lately I feel EVERYTHING

lately I feel EVERYTHING, Willow’s highly anticipated fourth studio album, dropped on 16th of July 2021. It features the likes of Avril Lavigne and blink-182’s Travis Barker](

Travis Barker — Genius

Travis Barker is an American musician, producer, businessman, tattoo enthusiast, and drummer extraordinaire, best known for his involvement in the pop-punk goliath blink-182. Compelled to constantly stay busy, Barker has taken on many music projects, often simultaneously, and even founded his own record label DTA Records.

lately I Feel EVERYTHING is largely inspired by pop-punk acts like Avril Lavigne, My Chemical Romance, and Paramore, as well as Smith’s early memories of going on tour alongside her mother Jada Pinkett Smith’s metal band, Wicked Wisdom.

In an interview with Rolling Stone she revealed:

When Covid hit and quarantine started, I just kind of needed something new — everything was slowing down, and I wanted to try something that I had never tried before.

The first single, “t r a n s p a r e n t s o u l,” dropped on the 27th of April 2021, and its massive success is an indication of what we can expect (the song appears in over 364,000 TikTok videos alone.)

WILLOW set the tone for the sort of musical experimentation that might come with the new album. The artist suggested that genre-mixing was par for the course in 2021.

I feel like in some cases genre can be helpful because it is historical, and the only reason why we’re seeing so much genre-mixing today is because it’s 2021 and so much has evolved.

I feel like it’s really case by case, but overall, I’m all for getting rid of the categories and just doing whatever you feel. But sometimes when I’m conceptualizing things, I do need to know each different kind of genre that I’m going to be nodding to—like laying out a road map that’s specifically for me.