Avril Lavigne x WILLOW = early 2000s tweens and teens dream!!
Willow Smith, who goes by the stage name WILLOW is going full on punk rock with her new upcoming album. Willow’s mother, Jada Pinkett-Smith was her inspiration as a child and because of her, doing a metal album is something she’s always wanted to do, she reveals in her interview with W Magazine.
“Seeing a Black woman onstage singing rock was so amazing—but a lot of people weren’t happy about seeing a Black woman in that space.”
Jada Pinkett-Smith had a rock band called Wicked Wisdom and at the age of “7 or 8” Willow saw her perform at Ozzfest. Willow tells W the very valuable lesson Pinkett-Smith taught her, one that has stuck with her all of these years—”I saw her gracefully do her thing while so many people were being racist and sexist…but she handled it with such strength. She was like, “Some people are upset, but we don’t focus on that. We focus on doing our best and being strong and doing what we want to do”. Valuable lesson’s are invaluable and for Mother’s Day, Willow gave her an invaluable gift that she will never forget. Willow performed “Bleed All Over Me” by Wicked Wisdom with the Wicked Wisdom band on their Facebook Watch series, Red Table Talk. Jada Pinkett-Smith’s reaction to the performance was a precious moment and Willow of course was incredible. Watch the Mother’s Day Red Table Talk performance below.
As you can see, Rock was made for Willow! But, she didn’t always think so. When asked if trying out a new genre was intimidating Willow said, “I never thought I could do rock music, because I was trained since I was 8 to sing R&B. Then I was just like, you know what? Eff it.”
Thank goodness she said eff it because if she didn’t we wouldn’t be getting this upcoming rock album with features from a punk rock dream come true! Willow told W she needed a pop-punk cosign and first she hit up Travis Barker—”I let him listen to “Transparent Soul”, and he loved it; I was shaking in the studio, worried about whether he would think it was lame.” Willow’s song featuring Travis Barker, drummer of Blink-182, was released April 27th along with a music video and is the first single released from the new album. Maybe it’s safe to say the next single will be featuring Avril Lavigne? In the W interview, Willow revealed that she reached out to Lavigne for “Grow”, a song she wanted to sound like 2007 Radio Disney. “I wanted that 2007 Avril angst. When I heard what she did with what I sent her, I felt like I was transported back to my tween days, in the car, just screaming, “I don’t have to try to make you realize!” It was beyond any joy that I could have imagined.”
We don’t know the title of the album yet or the release date, we just know it’ll be out sometime this Summer.
