JoJo Siwa’s Shockfest New Single ‘Karma’: Bop or Flop

JoJo Siwa is right here, and she or he’s able to shock you. Are you shocked but? How about now? The singer(?) launched her new music “Karma” on April 5, and the music video finds her bedecked in Kiss cosplay, getting shut with two separate ladies, dry-humping, and falling within the water. She’s an excellent lady gone dangerous, and by “dangerous,” we imply “low high quality.” And but, the music video is garnering Siwa enormous quantities of consideration, trending on YouTube, and forcing her into the pop-girl dialog. So let’s give her what she desires, lets? Rebecca Alter and Jason P. Frank collect to debate “Karma,” this rebranding, and why we will’t cease watching even when it isn’t working. Is it a flop or is it a flop?

Rebecca Alter: Jason, you’re the emissary for Gen Z on this Google Doc. Do you declare this? Please inform me what is going on.

Jason P. Frank: JoJo Siwa is self-consciously turning into a foul lady and managing to do it with out getting a single fleck of filth on her pristine costumes. Siwa, the effervescently vibrant Dance Mothers star who was the most well-liked lady on the earth amongst 6-year-olds, is fed up with being perceived as a sexless clown for infants. And so, she’s donning Kiss make-up, humping ladies, and performing pop music. Is it punching right down to make enjoyable of this?

RA: What you’re saying is, she’s fed up with being perceived as a sexless clown for kids, so she’s rebranding as a clown for grown-ups who fucks dangerous.

JPF: Objectively, sure.

RA: We’ve seen plenty of youngster pop stars rebrand as a foul lady, however she is perhaps one of many first to reinvent herself as dangerous lady. As a result of oh, brother, this stinks! And to reply your query, no means it’s punching right down to make enjoyable of this. Siwa’s an empire. Cardi B couldn’t afford to e book her for her daughter’s birthday. She has her personal branded Lunchables and asbestos-laced make-up! And on high of all of it, as soon as she graduated out of being a children’ entertainer herself, she went on to turn out to be the Abby Lee in her personal story, managing a children’ lady group referred to as XOMG POP! With all of the care and sensitivity of Larry Plumb.

However XOMG POP! is a Dateline episode for one more day. We’re right here particularly to speak about her new single and music video, “Karma.” Let’s make like JoJo on the 1:21 mark of the music video and dive flop in. This music … It’s no good, Jason.

JPF: Definitely! A thumping, uninspired beat, with fake-edgy lyrics (“She stated ‘bitch’!”) carried out with all of the conviction of the elementary-age college students who was once her followers.

RA: It’s humorous how within the refrain, she retains saying “bitch,” however in a means that quotes a well-recognized saying. Then, she instantly says “effed round,” which is so Christian dad of her.

JPF: The central drawback is that it’s so transparently that — a recalculation of a model. There’s no sense that there was any actual creative muse, from her or from anybody else on her staff. In interviews, she’s made reference to different “good lady gone dangerous” moments from pop — Britney, Miley, and so forth. — however when all you’re doing is regurgitating different individuals’s efforts, you find yourself with a facsimile of a modified picture. You realize what this jogs my memory of, Rebecca? Sugar and Spice from Drag Race — one is good (wears pink), the opposite’s scary (wears black), however in the end, they’re nonetheless in the identical outfit.

RA: Besides Sugar and Spice took inspo from Bratz dolls, and one of many elementary points with this video is I saved pondering, JoJo Siwa has American Lady Doll face.

The way in which she’s nonetheless dedicated to the tight slicked-back hair (now in some type of fake-hawk as an alternative of a pony) makes her head seem like an enormous ol’ egg! A bedazzled egg! It’s not fairly cherubic, extra Schumeric. She has at all times had bouba face with kiki vitality, bringing to any scenario a continuing sense of unease and battle. It makes all of her jagged, quick, onerous humping on this video (a lot humping) actually uncanny! She humps like she dances, and she or he dances like …

What would you name this? Are we being too imply? I feel my fight-or-flight is activated as a result of I’m scared!

