JoJo Siwa is getting the side-eye from queer music fans—and queer music icons—after a confoundingly clueless comment she made during an interview.
Siwa, who has been in the middle of a rebrand with the launch of her new song “Karma,” spoke with Billboard recently about her latest foray into music. Specifically, she spoke of wanting to create a “new genre of music.”
“I said it back in the day, when I first signed with Columbia. I said, ‘I wanna start a new genre of music.’ And they said, ‘What do you mean?’ And I said, ‘Well, it’s called gay pop.’ And they were like, ‘What’s that?’ And I was like, ‘It’s like K-pop, right? But it’s gay pop,’” Siwa recounted.
Erm.
It's cool that the Dance Moms alum clearly wants to go out and do her own thing, but the idea that she’s doing anything that hasn’t been done before is not only laughable but, quite frankly, insulting to musicians who came before her.
Queer pop artists have been around—and out—for decades. Even if you want to talk about pop music that is explicitly lyrically gay, is otherwise comparable to other mainstream pop of its era, or exists only in recent years, there are plenty of trailblazers to point to.
Among them are Tegan and Sara, who responded to viral footage of Siwa's interview in the most appropriate way.
But our fave lesbian pop twins weren't alone in expressing frustration with Siwa's comments.
Even Siwa herself seemed somewhat confused on the topic, as she went on to cite “Applause” and “Judas” by Lady Gaga, “On My Own” and “Can’t Be Tamed” by Miley Cyrus, as well as her own song, “Karma,” as examples of gay pop, while using “California Girls” by Katy Perry as an example of something that isn’t gay pop. It’s not very clear what the divide here is, but what is certain is that all of those other songs and artists were around before Siwa was even considering making music.
This all comes on the heels of the TikToker making the similarly bold claim that “no one has made this dramatic of a change yet,” when speaking about her rebrand.
“No one has made — in my generation — this extreme of a switch. And I am the first in the generation. It is very scary. But someone’s gotta do it,” she said. “And there are people in my generation who have gone from child star to adult star in the music world. Incredibly, super successful careers. But not this 180, and not making it apparent that it’s a 180.”
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