JoJo on New Album, Instagram Live Sessions, And Love Lost

When you speak to JoJo, or even just watch her on Instagram, you can feel how much she loves the physical act of singing. Vocal riffs are not just strings of notes; she’s expressing herself to you. She shares her voice with her fans almost every day on Instagram around noon (PST), when she goes live to talk, sing with guests, and unpack her new album, Good to Know.

“I think that energy exchange is important,” she tells Teen Vogue on a phone call weeks into California’s mandated social distancing. She misses in-person experiences, but that’s the reality of album rollout in the age of COVID-19. And she won’t let this new normal bring her down, either. “To feel the music and hear someone sing live is a powerful thing.”

Truthfully, JoJo doesn’t feel woe-is-me about her circumstance. She understands everyone is burdened in their own way, including her own friends who’ve lost businesses and experienced major life changes. Her change simply meant orchestrating an album campaign from her own living room. “It’s keep evolving or die,” she says. “And we gotta keep evolving.”

Her strategy has worked. The 29-year-old’s Insta-sessions have become must-watch. She’s always dressed at the nexus of style and comfort: crop top sweatsuits, hoop earrings, baseball caps. She lights sage in her Los Angeles home and answers fan questions. And singing is constant. When she’s not displaying her brassy vocals on R&B classics like "Unbreak My Heart", she sings accompanied by artists Tori Kelly and adoring fans. In this time of disconnectedness, JoJo has prioritized intimacy which is why, absent late-night talk shows and live gigs, you get her, unfiltered.

JoJo couldn’t have predicted that her album would come out during the age of COVID-19. Even further, she couldn’t have predicted that her fourth studio album — her first since 2016’s Mad Love — would be an album that the world needs now. The collection of songs tells a story: an arc that goes from negative emotions, bad coping mechanisms, self-doubt, and unsureness toward wholeness, empowerment, and fulfillment. JoJo has healed and written a sonic roadmap of her journey, one that listeners can follow to their own sense of peace.

The wounds that JoJo heals on Good to Know go back a long time. Some of them stem from her earliest days of fame when 13-year-old Joanna Noelle Levesque catapulted to international fame off of two hit songs and accompanying hit albums, 2004’s JoJo and 2006’s The High Road. All of a sudden, the Foxborough, Massachusetts, native had to navigate personal and professional pressures. There’s no guidebook to fame, even less so for young women thrust into the national spotlight with a No. 1 on the Billboard charts.

“Having such immense success at a young age, it set a real precedent for, ‘If I’m not the most famous person in the room, who am I?',” she says. The singer spent a lot of time comparing herself to other young women in the public spotlight, questioning whether she measured up in terms of talent, beauty, and mainstream appeal. “My self-esteem was on a sliding scale. It was related to people’s approval of me and feeling respected, appreciated — feeling seen. It was hard to keep blinders on.”

However, much of Good to Know examines highly-personal relationships from JoJo’s own love life. The first leg of the album’s journey includes songs like “Pedialyte” and “Bad Habits,” two tracks where JoJo reflects on self-soothing through substances and partying. Both served as distractions from dealing with the fallout from a failed relationship that ended when she cheated on her partner.

“I felt ashamed,” she says. “I didn’t feel worthy of that type of love. I felt like, ‘Well, I already did a bad thing, so I’m just going to keep going out and continuing.’” Even that wound, which is a few years back in JoJo’s past, harkens to a problem that she’s now only addressing.

“I wasn’t taught how to love myself. I wasn’t taught boundaries. I wasn’t taught a standard I should hold myself to. There are all things I’ve learned on my own: trial by fire, I guess.”

Currently, the entire industry is embroiled in a conversation about artist exploitation, ownership, and entrapment. In March, rapper Megan Thee Stallion sued her record label to release her latest project, Suga. Taylor Swift intends to re-record her masters in order to retain rights to her voice and lyrics. Kesha navigated years of contract disputes, prompting her fans to start a #FreeKesha campaign to allow the singer to release music untethered to her former label.

