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“I definitely wanted to go for a pop-punk feeling, but I also wanted to bring in a moody, almost shoegaze feeling,” says Smith. Many critics have pointed to Lately I Feel Everything’s playful approach to the boundaries of the pop-punk genre, partly thanks to features from the agenda-setting, experimental rap star Tierra Whack and the Californian garage rock band Cherry Glazerr. And so when quarantine rolled along, I kind of felt like this was the moment for me to do some exploring with what I could do with my voice and just step outside of the norm, because why not?” “So for a very long time, I didn’t think that that was something that I could do. “I mean, I wasn’t trained as a rock singer,” says Smith. Smith’s initial experiments in the genre came partly as a result of the pandemic, and the time it afforded her and her long-time collaborator, producer Tyler Cole, to experiment with a variety of new sounds. She’s such a beautiful person and immediately when she got on the track, it was just right in her element. I didn’t really think it was going to happen, but we reached out to her people, and the rest is history. (Naturally, the Canadian musician appears in her own riff on the leather-jacket-and-plaid-trouser combo.) Who else should Smith have invited to feature than an artist whose role in bringing women to the forefront of the pop-punk movement remains historic to this day? “We’d written the song, but I felt like it wasn’t really working with just me on it,” Smith says of “Grow.” “So I was like, you know what would be so crazy? If Avril could get on this. There’s Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, yes, but arguably even more thrilling is a rare appearance from Avril Lavigne. Just as striking are Smith’s collaborators on the track.
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“I’ve been putting work in, healing myself,” she sings. Stomping through the skyscrapers of Downtown Los Angeles in neon green plaid trousers, a studded leather jacket, and a ripped-up band tee, Smith’s “punk Picasso” visuals are the perfect complement to the bold sonic pivot she took on her most recent album, Lately I Feel Everything: namely, an expression of personal development and angst wrapped up in a delightful throwback to the early-’00s pop-punk aesthetic that first inspired Smith when she discovered My Chemical Romance and Blink-182 as a young teen. In the video for Willow Smith’s latest single, “Grow,” the musician appears, quite literally, larger than life.