JoJo Siwa Warns of Imminent Pivot to Adulthood

There comes a time in all child stars’ lives when they must make the decision to take off the glittery bows and instead don glittery Gene Simmons eye makeup. Well, that’s the decision that JoJo Siwa is specifically making, at least. She is following in the grand tradition of famous kids announcing the end of their innocence via music—like Miley Cyrus with Can’t Be Tamed or Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman. JoJo is giving us “Karma,” a single she teased on Monday that she’s been building up for a few weeks now with hilariously dark snapshots of her new “era.”

 

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“I was a bad girl, I did some bad things. I swear I did it all for fun and it meant nothing,” she sings in the teaser, her voice, auto-tuned into adulthood. Long gone are her highlighter neon bows and wardrobe picked straight from the Target back-to-school catalog. The 20-year-old former Nickelodeon and Dance Moms star is now wearing what can best be described as a BDSM-inspired gymnastics routine outfit made at Joann Fabrics. 

Some of the posts she’s shared are closeups of her face-painted eye and some black and white BTS shots of dance rehearsals between Siwa and a young woman. Siwa, for those who don’t know, came out as a lesbian about three years ago. She’s since been entangled in some dramatic TikTok lesbian drama that involved breaking up on an influencer trip for Royal Caribbean cruises.

“WARNING: The following content is not made for children and may be disturbing or offensive to some viewers. May contain sexual themes, violence, strong language, traumatic scenarios, and flashing lights,” a triptych of photos on her Instagram posted last week reads. An AI voiceover reads it too, sounding like a warning for a naughty haunted house. 

What makes it all so funny is just how outwardly orchestrated it is. Like, all of the transformations are always so highly choreographed by artists’ PR reps and managers, but this seems overly so and to such a corny degree.  There’s simply no way the music will live up to the weeks worth of hype and warning about her new bad-girl era.  Unfortunately, teasing lyrics like, “It never happened, it was a secret, Like when a tree falls in the forest, no one hears it” does not make me take Siwa seriously as an adult. It sounds like a high school English student’s essay on deconstructing metaphors. That all being said, consider me SAT for when the album does release.

• CLARIFICATION: Richard Simmons is not actively dying, despite tweeting that he is dying. [NBC]
• The name is Taylor–Johnson. Aaron Taylor-Johnson.  (He’s the new Bond.) [The Sun]
• HBO has ordered a Rachel Sennott comedy pilot about “a codependent friend group.” Can’t wait. Genuinely. [Deadline]
• Sophie Turner has asked for her divorce settlement with Joe Jonas to be reactivated. [People]