A woman of ‘Influence’
With a memoir, a Broadway turn in ‘Moulin Rouge!,’ a planned tour and new music, Joanna ‘JoJo’ Levesque is back in control of her career
For a long time, Joanna “JoJo” Levesque resented “Leave (Get Out),” her best-known, breakout track released in 2004 when she was just 13. “This song was on some Disney Channel s—,” she writes in her memoir, “Over the Influence.” Although she was the target demographic for the family-friendly programming she likened her song to, Levesque thought of herself as a wise-beyond-her-years R&B and soul singer, the genres that she had been firmly working in up to that point in her young life and that the rest of her self-titled debut album consisted of.
“I like it now. I just didn’t get it then,” Levesque, 33, says on a video call from her New York apartment.
“It’s a totally different experience singing ‘Leave (Get Out),’ ‘Too Little Too Late’ or ‘Disaster’ or any of these songs that are about breakups or relationships as an adult, versus being 12, 15, even 20. You get more grit and texture and experience under your belt. It’s the difference between phoning it in and feeling it. I’m thinking about this person as I’m singing it, and I’m able to drop into that because I have a memory of telling someone to get ... out of my house, it’s done.”
Far from a one-hit wonder, Levesque has been working steadily since her debut single, as a singer and actor, including in the films “Aquamarine” and “G.B.F.” and the TV show “All American.” Admittedly, her recording career has never again reached the heights of “Leave (Get Out),” which made her the youngest female solo performer to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Pop
Songs chart, largely due to a prolonged legal battle with her record label.
In 2013, Levesque filed a lawsuit against Blackground Records to be released from her contract, which she signed as a minor and, under New York law, should have elapsed after seven years.
Unable to release albums, she put out mixtapes and “tringles” (trios of singles) instead. Both parties came to an agreement out of court, but Levesque found similar creative differences at her next label, Atlantic Records.
“It was like every Tom, Dick and Harry was encouraged to voice their opinions about what they thought I should do,” Levesque writes. “I came in with a vision, but I don’t even remember what it was anymore.”
She finally found independence by launching her own imprint, Clover Music — a joint venture with Warner Records — in 2017.
Long before Taylor Swift began rerecording her albums in 2021 after losing ownership when Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of her former record label, Big Machine, sold her masters to music manager Scooter Braun, Levesque embarked on a similar journey in 2018.
“That was between me and my fans so that I could feel some sense of empowerment when my music was not available on streaming services because my record label didn’t make a deal with the DSPs [digital service providers],” she says.
“I was so sick of feeling like things were happening to me as opposed to me being in control.”
Although Swift and Levesque did have a “moment” during Swift’s “squad” era in which they were friendly, Levesque says Swift did not approach her for advice about rerecording her “Taylor’s Versions.” “I do appreciate those who noticed that I did it a few years before,” Levesque says.
This battle for control is one that has followed Levesque throughout her career and, indeed, her life. The title of her memoir, “Over the Influence,” has a double meaning.
First, it refers to intergenerational trauma — her parents met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, and her father, Joel, died of complications from drug addiction in 2015. Levesque says she’s cautious of coming across as “judgmental” of her parents. But she need not be: She crafts a remarkably compassionate portrait of not only “my story [but also] our story” that’s bolstered by fastidious journal entries she’s kept throughout her life. “It was interesting to see the things I thought I had overcome that I hadn’t,” she says.
She also had a lot of deep and meaningful conversations with her mom, Diana, who helped Levesque fill in the blanks of her own childhood memories as well as her parents’ early relationship. “I’m grateful that she was even open to going there with me,” Levesque says.
Things could have certainly gone a lot worse for Levesque as a child star. “Maybe I dodged a bullet,” she writes in the just released “Over the Influence.” “I’ve seen the doc and listened to the podcasts, and OH MY GOD,” she says of ‘Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV,’ which alleges abuse at Nickelodeon.
Levesque’s mom was her reluctant manager who shielded her from a lot of it. Momagers often get a bad rap, but Levesque says she wasn’t pressured into pursuing fame at a young age.
“I wanted a different life than the one my mom and I had, and I felt like I could be the one to get us there,” she says. Still, that’s a lot for a preteen.
“She did a great job of trying to keep me humble, but from a young age, I really wasn’t told no, and I do think that that can create a monster. It gave me a false sense of the world. Already, [I’m] an only child. People are telling [me] that [I’m] so great and talented and [I] deserve certain things, and then I become famous?” she muses. “It’s only in hindsight that I can see that I might have been spared some growing pains if I had had more parenting, in a sense.”
The second allusion in the book’s title is to the freedom to determine her own career path.
“For so much of my life, [I’ve felt] under the influence of other people’s visions [as to] what I should want and what my values should be: ascension or topping the success I had as a teenager,” she says.
“I am eternally grateful for [‘Leave (Get Out)’] because I now have a life that I really enjoy,” she later adds.
That includes Levesque’s return as Satine in the Broadway production of “Moulin Rouge!” opposite Aaron Tveit.
“Her voice is very moving to me,” Tveit says. “There’s so much emotion conveyed by [it].”
Levesque made her Broadway debut as Satine in 2023, following a pandemic closure she spent singing showtunes with her mom. She thrives on the repetition and stability that musical theater offers.
“I didn’t have a lot of that growing up. I was always doing different things — being in a different city, being around different people, moving a lot,” she says. “As an adult who has an inner child, I’m giving her the structure that she might’ve needed.”
Although Levesque did perform in musical theater as a kid, she’s newly inspired by the combination of singing and acting that Broadway affords. “It’s a really exciting time for me, because a lot of my passions can intermingle pretty seamlessly,” she says, adding that she’s been workshopping an original musical during the day while performing as Satine in the evenings.
“It’s not something for the faint of heart,” Tveit adds, but “I think she has a lot to offer to musical theater.”
After Tveit and Levesque take their final bow Oct. 13, Levesque has a tour and new music planned, under the tutelage of her co-manager Randy Jackson — yes, that Randy Jackson. Although the two connected in 2021 when Levesque was a contestant on “Name That Tune” (Jackson is bandleader of the Fox game show), they actually had met years earlier when Levesque was starting out. Jackson was interested in signing her to his record label at the time.
“I’m interested in people who’ve had longevity. [I’ve been doing this for a long time], but there’s people who’ve been doing this for a really long time, and I want to know, how do you maintain good relationships, how do you nurture business relationships?” Levesque says of Jackson.
Jackson calls Levesque a “triple threat” of music, screen and stage.
“You have to be inspired by the person and their personality first, and [talent second],” he says.
The cool girl at the fairground from the “Leave (Get Out)” music video is certainly on display in “Over the Influence” and is a persona Levesque has adopted as a kind of “eccentric auntie” to her fans and others coming up in the industry.
“I’m an only child, so I’m nobody’s aunt, but I think I could be a help to people,” she says. “I want to share what I have to give.”