Dance Moms Alum JoJo Siwa's Rebrand Drama, Explained

"Dance Moms" alum JoJo Siwa seemingly wanted to do something groundbreaking with her 2024 rebrand. After years of being perceived as the sweet child from the reality show, she sought to adopt an edgy personality into adulthood. So, she started teasing new material that welcomed a new era in her life where she would embrace her sexuality, speak her mind, and leave behind her previous life as a child star.

Then, Siwa released her supposedly edgy song "Karma" with a music video. The track primarily detailed her partner's infidelity and reminded her that karma would make her pay for hurting Siwa. Speaking to Billboard, Siwa confirmed the intentions behind the song and her rebrand in general, saying: "I wanted it to be as bold and as ballsy as possible. There is nothing more ballsy than this song." While Siwa seemed proud of her work, social media users didn't share the same sentiment and harshly criticized her rebrand for a variety of reasons. 

Some people believed Siwa was copying Miley Cyrus with her rebrand as she had followed a similar path to help audiences let go of her "Hannah Montana" persona. In the "Karma" music video, the former child star even seems to have adopted a similar hairstyle to Cyrus in her "We Can't Stop" music video. However, those parallels paled in comparison to the fact that "Karma" seemed to be a lyric-by-lyric copy of Brit Smith's 2012 release, "Karma Is A B****." While many users accused the former child star of plagiarism, she didn't seem to think she was in the wrong.

When TMZ asked JoJo Siwa if she stole Brit Smith's "Karma Is A B****," she answered, "What happens is, people write songs and then they just don't do anything with them. And then, a few years later, it makes more sense for another artist." The former YouTube star also stressed that she hadn't met Smith and someone else had told her to use the track. Even Smith cleared the air in a TikTok video, asserting, "JoJo did not steal my song [...] She was totally in the right to record her version." 

The singer urged people against flooding Siwa's videos with hate comments that accused her of plagiarism. However, a week before she made the video, Smith released her version of "Karma Is A B****," and it went viral and charted better on iTunes than Siwa's take on the song. In a Page Six interview, the original songwriter noted that she had penned the track for Miley Cyrus, but that the "Flowers" singer ultimately chose not to record it.

Smith's statement makes Siwa's rebrand seem almost fated, as she admitted that she followed in the "Malibu" singer's footsteps for the start of her musical career. During an appearance on the "Call Her Daddy" podcast, the Nickelodeon alum recalled that she was impressed by how Cyrus had rebranded her public image to an edgier one through her fourth album, "Bangerz." Siwa noted that although she was only eight when Cyrus changed the game, she vowed to go through a similar transformation into adulthood.

When JoJo Siwa sat down with Billboard to discuss her rebrand, she shared that when she signed her first record deal as an 8-year-old, she told the label she wanted to be the trailblazer for a new genre called "gay pop." She also admitted that gay pop wasn't a fresh concept anymore. However, the internet didn't take kindly to her comments as users on X, formerly known as Twitter, pointed out that artists like Lady Gaga and Britney Spears had already founded the genre long ago.

In Siwa's chat with Billboard a few weeks prior, she made a similarly bold remark about her rebranding, noting, "No one in my generation has made this extreme of a change," adding, "I am the first in the generation, but someone has got to do it." The YouTube video's comments featured several people labeling her delusional and pointing out that her style hadn't changed much. But when Siwa walked out of an adult store carrying a plushy penis, people believed she was going overboard. 

All-in-all, the rebrand didn't work for many reasons, and one X user had a theory for what was going on behind the scenes. They shared a video of the former child actor impressing producer Jenna Andrews with her vocal improvements. Even as the song's final cut plays with seemingly auto-tuned vocals, they both seem floored by Siwa's performance. The user felt that the dancer had developed an inflated ego because people on her team lied about her talents instead of giving her constructive feedback.