JPF: We aren’t being too imply, however I do fear we’re giving an excessive amount of credit score. Had been you really uncomfortable with this? Does it even warrant that? The music video is so aware of the response it’s intending to impress that I can’t work up greater than a watch roll. You wished “good lady gone dangerous” and also you went with … Kiss? And the music doesn’t reference that band in any respect? If she wished to shock me, she’d really get messy. As a substitute, it’s the identical overly polished, heartless work that she’s at all times completed. The humping is embarrassing, after all, however that’s as a result of it’s sexless. She treats it the identical as some other dance transfer — a movement to be executed.

RA: Took the phrases proper out of my mouth — I’m alarmed and disturbed as a result of it’s physicality with out sexuality or sensuality. I wouldn’t even say “robotic,” as a result of fembots? Famously attractive. I wouldn’t say overly polished both; have a look at the background dancers’ management on the choreo over the best way she hits each beat too onerous. It’s jagged, but it surely’s additionally too a lot. And, yeah, whether or not the make-up is Kiss or Alice Cooper, you don’t get any of that within the music. Talking of which, these lyrics actually are one thing else. Undecided what my favourite lyric is between “Like when a tree falls within the forest, nobody hears it,” and the half the place she rhymes “boring” with “loud night breathing.” What are your takeaways from the music itself?

JPF: It’s fascinating you make enjoyable of her for rhyming “boring” with “loud night breathing,” as a result of I used to be about to make use of each these phrases to explain the music.

RA: Hahaha, she sang “After I lay me right down to sleep …” and also you had been like, “That’s me.”

JPF: I can’t consider a funnier second than the opening line itself: “I used to be a foul lady.” It’s so blunt. And I’m not a monster; I don’t want subtlety in pop music. However the music just isn’t about her doing dangerous issues, it’s her gesturing at “being” a “dangerous lady.”

RA: Properly, I’m really confused on that time. As a result of the refrain begins, “Karma’s a bitch, I ought to’ve recognized higher / If I had a want, I might’ve by no means effed round,” however then the remainder of the music is about her girlfriend with another lady making her jealous? Even in her bad-girl fantasy, she gained’t let herself be the dangerous man.

I’m solely saying this as a result of I’m on the music’s Genius web page proper now, and I even have a brand new favourite lyric: “Chilly blue eyes look again at me / the mirror has no sympathy / my guilt’s turn out to be a symphony.” She’s a kind of ladies who says, “My eyes look so blue after I cry.”

JPF: Oh, like Kenzie from Survivor this season. At the least she has tattoos.

RA: No, precisely. 

JPF: Did you discover that JoJo by no means really kisses both of the ladies within the music video? They contact faces, she humps, she will get just a little tongue to the neck, however she by no means bothers to truly kiss both. To me, that’s the entire music. For all its makes an attempt to shock audiences with queer sexuality, there’s no sexuality on show.

RA: None! When she was phantom-humping with out eye contact or bodily contact, I wished to yell at her like a Yorkiepoo: Jojo, you cease that proper now! Not on the rug!

JPF: Are you offended by this? After I wrote the factor about queer sexuality above, it occurred to me that it was potential to be offended — a capitalist is utilizing her sexless sexuality to scandalize the nation with out really committing to the bit, yada yada. And but, I can’t work up the vitality to care. It’s the form of artwork content material that, regardless of our 1,200 phrases on the topic, eschews really think-piecing. Clearly, it’s labored for her when it comes to the true purpose, which is “getting consideration” (1.4 million views by this morning already, and counting), however is it even price making an attempt to delve into this for some political level?

RA: WELL, NOW THAT YOU MENTION IT [*unfurls scroll that rolls across the entire room*]. Numerous pop stars have completed homosexual shit as a profession software. Siwa, at first, did one thing form of totally different when she got here out as really homosexual (technically, she first got here out because the “finest homosexual cousin ever”). It was her id, her sexuality, and it didn’t detract from her rainbow and unicorn merchandise strains. But additionally: She’s been form of cringe each step of the best way.

However now she’s tried to include it into some manufactured comeback for shock worth, play-acting her personal id. The sweatiness of determining the way to reinvent herself within the public eye is definitely form of genuine to who she is, in a means. Loudly and proudly cringe.

JPF: Essentially the most surprising factor that occurred in my day was the earthquake that simply hit. Sorry, JoJo.

RA: Like being dry-humped by Mom Earth …