JoJo Siwa’s ‘Invention’ of Gay Pop Hasn’t Gone Over Well

JoJo Siwa said she was inventing a new kind of music, and many people found that a bit ahistorical. The young pop star recently came under fire for a number of reasons, many of them all happening as she was dressed like KISS’ Gene Simmons on a red carpet.

The “Rock and Roll All Nite”-inspired look ended up not being the talk of the week for Siwa. She rebranded herself and dressed like this as part of the promotion for her new single “Karma,” which also has its own controversy. But when it comes to Siwa’s view of her style of music, many are pushing back against something she said in an interview with Billboard.

When asked what genre “Karma” would be, Siwa told Columbia Records that she wanted to start a new genre of music: “The genre is, 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.’”

Now, I am a child of the ’90s and ’00s. What Siwa is doing with her rebrand in general is something that many child stars did back in the day. “Rumors” by Lindsay Lohan and “Can’t Be Tamed” by Miley Cyrus stick out as the “I’m an adult now” anthems of the time. Point is, that has been done. Then, if you bring in Siwa’s comments on “gay pop,” many people quickly took issue with Siwa seemingly overlooking many icons that came before her, and even Tegan and Sara responded to the comments.

Siwa has walked back her comments

TMZ caught up with Siwa as they do (by annoying people just walking around outside), and they asked her if she wanted to change what she said considering what the reaction has been like. She quickly backtracked: “So many, so many. Gosh, I saw even Betty Who made a post being like, ‘Hey,’ and I’m literally friends with Betty. Like … Madonna, Lady Gaga, Michael Jackson … there’s so many people who have made gay pop.”

I think Mika is owed a personal apology at this point. She continued, “I think I just want to make it more clear that gay pop is a genre. You have pop, you have rock, you have country, and you have gay pop. If I said to someone, ‘Name a gay pop artist,” they’d go, ‘What’s gay pop?’ But if I said to someone, ‘Name a rock artist,’ you would say, ‘KISS, ACDC, you know what I mean?’”

Even the TMZ reporter tried to help her out and name several musicians that people would bring up if you ask for a gay pop artist, so Siwa tried a different way to clarify how she imagined herself: “I definitely am not the inventor of gay pop, but I do wanna be a piece in making it bigger than it already is. I want to bring more attention to it, OK? I’m not the creator, I’m not the president, but I might be like the CEO or the, like, CMO … OK, I could be the CMO, the Chief Marketing Officer.”

(featured image: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)