No, JoJo Siwa Didn’t Invent Gay Pop
By Anna Buescher
JoJo Siwa has been headlining news recently. With her attempted re-brand and its less than warm response to the controversies surrounding her music, JoJo Siwa is being critiqued in nearly every aspect in her life. Siwa, recently, has been attempting to re-brand her image into a more mature LGBT+ celebrity icon, but has been doing so in a poor way. In an interview with Billboard, Siwa was quoted saying she was “excited to be bringing back” the gay pop genre. This comment left many fans, and LGBT+ music stars astounded, responding that “gay pop” has been around for decades and that the comment has made them see JoJo Siwa as a young, sheltered star.
Gay pop is in no way a new or recently revamped kind of music. From Freddy Mercury and David Bowe, to Pink and Ke$ha, to Lil Nas X and Fletcher, gay centric music has been present in the pop genre since pop was defined as a genre. In the 80’s pop singers were lamenting about their queer love, and sense of othering in rock ballads. In the 90’s and 2000’s singers sang upbeat songs about sexuality and their struggles with love. Everyone remembers Katy Perry’s iconic song “I Kissed a Girl”. In the 2010’s up to the present hip hop artists, pop singers, and rappers have poured out their heart, sharing their struggles as queer artists. Artists like Joan Jett sing about inherently and solely queer experiences. When Joan Jette sings about her neighbor and the struggle of deciding if she wants to be her or kiss her, that feeling is uniquely queer. Chappell Roan sings about queer experiences as well in a meaningful and deep way while still maintaining her upbeat pop music. JoJo Siwa sings about relationship drama, not queer relationship drama. The song is not about being gay, it’s about cheating and, well, karma.
So what is gay pop? Gay pop has always existed. Singers and songwriters have been writing about the queer experience for as long as there has been a queer experience. Forever. So why now are we categorizing this music into its own subgenre? Now, more than ever, we have an abundance of openly queer singers and songwriters who are sharing their experiences, shared experiences, and uniquely LGBTQ+ experiences through their music. What we are now coining to be “gay pop”, has existed alongside pop music since the start. Now we have a large group of music and artists who are openly expressing their queerness in their art. Gay pop isn’t new, its just now giving itself a name. I’m sure JoJo Siwa meant no harm by this unfortunate comment, but the whole debacle has given her attempted rebrand an unfortunate swing, making the child star appear to be still what she started out as: a sheltered, young celebrity disconnected from the real world. Simply kissing women isn’t a queer theme. It is important that we can share our queerness with the world, but if JoJo Siwa wants to rebrand and write gay pop she first needs to grow up and learn to share her real experiences in a meaningful and artistic way, not by dry humping in a sparkling KISS cosplay.
About the Author
Anna Buescher is a current junior at Butler university studying Biology and French. She uses she/they pronouns and identifies as a queer woman. She is passionate about LGBTQ+ rights, climate change, fungi and much much more. You can reach out to her at abuescher@butler.edu.
