JoJo at 35: A pop icon’s rise, its shadows and a life under the microscope

JoJo is marking her 35th birthday with a rare public reckoning about a life lived in the glare of fame from the moment she was a child. The singer, born Joanna Noëlle Levesque, rose to international prominence at age 13 with Leave (Get Out), a debut that climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 and helped establish her as one of the era’s defining pop voices. But the path to that peak was complicated by lyrics written for a teenager by a team of male writers and by a rapid ascent that would later collide with contract disputes, legal battles over control of her music, and a years-long struggle with substances and self-doubt. Her story, recounted in part in her memoir and in recent interviews, is a portrait of stardom that appeared pristine on the surface but carried deeper tensions beneath the music and the image.

The early arc of JoJo’s career began when she appeared on America’s Most Talented Kids and was signed to Blackground Records and Da Family Entertainment at age 12. Within a year, Leave (Get Out) became a mainstream hit, and she became the youngest solo artist to top the Billboard Mainstream Top 40 chart at age 13. The rapid success, paired with a glossy public image built around jet-set living and high-profile tours, suggested a guaranteed long run in the music industry. In public, the family-like aura of her label felt protective, even aspirational; in private, the dynamics of control and timing would soon reveal themselves to be far more complex.

A closer look at the songs that defined her early career shows the tension at the heart of her rise. Several tracks from JoJo’s early catalog carried themes that felt misaligned with a teenager’s experience. The track How To Touch A Girl, which JoJo wrote with others but which featured lyrics about satisfying a partner, drew attention to the way songwriting teams and producers set parameters for young artists. Other songs such as Not That Kinda Girl (2004), co-written by multiple writers, contained lines about bar-hopping that suggested adult predicaments far from a 14-year-old’s reality. In 2003–04, JoJo also contributed writing credits to material like Not That Kinda Girl and How To Touch A Girl, while still under contract with a label that had her protégés, image, and releases tightly managed. While some writers in the industry routinely pitch songs to multiple artists, the nature of those collaborations and whether the performer fully agreed with the lyrical content remained a point of tension as JoJo aged.

The public trajectory of JoJo’s career intertwined with the business side of music. The label, at times described by JoJo and her family as a protective circle, became a source of friction as she sought to maneuver her path beyond the constraints of a long-term deal. After an initial burst of successes—her second single Too Little, Too Late also became a commercial hit—the singer says she realized she was tethered to a contract that wasn’t aligned with her long-term career goals. The ensuing legal battle spanned years and culminated in 2014, when Blackground Records and related entities released JoJo from the contract and she signed with Atlantic Records. The dispute, which became a rallying point for fans under the #FreeJoJo banner, underscored the tension between artistic autonomy and the control exerted by a label during a child-star era when contracts could outlive the performers who signed them.

Beyond the legal cordons and chart milestones, JoJo’s memoir and other interviews paint a portrait of a young artist who faced pressures that extended far beyond the stage. The singer described a childhood in Foxborough, Massachusetts, where her mother and family faced financial challenges and where a move to Los Angeles and later to New Jersey seemed to promise opportunity but also introduced a new set of pressures. In her memoir, Over the Influence, released earlier this year, JoJo speaks candidly about the internal and external forces that accompanied fame: the relentless media scrutiny, the expectation to maintain a flawless public image, and the preoccupation with weight, appearance, and the adults around her who framed the industry as a path to security and belonging. She describes the emotional strain of growing up in the public eye and the way that external validation—audience acclaim, media appearances, and fashion moments—became a substitute for feeling seen.

As JoJo describes it, the ascent came with the kind of access that can be intoxicating for a rising star—private planes, luxury apartments, and a circle of professionals who presented themselves as mentors. Yet even as the world seemed to orbit around her, she found herself wrestling with insecurity and a sense of not belonging. The memoir details an industry culture that could place young women in positions where appearance, performative confidence, and the pace of a demanding schedule defined their self-worth. The narrative also notes that the move to more mature phases of her career coincided with personal tests that would intensify after the initial wave of success.

The personal dimension of JoJo’s story is inseparable from her music. In addition to her chart-topping debut and subsequent albums—The High Road (2006), which opened at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, Mad Love (2016), Good to Know (2020), and Trying Not to Think About It (2021)—the singer has spoken openly about the ways in which fame and industry expectations intersected with her own attempts to navigate adolescence and adulthood. The period after her early triumphs saw JoJo confront the pressure to maintain a certain image while pursuing new artistic directions, often at odds with the pace and control demanded by the industry. The result, as she herself describes it, was a prolonged period of feeling boxed in and a longing for creative freedom that finally began to emerge as she moved past the age at which she originally signed her first contract.

The toll of those years extended into JoJo’s personal life as she described how the demands and the environment around her shaped her relationship with alcohol, substances, and dating. According to her memoir, JoJo began to experiment with alcohol in her mid-teens and later described using substances and risky behaviors to cope with the pressure and to fit into a persona that audiences and executives expected her to embody. She has spoken about the isolating nature of fame and the internal toll of being a public figure who felt she did not fully belong, even as the world celebrated her music. The memoir also details episodes of self-doubt and self-harm that reflected the darker side of growing up under a microscope, and it paints a portrait of a young artist who endured a cycle of validation-seeking, self-criticism, and attempts to regain control over her career and her life.

Despite the challenges, JoJo has continued to release music and to tell her story, underscoring a trajectory that has moved from a fraught child-star experience toward a more measured reinvention as an adult artist who can speak about the past with clarity and candor. The arc—from the girl who topped charts at 13 to a 35-year-old performer and memoirist who has confronted the personal costs of fame—offers a window into the culture of early-2000s pop and the enduring human costs of child stardom. In interviews and public appearances, JoJo remains focused on her art and her ongoing evolution as a musician, while also acknowledging the need to address the mistakes and harms embedded in the era that shaped her early career. The broader conversation around child stardom and artist autonomy continues to evolve as new generations navigate the balance between opportunity and well-being in the music industry.