Willow Smith’s latest album, lately I FEEL EVERYTHING takes the listener on a journey of self-reflection with an angsty edge. Moving away from the alternative R&B tracks she’s known for, Willow blends heavy rock and pop-punk sounds with passionate high notes and raging yet vulnerable lyrics. She falls into the rock rhythm as if she’d been doing it all along.
In an interview with Genius, Willow Smith explains the meaning behind the lyrics of “Transparent Soul,” the first song on the album: “I think that the song kind of encapsulates this angsty feeling and this anger of like…you feel like you’re getting taken advantage of, you want people to know that you can see through their intentions and that they can’t take advantage of you.”
Willow explains how her spiritual journey has clued her in towards seeing through people’s nefarious intentions, and how examining oneself is important in discovering how she can be “more compassionate.”
At first listen, it doesn’t appear that ‘compassion’ is at the heart of her new album, which is full of angry, heartbroken anthems. But upon closer examination of the lyrics, Willow screams lessons about putting her needs first, speaking her truth, perceiving deceptive behaviour, and the importance of individuality, freedom, and personal evolution.
This is perhaps a raw form of compassion that is meant for herself, where she can make mistakes, let the wrong people in, and still keep her power intact. In the form of aggressive drumming, and vibrant guitar, the album is Willow’s way of processing heartbreak, frustration, and righteous anger–while revealing social truths as well.
Without attempting to psychoanalyze the meanings behind Willow’s lyrics as it relates to her personal life, the lyrics themselves, shouted over both minor and major sounds, display what it feels like to wake up. It is the awakening to the reality that someone has been lying or taking advantage, and clapping back accordingly. In “Transparent Soul,” Willow sings, “I knew a boy just like you / he’s a snake just like you / such a fake, just like you, but I can see the truth.” Willow reveals anger over deceptive and manipulative behaviour, firmly reminding whoever is listening that she can see right through the facade people may put on to get what they want from her.
Her third track, “Gaslight,” which is titled aptly when considering the precedent which is set up by “Transparent Soul,” evokes a powerful image with the line “I blew out the gaslight now I feel a different way.” Willow doesn’t just see through the fog created by people who “mess with [her] head” or, put more bluntly in her shortest track “F**k You,” “F**k with [her] head.” She dissipates the haze by shouting into it, and getting right in the face of anyone who attempts to gaslight or deceive her with a clear message of taking back personal power and refusing to be led around and confused.
In “Lipstick,” the lyrics “vision gets dimmer / the room is closing in on me” harkens back to the image of being gaslit with a starkly literal visual of feeling trapped, spoken with the angst of one who is deeply hurt. The lyrics of confusion show up again with “I think we live in a labyrinth created by my mind.” This line reveals a level of self-awareness that Willow has about, as she defines it, “turn[ing] that [judging] eye on ourselves.”
The confusion and gaslighting isn’t just perpetrated by others, but is created within oneself–we fool ourselves, trick ourselves, rationalize, and overthink. We are always quick to judge, but do we ever look inward? Willow challenges herself to do just that, not just with her music, but in her spirituality as well.
“Transparent soul” has the dual meaning of referring to good judgement (ie, being able to see through people’s nefarious intentions) and referring to someone who has ‘cleaned’ their soul by eradicating their ego and clearing out their traumas. Willow notes that ego and trauma “causes [her] pain and the people close to [her] pain.” Attempting to ‘clean’ the soul is a form of self-love that Willow expresses through her pop-punk tracks that scream for attention.
In “Gaslight, ” Willow belts, “I’ll just love me instead.” She repeats a similar sentiment when she sings “You’ll find that you’re your own best friend” in “G R O W.” This may seem like a reactionary surrender of “No one will love me so I guess I’ll just love myself,” but it speaks to a blend of self-awareness, independence, and confidence in one’s power that comes through in some of the later tracks.
First, Willow gets most of it out of her system–the anger, the disillusionment, the betrayal and heartbreak–before venturing into more optimistic and vulnerable lyrics. “G R O W” featuring pop-punk icon, Avril Lavigne, is an upbeat, major key manifesto that opens with “I been putting work in / healing myself / still got room to grow” before humbling these lines with “honestly my heart is broke” and “I can’t help but feel like I’ve lost my way / cause no one ever truly knows just who they are.” The words are sung in a happy, poppy tone in a sound reminiscent of early 2000s stars such as Avril herself, and bands that heavily influenced the album like My Chemical Romance.
