s current chapter of life. Her forthcoming EP NGL, short for “Not Gonna …read more
Source:: Refinery29