JoJo Siwa under fire for “stealing” another artist’s song

Dance Moms alum turned YouTube star JoJo Siwa is facing backlash after an independent music artist accused her of stealing her song. Here’s everything we know so far.

JoJo Siwa is sparking quite the conversation online thanks to her bold new look. It’s a drastic change from her usual glitter and rainbows aesthetic, as the star instead opts for Kiss-style face paint and dark, gothic clothing.

She’s entering a new era, one that she claims is “not for kids” — but that’s not the only thing that’s prompting some backlash from viewers.

In April 2024, Siwa showed off one of her new songs at a live event. Titled ‘Choose your fighter,’ Siwa claimed the song was about one of her exes and contained a special ad-lib where she said ‘you’re welcome’ after the line: “Some of my exes are no one / some of my exes have fame.”

However, it didn’t take long for eagle-eyed netizens to notice that Siwa’s ‘new’ song was extremely similar to a track from TikToker and music artist Emeline, who uploaded the exact same track with the exact same name to TikTok in October 2022.

you gotta laugh. she literally stole someone’s song from 2022 and is putting it out as her own💀 pic.twitter.com/HCdOAKYegl

— katie (ttpd is album of the year)🤍 (@chloeandoomfs) April 5, 2024

Commenters raced to inform Emiline that her song had been effectively stolen by JoJo — something the singer addressed in a comment beneath the original video.

“I didn’t actually sign off on it coming out with JoJo (not her fault),” she wrote. “If my version gets love, I can still put it out after hers. Thanks for the support.”

Emiline also promised to upload a “storytime” explaining the entire incident, which is leaving critics of Siwa extremely heated across social media.

“What’s wild if she did not even take your vocals off of it,” one user wrote on TikTok. “This is a good song because it’s all you. Unreal.”

“Even if she didn’t ‘steal’ it, she’s pretending she wrote it specifically about her exes and saying she did, which still looks bad,” another said.

Others are speculating that Emiline may have sold her song to Siwa, and the YouTuber may not have recorded her own vocals over the demo version of the track.

Whatever the case may be, fans are anxiously awaiting Emiline’s side of the story as JoJo’s latest single continues to divide the internet.