JOJO THE HIGH ROAD M4A FREE

For too much of the record, JoJo relies on familiar metaphors: storms roaring in her brain, lovers shedding their skin, sunrise waiting on the horizon. On “Spiral SZN,” a snappy pop track with blaring bass, she brands herself as someone who just “can’t chill,” tidying up the ache she articulates elsewhere. She croons a jazzy ode to the comforts of “sugar and carbs” she blames Mercury in retrograde. “Fresh New Sheets” is one of many moments that strains to be relatable, but the cutesy specificity can sound retrofitted from a meme or a tweet. “The energy that it takes to be somebody just ain’t in me,” she murmurs over finger snaps on “Fresh New Sheets,” pleading to stay curled up with her space heater. “Your power is amazing!” Elsewhere, she sings about slow, quiet collapse and the feeling of being drained.

On “Anxiety (Burlinda’s Theme),” she personifies her mental illness, addressing it in the second person: “You only show up when it’s inconvenient,” she belts over a building drumbeat. She constructs and curates a delicate feeling of intimacy, instructing us to exhale at the end of “Good Enough *interlude*,” like the narrator of a meditation app. “I hope this feels like a warm weighted blanket,” she told MTV, and the 12-track project plays like her most cohesive release yet. The music on Trying Not to Think About It is meant to portray the singer’s struggles with anxiety and depression: These are soft, cozy songs, with harmonies tucked between trickling piano keys and misty synths. Instead, JoJo has quietly crafted what she calls a “capsule project,” an elegant EP with deliberate and defined parameters. That same year, she won her first Grammy for a fleeting feature on a treacly PJ Morton song, an achievement that could have tipped her back into splashy pop and widespread radio play. She dabbled in electropop on her long-awaited third album in 2016, then launched her own imprint with Warner and released a slinky R&B record in 2020, crooning alongside Tinashe and Demi Lovato, two fellow veterans of young fame.

JOJO THE HIGH ROAD M4A FREE

In 2014, she finally broke free from her label contract.

Jojo the high road m4a