In the great flush of teen pop sensations from the early noughties, there was one singer whose pipes outshone them all, and that was Joanna Noëlle Blagden, aka JoJo.
The then 13-year-old Massachusetts native came out of nowhere in 2004 with Leave (Get Out), a global hit with a glass-shattering key change, and she continued to play the teeny bopper for a few more years, selling more than seven million albums in the process. But those kinds of acts often struggle to find a place in the charts once the teen sheen wears off.
Songs such as Too Little Too Late proved that she was capable of competing with powerhouses like Kelly Clarkson and Pink, but shortly after the release of her second album in 2006, there was radio silence. You’d be forgiven for thinking that she was just a flash in the pan.
In 2012, she tweeted that her label Blackground Records had stopped communicating with her. She said that album number three was in existence but because nothing was happening, she was locked in a seven-album contract that she signed when she was 12 years old. Artists such as Sky Ferreira, Outkast’s Big Boi and, more recently, Kesha found themselves in similar positions where they were locked into deals with record labels that were content to put them on the long finger.
While others just disappear or resurface on Dr Phil, JoJo refused to remain silent, releasing mixtapes that delved further into a moody R&B sound that her voice both melts and cuts right into. Thanks to a hefty Free JoJo online campaign and multiple lawsuits, JoJo was finally released from her contract and won her artistic freedom in 2014. At the age of 25 – 12 years after her debut – she finally released her third album Mad Love on Atlantic Records last year.
Kicking off a European tour in Dublin’s Academy on Sunday, JoJo is a rare survivor in an industry that could once erase your entire existence. She might be performing in a smaller venue than when she started but she’s looking and sounding stronger than before.
