JoJo is free from the clutches of her old record label, and that means she’s finally able to talk about what she has wanted to talk about all along: new music.
After leaving her previous label, Blackground Records, in 2014, the singer says she called up her mom and cried. “I called my mom and we cried,” JoJo tells Billboard. “I felt relief from the literal release. And then I had a bottle of champagne with my girlfriends!”
The pop singer is ready to unveil her new album, Mad Love, on October 14th via Atlantic Records, which comes nearly ten years to the date of her last full-length, The High Road. Released thus far is the lead single, “F– Apologies,” featuring rapper Wiz Khalifa, and it has already reached the Top 40 of Billboard’s Pop Songs chart.
Further in the interview, JoJo reveals some titles of the songs off of Mad Love and delves a bit deeper into what they’re about. “Honest” and “High Heels” are about a recent break up, while “Music” is dedicated to her father, who passed away last November.
“Music,” the raw piano-ballad opener, is dedicated to her late father, Joel Levesque, who heard an earlier version of the LP prior to his death in November 2015. “He was so moved and thankful that I got the opportunity to continue with what I loved,” she says. “I don’t think he thought that it was going to be possible, because it just didn’t seem like it.”
JoJo is currently on the road supporting Fifth Harmony on their 7/27 Tour, which wraps up on September 10th in Concord, California.