JoJo’s years-long fight for her masters differed from someone like Taylor’s in many ways. A single Notes app statement from Taylor can shift the music industry and garner her tons of support from artists and fans. At the nadir of JoJo’s legal turmoil, she admits she felt “pretty alone.”

“I felt like I might need to give up at many points,” she adds. JoJo came from “humble beginnings,” and had nothing to fall back on: All she had known was this industry and her voice. During her label-imposed hiatus from releasing music, she lived on money made from appearances and performances, royalties from her two albums, and appearances in films. She saved well and maintained a living, though she didn’t see an end to her legal troubles until 2014. “In retrospect, I’m grateful that because of what I went through, there is a standard set, and people can be encouraged to change their situation.”

In 2018, JoJo re-recorded her two hit albums from the 2000s, JoJo and The High Road, to retain rights to the songs. Singing the lyrics in her mid-20s made them more meaningful. Though she loves the 13-year-old who recorded these songs — “I was undaunted and unafraid … you couldn’t tell me nothing” — she’s connected with the songs in a new way and reclaimed both them and her time. “It felt like the lyrics applied way more now than they did then,” she says. “I was acting with those songs. They were so beyond my years conceptually and lyrically.” Those re-recordings were just another step in JoJo’s process. “This sh*t is a marathon, not a race. If you don’t give up, that’s when you win.”

What comes through from JoJo’s new album is that the process of healing is a marathon, too. The work continues and will continue — in fact, she promises that there will be even more new music later this year. If there’s one thing she stresses, is that she’s still a work in progress.

“I haven’t arrived at a place of self-love,” she says. “I’m going to continue and take a step forward and then a step back. It’s not a straight line.”

The first single from Good to Know comes midway through the album. The mid-tempo song "Man" is a great standalone where JoJo declares that she needs a partner who can love her just as fervently as she loves herself. “Until I find somebody who compliments what I’m bringing to the table, I’ve got the table covered,” JoJo says of the track. “It’s a message that I needed to hear.”

JoJo has seen her taste in men and what she’s willing to put up with evolve as she nears 30, she says. On a recent date, a potential beau kept referring to himself as a “boy,” which turned her off. “I’ve been taking care of myself since I was 13. I’m grateful to say that I finally feel like a woman.”

She is also very aware of the romantic distance needed for her artistic process. During the album, she refrained from serious dating. She journaled, meditated, and hung out with friends. Instead of bouncing ideas off other people, she listened to her gut. “I tried to lose myself in other people and relationships and distract myself from getting to know myself with boys. At the end of it, I came to the place of, ‘This is who I am and I love her.’”

Four years have passed since the release of JoJo’s last album. As the release date creeps up, a completely different, more calm energy envelopes her. The last album was her first after years of fighting for her freedom. So much seemed to ride on it: her career, her reputation as an artist. Part of that calm now comes with the self-assurance that she is on the right path and that she can feel secure in following her calling.

“This is what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” she says. “I don’t see myself getting tired of writing about love: losing it, finding it, wanting it missing it. Love is my thing.”

That much is evident from “Proud,” the introspective, moving final track of Good to Know. Mixed into the track is a voicemail from her mother, Diana Levesque. On the audio, her mother urges her not to dwell on the past. Her mother moved out to LA to live with her five months ago. JoJo says the two are in separate healing processes, but both learning how to love themselves at different ages.

“This is a family of origin thing, as well,” she says of her own self-esteem. “When you don’t know how to love yourself, you can’t teach your children how to do that, either.”

Anyone who listens to Good to Know can sense that, while finding peace and self-love is an ongoing process, JoJo sounds as if she’s found her peace. She’s also found a mellow, contemplative sound that can communicate that to the listener. She hopes others will begin to feel peace when listening to the record, as well.

“I hope that energy will reverberate out. I work hard to find moments of peace every day,” she says. “[But] I have found peace within my past and present.”

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue