If you’re a user of the popular social media short form video creation app, TikTok, you have unfortunately probably heard former Dance Mom’s child star, JoJo Siwa’s newest musical release- Karma. This song in JoJo’s eyes marks the transition of her personality and persona moving forward as a “bad girl”, and rebranding away from the rainbows, glitter and hair bows. The twenty year old quickly faced severe backlash, criticism, and ridicule for the song, calling it “unlistenable” and “just straight up bad”. JoJo has leaned into the criticism heavily, talking about how catchy her self written creation is, and how she’s paving the way for a new found genre in her generation of “gay pop”.
Several issues arose from JoJo’s comments, seeing her commentary towards the creation of “gay pop” a disrespect to visionaries and musicians that came before her such as Lady Gaga, Charlie XCX, Prince, and other iconic LGBTQ+ musicians that came before her. And the biggest call out of all… JoJo didn’t even write “Karma”. The song was originally produced by Rock Mafia, who originally wrote and produced the song for rising star of the mid 2000s, Brit Smith, a Ke$ha style punk pop artist who ended up scrapping the song prior to its release back in 2012. Prior to Brit Smith being proposed the song, it was originally written for Miley Cyrus back in 2011, during the period where Miley was transitioning out of her Disney Channel era into her Wrecking Ball, Can’t Be Tamed arc.
So where does JoJo Siwa come into this? When Brit Smith and Miley both ditched Karma (originally titled Karma’s a B****), Rock Mafia sat on the track for nearly a decade. Whether the song was sold to JoJo or it was sampled/stolen is unknown and under investigation, but the wannabe pop star is receiving even more backlash for claiming to have written the song over the course of “two years” she stated in a press interview. This development opens the door to the dangerous tightrope of song purchasing and sampling, and the ethicality of claiming purchased or stolen music as one’s own like JoJo did to Brit Smith. Will this situation open the door to more artists coming forward to reclaim their music that was stolen or wrongfully sampled?
Time will tell, and as Brit Smith said first- Karma’s a B****!