“I listened to Sly & the Family Stone and Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and Bob Seger,” she says via Zoom from Miami, where she was at the Montreux Jazz Festival to sing with Jon Batiste. Joanna “JoJo” Levesque performs at 8 p.m. on Friday, March 21, at the Agora. “I also liked Aretha Franklin. Stevie Wonder and Whitney Houston and everything from folk like early Joni Mitchell to funk like Rick James to jazz. I just loved music. I was super-obsessed as long as I can remember.”
Unlike many kids, who sing as a hobby, Levesque quickly turned singing into a career. She recorded her first album when she was 12 and released it when she was 13.
“It was a dream come true,” she says of the experience. “It was everything I had been wanting since I was an even littler girl. I had been performing in front of audiences since I was 6.”
She had a hit tune when “Leave (Get Out),” a pop number that finds Levesque, who describes herself as “an old soul,” singing convincingly about a breakup, topped the charts.
“I was not sure it was going to be a hit when I recorded it,” she says of the song. “But I was so excited. I grew up feeling like a bit of an outcaste in my small town. I’m from Foxboro, south of Boston. It was a moment of validation. All the kids who made fun of me and made my life hell at public school can all watch me and weep.”
Years later, after a very successful career, at 33, Levesque realized that she had been recording and touring for 20 years. To mark the occasion, she decided to write a memoir. Jennette McCurdy, who wrote I’m Glad My Mom Died, served as an inspiration, and she wrote Over the Influence, which chronicles being raised by parents who were both battling addiction and depression as well as a lawsuit with her record label.
“Jennette McCurdy inspired me because we were about the same age,” says Levesque. “It inspired me to go ahead and move forward and start mine. I thought, ‘Is this weird to share stories about my life at this age? Is this okay?’ But I thought that my life is pretty unique, and there are things I’d like to share with younger people or people interested in stories about the music industry or personal change and accountability and looking at yourself and picking yourself up after you’ve been down a long time.”
Some of the book’s sentiments find their way onto Levesque’s new EP, NGL. “Porcelain,” for example, features upper register vocals and percolating synths courtesy of a sample of a song by rapper Uncle Luke. It all coalesces into a dancefloor anthem.
“Its stream-of-consciousness melody lyrics and ideas,” she says. “I had this idea of running through the streets crying and letting go and shedding whatever needed to be shed. I was inspired by Kintsugi. You break ceramic and put it back together with metallic glue, and it’s really beautiful. I thought that all of us are like that. We’re perfectly imperfect and made up of our broken parts. You can come together and make something even cooler.”
Levesque says she has not yet started to think about her next record, but she says she’s aware of the way in which she serves as an inspiration for anyone coping with mental health issues.
“I think it’s so understandable that mental health is such a big issue now,” she says. “It’s a response to a society that’s sick. These systems aren’t working, and social media makes us feel like we’re never gonna be enough. The job of the artist has always been to speak to where they are at authentically and hopefully be a mirror for those who want to get close to them. I feel fortunate and honored to be making music in 2025. I’ve been getting to live out my dream for a long time. I understand how precious it is to have people come out and sing my songs back to me and listen to the lyrics I write.”
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This article appears in Feb 27 – Mar 12, 2025.
