Joanna “JoJo” Levesque, who scored hits like “Leave (Get Out),” “Baby It’s You” and “Too Little, Too Late” in the first half of the 2000s will tell her story in a new memoir called Over the Influence, due out Sept. 17.
“I wrote every single word of what you will read and I’m NGL— I’m nervous,” she wrote on Instagram. “It’s the most challenging yet meaningful project I’ve taken on.” She notes that she decided to put pen to paper when she realized that 2024 would mark the 20th anniversary of her debut album.
“This is a story about addiction, generational trauma, fame on a developing brain, lies, love, stamina, spirituality, resilience, and reinvention,” she wrote about the book.
JoJo tells Bustle, “I’m in a season of life where I want to say and do things that scare me a little bit. And this scared me because I knew that if I was going to tell my story, that I was going to be grossly raw with it, and very, very honest.”
“It’s about my upbringing, [being] really close up to addiction, being like ‘That’ll never be me,’ and then it being me,” she tells Bustle. JoJo’s parents both struggled with addiction, and she’s admitted to using alcohol to cope with depression.
Of course, the book also covers what it was like for JoJo to become a pop star at age 13.
“I felt very alone coming up in this industry and had no guidance,” she tells Bustle. “If I can make it a little easier on a younger person, that would make me really happy.”
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