Willow Smith spotted filming music video with ‘idol’ Avril Lavigne
The musician and celebrity daughter is working on a new, as yet untitled album release
Willow Smith has rock music in her blood, but it looks like the youngest of the Smith clan is now teaming up with her “idol” Avril Lavigne for a new project.
According to reports, Monday, the 20-year-old was spotted shooting a music video in Los Angeles with the Canadian artist.
The music video is likely being shot for Smith’s upcoming album which will seemingly be more punk rock than her previous singles. She has a song with Lavigne on the as-yet unnamed project.
Earlier this month while speaking with V Magazine Smith revealed that acts like Lavigne and My Chemical Romance inspired her to take her music in a new direction.
“I wanted to open myself up a little bit more and not just be so anti-social in the studio,” she explained. “I’m so excited that I’m going to be having a song on the album with Avril Lavigne. She is so iconic. From [ages] 13 to 16, she was my idol. It’s really nice to be able to have a quintessential pop-punk record with the pop-punk queen.”
Smith did acknowledge that she knew from the beginning that switching into the punk genre, would be tricky given she’s always been teased for her taste in music. But she hopes that her new release will inspire other Black people to become more visible in rock music.
“Being a Black woman in the metal crowd is very, very different on top of the pressures that the music industry puts on you,” she told the publication. “Now, it’s like an added pressure of the metal culture, the metal world, and just rock in general. I used to get bullied in school for listening to Paramore and My Chemical Romance.”
In May, Smith went viral after she surprised her mom, Jada Pinkett Smith, with the reunion of her band, Wicked Wisdom, as a Mother’s Day gift.
“For the last three months, I’ve been planning a huge surprise for my mom,” Willow says at the beginning of a Red Talk Table episode, out of her mother’s earshot. “She has no idea that I’ve been orchestrating this reunion…This is all happening, like, 40 feet away from the Red Table. If my mom gets up to go to the bathroom or anything, we are all sunk.”
Pinkett Smith was a member of the rock band that formed in 2002. The band featured her, Cameron “Wirm” Graves, Philip “Fish” Fisher, Pocket Honore, and Rio Lawrence. Taylor Graves, who joined the band later, participated in the reunion with Honore.
“She was a rock star, and I was living for Wicked Wisdom. I felt like it was only right for me to pay homage to a time in her life because she showed me what womaning up really is about, so for Mother’s Day, I’m about to reunite with some of my mom’s old band members to do one of my favorite songs by my mom, which is called ‘Bleed All Over Me,'” Willow said.
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