A fiercely independent streak runs through the album like a pulsating heartbeat, speaking through the long and desperately drawn-out notes of “naive” and coming in fiery bursts of rage in “¡BREAKOUT!” In “Lipstick,” the chorus shouts, “I spread my wings / the song they sing / I owe it all to you.” After “blowing out the gaslight,” navigating the “labryinth,” saying “f**k you” to whoever it was who hurt her, Willow is finally free and can take flight.
The constrictions felt within and the anger that permeates every track stays strong in “don’t SAVE ME.” The all-caps shouting effect, present in the name of the album, repeats here in the title of the fourth track, picking up where “Gaslight” left off and proclaiming “Gotta fight my own battles to get stronger / I just say, ‘don’t save me.’” Again, freedom in the form of independence and self-determination arises, this time in the unconstrained and loose electric guitar sounds breaking up the chorus, the drums remaining steady and strong.
“naïve” starts out slow and quickly builds into a ballad when Willow hits the chorus, screaming “I need you to tell me when I’m being naive / because I know I can be.” This song marks a moment of vulnerability before “Lipstick” takes the wheel to spouse messages of freedom. “naïve” has more narrative-style bridges that give a window into the social activism Willow wants to incorporate into her music.
She sings, “I get a phone call / it’s my n**** saying can you pick us up / we got shot by rubber bullets at a protest in the Bronx, yeah.” In an interview for V Magazine, Willow opens up about how metal and rock have long been seen as a ‘white’ genre of music, and how that affected her: “being a Black woman in the metal crowd is very, very different…Just through the music that I’m putting out right now and the representation that I can bring to the mix, I just hope that the Black girls who are listening to my music and listening to this album see that there’s more of us out there.”
By mentioning protests and alluding to the Black Lives Matter movement in “naïve” while using the medium of rock music, Willow claims a space for Black artists in rock, pop-punk, and metal. Instead of conforming to predecessors which she was “bullied” for listening to such as Paramore and MCR, she puts her experience as Black woman front and center in the album, and like her anger, refuses to hide it in the shadows. She achieves her ultimate goal, which is to create things that are “a mixture of activism and artistry.”
“XTRA” and “4ever” venture into more vulnerable waters with some very relatable truths, employing more storytelling lyrics rather than the disjointed (yet powerful) metaphors found in the other tracks. “4ever” starts with the steady drum heartbeat found throughout the album, but tempered with “ooos” and wavering, drawn-out notes, almost seeming to wail in the repetitive lines before the chorus, where she comes to the melancholy conclusion of “I know, you know, we know, this can’t last forever.” With the sound and lyrics of this song, Willow reminds us of her previous R&B roots and her ability to reach down into the depths as well as spread her metaphorical wings.
Sad, yet accepting, this track blends nicely with “XTRA” which reasserts itself into the pop-punk genre, combining major and minor sounds and marking the beginning of the end of a relationship, when things start to become clear: “you don’t make the same effort when I’m tryna see you…need some time alone to breathe.”
The anger hasn’t been forgotten, though. As if in a dialogue with the listener, Willow claps back with the chorus: “miss me with the fake apologies you’re being extra.” This line keeps the momentum going for Tierra Whack to come in with the reprimand: “you break everything that you touch / make me wanna throw my food up…now you’re dead to me, so suit up.” The slightly humorous lines seem to poke fun at the intensity and passion that define the other songs, like a reminder not to take life so seriously all the time.
“Come Home” is a mix of anger, confusion, and passion blended with raw honesty. Drawn out, wavering vocals are employed, infusing the lyrics with emotion and occupying a liminal space between devastating heartbreak and frustrated heartbreak.
As if angry with herself and impatient with the world, Willow admits, “closer to love / I just wanna get a little closer to love.” Willow stubbornly refuses to let go or feel grief when she sings, “loss is for when it comes to an end” before launching into the chorus, which evokes the same angst that marks the album as a whole, and holds strength and power in vulnerability. “I feel so alone / I need you right now baby, won’t you come home,” she belts, laying it all out on the table.
Willow manages to imbue typical heartbroken lines such as “I need you right now” and “I feel so alone” with a feeling that oscillates between the anger and denial stages of grief. But unlike “naive,” “Lipstick,” or “Gaslight” there’s no sense of being taken advantage of or having someone to blame. There’s only herself and the intensity of her feelings. Beyond the confusion and self-doubt, there lies a deep and universal truth about wanting to feel secure and loved while also desiring independence and freedom.
Willow admits “I aspire to be the transparent soul.” With her latest album, which not only speaks truth to power but discovers a power within one’s emotional reality, she’s well on her way to reaching that goal.
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