Though she’s been releasing music since a young age, Willow is fully leaning into a pop punk persona with her recent single “Transparent Soul” featuring Travis Barker. The musician showcased her track with a revved-up performance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she also mentioned how Michael Cera was an unlikely muse for her new era of music.
About her pivot to pop punk music, Willow says she had been wanting to learn how to play an instrument for some time. Apparently, she was finally inspired to do so after hearing Michael Cera’s folk-adjacent 2014 album:
“I honestly think that it was brewing in me for a while that I knew I needed to play an instrument to really call myself a musician. I think it was just during the time that I had found out Michael Cera made music. I had no idea he made music. I listened to his album and he’s playing some acoustic guitar, like folk acoustic guitar. Michael Cera, the actor. I had no idea that that was ever going to happen. I think it was kind of the breaking point. I was feeling this way for a while and then I listened to that album. Him being such a unique person to even make music, I was like, ‘Woah. This is inspiring in a really unique, weird way.’ So I just kind of took the bull by the horns.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Willow described how nerve-wracking it was to send her music to Travis Barker. “Even before I started making this album, I already had insecurities about my voice in rock music and how I could make that work, and if that was going to be authentic to me,” she said. “So sending it to Travis was kind of like, ‘Okay. This is the moment where you get to see this amazing, talented pop punk God is going to let you know if he likes your song or not.'”
Watch Willow talk about taking inspiration from Michael Cera and perform “Transparent Soul” with Travis Barker on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon above.
