YOU DON'T KNOW JOE
Emancipated from his boy band, Joe Jonas is playing it cool.
Joe Jonas doesn’t give a shit that I’m not well-versed in his music. “I actually prefer that,” he says, stretching out his legs in the library at NYLON’s headquarters in SoHo, not all that far from where he now lives in New York. “It makes for better conversation.” It’s a cold and dingy weekday afternoon, and by 4:30 p.m., sunlight is already draining from the sky. On the streets below, tourists are scuttling toward the subway. Jonas stuffs his phone in the pocket of his rumpled navy pants. A report about the breakup of his familial boy band, the Jonas Brothers, is the “most read” story on People.com. When the piece posted that morning, I offered to reschedule our interview for a day when Jonas wouldn’t be trending on Twitter. But I was promised that Joe is “cool.” And wearing a moody plaid Mr. Gentleman shirt and Common Projects sneakers, his once-flowing locks shorn into a soldierly buzz cut, he is.
“It was crazy for a few weeks,” he says, in a gentle, assured voice that could have been custom-made to enchant teenage girls. “There were so many dysfunctional things going on as a band that it was breaking us up as brothers. It wasn’t healthy. Finally, we were honest with each other for the first time in 10 years about stuff that has boiled up. This is time for us to take a step back and realize we can support each other.”
A Jonas Brothers primer: Joe, Nick, and Kevin grew up in Wyckoff, New Jersey, about a 40-minute drive, without traffic, from Times Square. “As a kid, I was pretty quiet,” Joe recalls. “I had a bowl cut for years, and glasses. When Harry Potter became famous, I looked just like him. That’s when I cut my hair, and had the bleached front. It was horrible.” He was always interested in acting but he spent most of his time making skateboarding videos with his friends. Nick, the youngest, was an ambitious and talented theater kid who got his first Broadway gig at age seven. As a preteen, Nick started working on a solo project for Columbia Records. Joe, then 15, and the eldest brother, Kevin, wrote a song for the album—“with no intention of becoming a band,” claims Joe. “But fast-forward, and we produce a record that was shit, and get dropped from Columbia Records.” This was circa 2007. “We were broke, and all living in the same room,” Joe continues. “It was a really tough time. Then we got a call: There’s a record label out in L.A. who is interested, and so is Disney.”
The Jonas clan decamped for Los Angeles, signed a deal with Disney’s Hollywood Records, and started guest-starring on Hannah Montana and recording a cover of “Poor Unfortunate Souls” (originally performed by an evil octopus in The Little Mermaid) that was soon being perma-broadcast. Their fans? Girls, millions of them. (Joe has nearly seven million followers on Twitter.) Heartthrob qualities aside, Joe and his brothers avoided stunts and scandals, and instead perpetuated a normal-guys-living-the-dream narrative that kept them controversy-free.
By the time they starred in 2008’s Camp Rock with Demi Lovato, the Jonas Brothers’ fame was assured. Arguably, their biggest accomplishment was negotiating a deal that ensured their continuous ownership of their entire music catalog; the dividends will continue for decades. (They’ve already sold over 20 million units worldwide.) The world tours, the private planes, and the romancing of Taylor Swift became a lifestyle. “It got huge and crazy,” says Joe. “All these dreams coming true.” When asked if those were his dreams, he pauses. “Yes and no. There were years where we were definitely the cookie-cutter [ideal of] perfection.” As both heartthrob and artist, Jonas felt trapped. “There are so many times we look at a set list, and we’re like, ‘Do we really have to play this?’” he admits. “Even though it’s a fan favorite, you’re like, ‘I’ve been playing this since I was 15, and it doesn’t sound like anything we’re making now.’ It can be very brutal listening to the same things over and over again.”
But he’s far from finished performing. “I’ve been reaching out to a lot of musicians and producers that I would like to work with,” he explains. “I don’t really know what the music is going to sound like, but I can tell you what I like—hip-hop, indie, dance music, pop.” He cites Pharrell and Phantogram as favorite acts. And given Joe Jonas’s dynamism and sense of cool, why not think big? Why not take on Justin Timberlake? He smiles at the comparison. “I’ve heard it before, when I did my solo project,” he says. “People would be like, ‘I hear the Justin influence.’ I’d say, ‘No! Don’t say that!’ He’s somebody I respect, but I want to have my own identity.”
Solo Joe has been immersing himself in the style world, checking out Milan Fashion Week and hitting up the New York show of his friend, Jeremy Scott. He’s also getting serious about acting. “I want to do something kind of daring or shocking,” he says. He’s been pondering a script about, in brief, a guy who turns into a woman and has a baby. “I don’t want to be in a movie with a guitar, singing as the high school heartthrob. Somebody said to me recently, ‘My daughter still thinks you’re in high school.’ That’s because Disney replays everything. It sucks, but now that I have the opportunity and time, I’m thrilled.”
Ironically, high school is something of a foreign concept. “Yeah, there are certain things I wish I could’ve experienced, but it’s all so little compared to what I did,” he explains. “That’s why a lot of my friends are 10 years older than me. They’ve experienced life, and they’re at the same place I’m at now, career-wise.”
Jonas gathers his jacket and fumbles for his phone, preparing to head home. He’ll probably encounter some fans along the way. “I don’t mind when people come up when I’m eating food,” he says. “I’m not the kind of person that’s like, ‘Excuse me, let me finish my lasagna.’ But on my bike, I’m pretty quick.”