She was a bad girl. She did some bad things. Who might I be talking about? Unfortunately, Jojo Siwa. In the past month, Jojo has taken over the internet with the start of a new music career. And let’s just say, it has been a complete and total train wreck. For those who are unaware, Jojo Siwa is a twenty-year-old social media star who got her start on the show Dance Moms. It’s sort of hard to explain what she does because she is so multifaceted. But she’s mainly a dancer, YouTuber, and now a singer. 

I’m not going to go into the long history of Jojo Siwa. I feel like most of Gen Z knows about her, so I will jump right into “Karma.” “Karma” is Jojo’s new song that kicked off the start of her “rebrand.” It’s been confusing to me because she is saying that she is beginning her music career, but she already has a music video with over a billion views. Anyways, this “rebrand” is supposed to separate her from her child stardom and move into a more adult version of Jojo. The number of times that she has said that she wants this change to replicate Miley Cyrus’s “bangers era” is embarrassing. Here’s the thing: it is not unusual for celebrities to have a rebel era. But, anytime they do, they never make an announcement saying that they are in their rebel era, they just do it. Miley Cyrus never made an Instagram post telling everyone that she is now a bad girl, and that she’s so rebellious. On the other hand, Jojo’s actions have lead nobody taking this rebrand seriously. The amount of memes that have sprouted from this is what has kept me entertained the past month. 

First of all, Jojo physically looks the same, except she discovered the color black exists. She is still dressed in rhinestones from head to toe and wears a ponytail. On top of that, she is trying to come off as edgy, and instead, she sounds like a middle schooler who just said their first cuss word. The whole new image seems extremely fake and forced. In an interview on the Call Her Daddy podcast, Jojo revealed that she has wanted to have her “bad girl moment” ever since the age of nine. That proves that it is not authentic. 

Now, let us discuss the music. Jojo did not write “Karma.” It was written by people who worked on the music for Disney’s Descendents. The song is fine, I wouldn’t say that it is good or bad. But, Jojo’s vocals don’t do anything for me. She actually sounds quite crap. The auto-tune is very prominent, which doesn’t surprise me after seeing her “Traitor” by Olivia Rodrigo cover. It doesn’t help that Jojo sounds like she smokes twelve packs a day, which is also a facade. Like I mentioned earlier, she has an obsession with Miley Cyrus and wants to be exactly like her. Miley has an extremely raspy voice because, A, she fried it, and B, she smoked a lot. In the past two years, Jojo’s voice magically went from high-pitched and squeaky, to low and raspy. One could only assume the reason behind it.

And now for the part that gave me trauma, the music video. The amount of promotion that went into the “Karma” music video is insane. Jojo made over seventy individual posts on Instagram prompting the video. Once it finally came out, people were in shock. The video is set out in the middle of the ocean on a yacht. There are a bunch of girls on the boat, and Jojo is trying to be seductive, but instead looks flat-out dumb. So, she dances with the girls for a bit, then she randomly star-jumps off the yacht into the ocean. Now, she is underwater singing, then she emerges. When she emerges from the water, she is wearing her iconic black outfit. This outfit was the source of so many memes. If you haven’t seen it, just imagine the lead singer from KISS and that is basically it. Anyways, she comes out of the water and crawls onto an island. She proceeds to do the signature dance that had also been heavily memed where it looks as though she is having a spasm. The next part of the video is where the real trauma is caused. Out of nowhere, this girl in red crawls over to Jojo, and they begin to dance. Jojo does a questionable dance on that poor girl, and it’s probably the most memed part of the whole video. My heart goes out to everyone affected by that part. Then, that’s the end of the video. It was incredibly confusing. I couldn’t tell what story she was trying to tell with it. It seemed like she just wanted to come off as risque and instead, she caused pain for the viewers. 

To end things off, I think that this whole fiasco has been extremely entertaining. The videos of people recreating her “dream guest on my podcast” video have made me laugh the hardest. Do I think that the rebrand causes second-hand embarrassment? Yes I do. But, I also think that the reason Jojo has gone so viral is because she is incredibly smart when it comes to knowing the internet. She knows exactly what will get views and what will get memed. If anything, the memes from her outfit and dance have given the song the most amount of free promotion. But yeah, it’s been really fun to watch.