pnk#5 – WILLOW (the good, the bad and the growth)
Willow Smith dives into learning from every experience in life, how it influenced her album and unlearning the concept of "permanency".
Getting over it now and I
Never wear a frown because life doesn't choose
Either side, win or lose, right or wrong, it's a battle
That's all in your mind, you better open wide
Willow – "curious/furious"
I picked a corner of my living room to write from. Red armchair, guitar on my left overseen by a vinyl collection me and my friend share, and Willow Smith on “The FADER Interview” banging.
Willow Smith shared with Gyasi Williams-Kirtley from “The FADER Interview” her process while making the album “<COPINGMECHANISM>”, an amalgamation of influences from alternative rock, pop punk, emo, grunge, metal and R&B. Willow poured into the album what she felt during her heartbreak, the healing and the growth.
“Gratitude carries me through everything”
As an artist, it can get hard to be happy about your own work. It can often be better (or so we think). But the fact that one can compose, create, build from scratch is a privilege. Willow tries to remind herself of that.
Willow: “When I feel like things aren’t going well, or when I feel like I could just be doing better, I’m like ‘You know what? Let me just tap into the fact that I am even grateful to be able to do music in the first place’”.
Accepting everything, both good and bad
Willow explores in her music topics like the meaning of everything, personal growth and awareness. A lot of these learnings come from enjoyable experiences, but also painful ones. She tries to welcome both, as they will always be part of her growth.
Willow: “I accept everything that comes to me, good and bad with equal love”.
Curious, but furious
“curious/furious” is my favourite song from her album. It brings back the emphasis on the duality between great experiences and dreadful ones – but how both act as teachers in our lives. “curious/furious” highlights this dichotomy.
Willow: “I’m super curious about those things, but when that pain comes in… I’m like, do I really wanna learn this lesson? But obviously I wanna learn this lesson.”
Learning detachment, unlearning permanency
When we get it good, we strive to maintain the status quo as is. A good relationship, a satisfying job. There’s no incentive to change. But the expectation that things are permanent in an ever evolving life can fall short. Willow is working towards seeing the beauty in detaching from the permanent. All empires that rise eventually fall. She feels furious when the ocean comes to destroy carefully built sand-castles. But it’s part of the process. And one should remember to have fun in the midst of fragile permanencies.
Willow: “There’s a part of us that truly wants it to be permanent. That truly wants our hard work to be permanent. But it really isn’t and that’s kind of a beautiful part about it.”
Making friends with your shadows
What we try to hide in the dark has a way of fighting back. Willow has been through that, suppressing bad thoughts and hoping to remain optimistic. Instead, she now welcomes those thoughts. On a very similar note to Finneas, she creates space to digest and be comfortable with the darkest corners of her mind.
Willow: “In the past I wanted to look more into the light, and be like ‘what can we do to be better?’. And this is still what is at my core, but I do honestly feel that shadow work is really important sometimes. And we can’t be afraid of the shadows. We have to accept them and make them our friends in order to bring them into the light.”
Making baby songs out of a song
I’ve been working on my own EP and there’s one song that is the centre of gravity for the whole collection. I found it interesting that Willow felt the same about her album. “<maybe> it’s my fault” was the inspiration for the album, a song that dictates the tempo of emotions that every other song should follow.
“And I was like ‘oh shit, this is fantastic. I wanna make a full album that it’s just little babies of this mother song’. That’s always how it goes for me. […] I have to make one song that encapsulates the feeling of what I want to recreate in that album”
Working organically with a producer
Willow worked with her producer from scratch. No melodies sent over email – everything was born in the studio. It made her feel control over the process of seeing her songs slowly form. Melody informed writing. And writing informed drums, the same way that drums informed back writing, in a symbiotic relationship.
Willow: “It just felt very free. We were just painting, and I just loved that.”
Coming back to a song that was ahead of its time
In 2018 when Willow was working on another album, she found a note titled “Coping mechanism”. She knew back then she wanted to do that song, but she couldn’t create it at that time. It didn’t make sense for that album. Bicep described discarding a track from their album and when they came back to it later, suddenly it made sense to include it in the collection. Fast forward to 2022, Coping mechanism has had its moment, and inspired the album “<COPINGMECHANISM>” and the song “<Coping Mechanism>”.
“It’s just beautiful that I got that vision long ago. And we really create it in the future.”
Music as a coping mechanism for dark times
Willow went through a tough heartbreak. She relied on weed and alcohol to deal with it, until she switched to making this album. Being in the studio became her new coping mechanism, where she poured her heart out into her work.
“Music should always be the coping mechanism.”