Remembering Kim Kardashian’s Ill-Fated Pivot To Pop, ‘Jam (Turn It Up)’
According to Kim, it was the biggest regret of her life.
Next year, Keeping Up With The Kardashian will come to a close after 20 seasons, which means we’ve had nearly 15 years of the Kardashian-Jenner family ruling over pop culture, for better and worse.
The empire will expand long after the show’s ended (and you could argue the show, once the central pillar of their power, has been obsolete for a fair few years), as the family have their hands in many, many pies. But there was one, oft-forgotten moment along the way that deserves a revisit — Kim Kardashian’s one and only song, the 2011 party non-starter ‘Jam (Turn It Up)’.
If you haven’t heard it, you’d be forgiven. The dance-pop track barely made an impact upon its release, despite arriving at the upswing of the Kardashian domination, where the family launched two new KUWTK spin-offs in one year. On paper, it had potential: written by hit-makers The Dream and Tricky Stewart (‘Single Ladies’, ‘Umbrella’, Bieber’s ‘Baby’) and attached to a big-name, it could have popped off. But something’s lost in the execution.
Kim readily admits she’s no singer, but this came at an auto-tune peak for pop. If they had of truly turned it up, the song could’ve aged like fine wine, and be considered a proto-PC Music jam, á la Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham’s album. Instead, it’s an absolute mess, as the production leaves Kim’s already strained voice out to dry — she hits the chorus fine, but everything else is hard to listen to.
It’s wild to think the track was written for her, as if it played to her strengths (aka persona) a bit more and pumped up the robotics, it could’ve been perfectly serviceable. Even the beats sound dull, cheap, and Kim herself sounds bored. If the production or the release roll-out committed to itself a bit more, it would have been fine — but there’s something cringe about the track, as if the .mp3 itself doubts its purpose.
When first debuted to a Las Vegas club on New Year’s Eve, Kim said she “didn’t mean to” make a song, but just kind of did. Meekishness has always been the defining through-line for ‘Jam’ whenever the track’s come up in interviews across the years. Shortly after video from the event circulated, Kim assured press this wasn’t the launch of her music career or the first taste of an album, but a one-off suggested by, of all people, Ciara.
“Basically, Ciara came to me and was like, ‘You’ve got to meet The Dream,'” Kim said. “I was not into doing a song. I thought, ‘Everyone kind of tries that, and it doesn’t really work out so well.'”
“So I talked to friends like Kanye and a few of my other musical friends, like this is their life. They gave me good advice. They asked me what I do for fun, and I said, ‘I go shopping, I hang out with friends.’ And they said, ‘We go to the studio for fun. Come have fun with us. Don’t think too much about it.'”
It was for charity, too, with partial proceeds going towards cancer research at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital in Tennessee. Two months later, it had an official release and failed to chart in the US, selling just 14,000 copies in its first five-days — and as of 2015, had sold 63,000 copies. That’s a pretty poor showing, considering Kim was arguably one of the most famous people in the world.
The track was compared immediately to her reality TV pre-successor Paris Hilton’s ‘Stars Are Blind’ (a track which has aged extremely well) and later album Paris. The comparison is somewhat unfair. Where Hilton threw herself into her music career (and continued it as a successful EDM DJ), Kim never seemed particularly interested in it.
The objectives weren’t the same, but the media were eager to whip up ‘Jam’ as a “failure”. The back-lash prompted Kim to effectively denounce the track in a 2014 interview, calling it the biggest regret in her life on Andy Cohen’s Watch What Happens Live.
She’s now changed her tune a little, last year calling it ultimately a fun if not “lame” moment of her career, and “the one thing I can’t believe I did”. Still, given how the Kardashians are quick to reclaim most missteps or continue to defend the most questionable #sponcon, it’s clear it’s something of a sore spot for Kim.
It’s telling the finished music video, which featured Kanye West and was directed by the esteemed Hype Williams, was never released, nor that it’s ever been ‘reclaimed’ by either Kardashian fans or pop music obsessives. Some things are just universally accepted as bad, difficult to enjoy even on an ironic level.
‘Jam (Turn It Up)’ stands on its own in the Kardashian empire not as their only ‘failure’ or ‘misstep’, but as one of the few moments the family has an uneasy distance from. Given the far more serious cultural offences of cultural appropriation and promoting controversial dieting methods, it’s an odd, somewhat revealing line to draw.
Find a fan-edited music video of ‘Jam (Turn It Up)’ below, featuring some leaked footage from the Hype Williams shoot.