Joanna ‘JoJo’ Levesque says being vulnerable comes “naturally” to her – and a big part of that is down to spending so much time with her mother in AA growing up. Best known by her stage name, JoJo, the singer is no stranger to opening up her life to millions of people – she’s been in the public eye since the release of pop hit Leave (Get Out) when she was 13 back in 2004. She’s spent the last two decades making music – as well as mistakes – in front of the world, and now she’s baring all in her new memoir, Over The Influence.
Advertisement Being vulnerable “comes really naturally to me”, Levesque reflects. “And I think that is because I grew up in the halls of AA, and I saw people laying it all out there, saying their most grossly raw thoughts and behaviours, and that’s informed my writing as a songwriter.” Advertisement (Kenny Whittle/PA) Levesque says she saw “adults being super vulnerable” from the age of four, because she accompanied her mother Diana to AA meetings.
In fact, her parents met in an AA meeting – they divorced when Levesque was young, and both struggled with addiction – Diana with alcohol, and her father, Joel, who died in 2015, with drugs. Advertisement The singer says she asked her mother’s permission before writing the book: “No one lives in a vacuum or lives completely by themselves. We’re interacting with people all the time, and my mum is one of the biggest parts of my life and my story and who I am.
She was.