Joelle Joanie Siwa of Dance Moms and Nickelodeon brand deal fame wanted 2024 to know that she’s a bad girl now. She ditched the “Boomerang,” JoJo-bow persona, songs under which, for the sake of parents, are THANKFULLY now distinguished on streaming services as “JoJo Siwa (Kids),” for a PG-13 redefinition of her career. Once you see her, it’s easy to see how. She debuted her new look on the iHeartRadio Music Awards red carpet, with her face dripped in black paint and body suit covered in glitter. It looks a little bit like she rolled around in the Nickelodeon slime that made her so famous, but not before slipping in some black dye.
I was wondering how out of all of the esteemed releases of 2024, Siwa’s debut EP Guilty Pleasure did not find its way into the U92 rotation. Was JoJo’s jarring persona actually masking a blossoming career of the next musical icon? As a “glass half full” person, I decided to take a listen to the 12-minute, 5-track EP while disregarding all that the crowd has told me to think about JoJo Siwa.
The EP opens with the title track “Guilty Pleasure,” which was actually co-written by Meghan Trainor of “All About that Bass” fame. It’s a harmless, flirty pop song that sounds a bit like an early-2010s reject (which is a VERY common theme across this EP). This is partly because the song’s producer, DJ White Shadow, actually worked with Lady Gaga on her now-classic albums from the same era. In fact, this is his first production credit since the A Star is Born soundtrack, if you can believe that. There’s some pretty cool vocoded harmony in the pre-chorus and a genuinely good bass line, but the “rapped” bridge, forgettable lyrics, and JoJo’s moderate vocals bring this one down a bit.
“Balance Baby” follows with a completely new batch of songwriters, a near-identical drum kit, and even more outrageous lyrics. I know I said I would look at this music on the surface, but that is pretty hard when JoJo’s Spotify canvas is her dancing on the floor of a casino in a bedazzled construction vest. There was no gradual introduction to bad girl JoJo; we are all meeting her now. The song itself was just as mindlessly catchy as “Guilty Pleasure” but a lot more mediocre.
In the center of this EP is its black sheep “Yesterday’s Tomorrow’s Today” – a phrase that I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to dissect before resorting to a LinkedIn self-help article for explanation. Why is this the black sheep? This song has actually gone a bit viral over social media because it sounds like it came straight out of Eurovision. The lyrics are extremely vague and extremely strange as JoJo reassures that you need to live in the moment because “before you know it, you’ll be dead.” However, the most remarkable feature is the synth that sounds somewhere between a saxophone and an accordion trilling through the chorus. Close enough, welcome back Mr. Saxobeat!
“Choose UR Fighter” is the first of the two songs which we have confirmation are genuinely early-2010s songwriter rejects bought by JoJo’s team. I listened to this one thinking how it is ALMOST there. JoJo sounds a little less nasally, and I truthfully believe that the “na-na” melody of the outro to be good. But again, this was a rejected song. It’s catchy, but that’s about it.
By far the most famous song on the EP and the song most synonymous with her dramatic career shift is the closer and lead single: “Karma.” This song and JoJo’s … we’ll call it … confident… chorus have been inescapable across social media since April. Brit Smith, the original singer of “Karma,” actually released her demo after Siwa, and believe it or not, it charted OVER JoJo on iTunes! After 9 minutes that felt like an eternity, I have no words to describe “Karma”; genuinely every criticism and compliment I have for the other songs applies (except the random Eurovision thing). The media zeitgeist that you have seen around “Karma” and the new JoJo Siwa suits it perfectly well.
So, to answer the question of the title – is Guilty Pleasure bad? Yeah. I believe that JoJo Siwa’s persona is genuinely inseparable from her EP, especially since she did not exactly ease into her post-Nickelodeon artistic career. And I feel bad saying this since, again, I am a “glass half full” music critic and strive to find the good in all that I listen to. It’s not a COMPLETE dud – I more or less enjoyed the title track “Guilty Pleasure,” and like all artists, I see the potential to grow – but I’d be a little scared to ask if we could add it to rotation on the Moose.
Photo sourced from Women's Wear Daily