Album review: JoJo - Good To Know

Those whose last memories of JoJo were "Too Little, Too Late" may be surprised coming into what is shockingly only her fourth studio album. Not only is JoJo swearing on songs now, but her songs are no longer as chart primed as they were back when she was a teen. JoJo's songs these days play out almost like soulful streams of consciousness. This of course won't be a surprise to fans who have stuck with JoJo through the mixtapes, as Agápē was the first of JoJo's works to tap into this sound that she's been on ever since. What this has also come with is raw honesty. JoJo's talent has always been selling a song and making you truly believe it. We shall never forget how she had us all convinced she really threw a cheating n***a out her house when she was 13 years old. So when you take this skill and fuse it with genuine lyrical honesty is makes for something special.

But JoJo isn't trying to be who she was. She isn't trying to recapture any of her music from her past. She is very much living and creating in the moment of who she is now. Good To Know is defiant. JoJo has certainly earned the right to make it so, after having a career start which saw her do things on other people's terms and pretty much lose everything.

There is no pretence on this album. JoJo lays herself completely bare, giving us songs about having self-worth, not having self-worth, fucking around, cheating, feeling insecure and championing your pussy. But despite the album being a celebration of discovery and realisation, there's a darkness in every song. Even in its triumphant moments of 'I'm that bitch and I can do good all by my damn self', such as on "Man" and "Lonely Hearts", there is pain. Because clearly JoJo was hurt by somebody for her to end up coming to a realisation that she's better off alone. Good To Know feels like somewhat of a contrast to what we know of JoJo via her social media and her albums up until Mad Love. She's fun loving, bubbly, funny and is full of positive energy. And then she gives us albums full of songs where she presents herself as a very tortured soul.

JoJo is to be commended for honesty. But as was the case with Mad Love, the honesty gets lost in an album of wholly forgettable songs and material which don't match that of her talents or provide a true reflection of them.

Good To Know is wholly unremarkable. Every song is good, but there are slim pickings of songs which are great. JoJo sells every song and sounds great across each one. But when the album is all said and done, that urge to jump back, skip to my faves, run the album again from top to bottom - it just isn't there for me, because the experience of listening to this album is so flat. It never shifts gears. It's almost as though there was a consensus with those who worked on this album that honesty and rawness has to be at the expense of songs which are catchy and sound like they're primed for radio. "Pedialtye", "Lonely Hearts" and "Don't Talk Me Down" come close to striking this balance. But in the case of the latter songs, they come at a point when the album is pretty much done, which also highlights another problem with Good To Know, which is that it finds its stride too late. Only from "Small Things" onward does the album start to pick up.

I think of albums like Amy Winehouse's Back To Black, Adele's 21 and Jazmine Sullivan's Reality Show, where these women were wearing their hearts on their sleeves and singing for their damn lives. But they still delivered albums which felt like rides and had strong defining moments that you wanted to dive back into and relive. I don't get this with Good To Know. And make no mistake, JoJo is as talented as the aforementioned. She has the willingness to bare her soul on record and drive all of her feelings through her voice. She just doesn't manage to channel it into great songs which will stand a test of time. And because of this, her legacy will continue to be that of "Leave (Get Out)", "Baby It's You" and "Anything", even though she wants it to be more than this and it deserves to be.



I adore JoJo. I think she's amazing. But I wanted more than what she gave here. This may be selfish of me to say given the honesty that JoJo displays on this album and what she had to have gone through to get this thing out. But I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed. Especially after the let down that was Mad Love, which Good To Know sadly feels like a sequel to - the flatness of the music, the song topics and the lack of a sound which feels like it's JoJo's.

Good To Know is not a bad album. But it certainly isn't what I personally wanted from JoJo after Mad Love, which I actually think may be a better album than this on the strength of the songs on it which were good.

RATING: 5 / 10

Album highlights:
■ Pedialyte
■ Small Things
■ Lonely Hearts 🏆 J's fave
■ Don't Talk Me Down