Shutever

(JoJo - Lie to Me)

JoJo > your faves.

In all seriousness, though, I think it’s worth drawing specific attention to this track — a recent leak from her upcoming album, Jumping Trains, about which I feel morally conflicted even posting a stream because God knows homegirl has had an undeserved share of leaks and I don’t want to be complicit in delaying or deflating this album even further, but it’s just so damn good. It’s more aggressive and muscular than anything else in her catalog, certainly, with a thunderous roar of a chorus, which is an interesting shift because she’s beginning to demonstrate, sonically, the anger which has always been central to her lyrics.

As I wrote about a few months back for The Huffington Post, JoJo’s one of the most dynamic and engaging chicks in the game because of this rage — she herself described the upcoming album as “pop with an anger management problem” — and it’s a sentiment that’s woven through everything she does. Even the sweetest of her ballads are infused with a wounded vulnerability that is, itself, a distillation of that anger; where other artists pine, Jo fumes. The recently leaked title track, “Jumping Trains,” is a marvel of layered vocals over the chugging of a train, and even if this literalizes the metaphor without much subtlety, the lyrics still reflect her characteristic defiance: “You got stuck in the comfort zone/And it makes me so uncomfortable,” she sings in the opening verse, before the chorus bursts open. “I’m sorry — fell off the track/Cause you just hold me back.”

She’s not sorry, of course; the apology is uttered with a little smirk, one of those self-conscious moments of pop genius like Rihanna’s sassified “Please!” in “Take a Bow,” or the way Taylor Swift sings “she’s cheer captain” in the second verse of “You Belong With Me” like she’s so goofily breathless with anticipation that she can’t be bothered to stay on key. Like both of those girls, who entered womanhood on a very public stage, JoJo’s an adult now, with all the anger and disillusionment that’s part and parcel with being a grown-up.