Willa Cd Reviews
My Mom saw Willa's "performance" on the Tonight Show and here's what she said:
'She needs to push in her tuning slide over an inch, she sings horribly flat'
(brass instruments push in their tuning slides to raise the pitch)
'If her goal is to be bad, she should be congratulated. She's achieved it.
That was one of the worst performances I've ever heard'
'She's not nearly as hot as she thinks she is, no one is as hot as she
'thinks' she is'
I thought you'd enjoy those, my mom had never heard of her and that's her
response after seeing her.
Katie
Wannabe pop queen Willa Ford disses "cheesy (lyrics) about butterflies, sunshine and candy" in the liner notes of her debut album. She might actually score the attempted points against the likes of Mariah Carey and Mandy Moore if her own songs didn't cling desperately to a handful of similarly radio-ready templates. Here horny ("I Wanna Be Bad"), there bitchy ("Joke's on You"), everywhere wistfully lookin'-for-love ("Tender," "Prince Charming"), Ford hardly stakes out her own vocal turf either. She draws on third-hand Britney affectations and the occasional Carey-like dog-whistle squeal, while various production teams cobble together similarly derivative tracks. Ford's romantic fireworks with a Backstreet Boy brought her a small notoriety long before this CD's appearance, and "Tired" makes it clear that she already considers herself a big-enough name that listeners will respond to gripes about fame she hasn't yet achieved. As if. --Rickey Wright
E-Online Music Review
Willa Ford Willa Was Here
our grade
D
Artist / Band: Willa Ford
Record Label: Lava/Atlantic
Release Date: July 17, 2001
Our Review:
The braintrust of the world's teen-pop fans have already passed judgment on Willa Ford--and for once we have to agree with 'em. A quick Internet search produces a surprisingly large number of anti-Willa Websites aimed at the girl who once dated Backstreet Boy Nick Carter and takes the low road to hopeful pop stardom. Amanda Lee Williford laps up the controversy with a first single called "I Want to Be Bad" and skips teen mags to flaunt her stuff on the cover of Stuff. But strip away the lyrics about ditching dudes and how lame those other pop bands are (then telling us she's all soft on the inside with "Tender"), and this debut is nothing more than an ultraproduced, R&B-fused pop album that, just like all the rest, drips with more cheese than sex. Yep, Willa was here. And hopefully she'll be gone soon.
On her debut, Willa Was Here, curvaceous 20-year-old newcomer (and ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter) Willa Ford gets her chic on via every dance-pop move in the Pop Star Celebrity Handbook as she high steps toward the lucrative second-tier It girl pantheon currently presided over by Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore.
Ford doesn't seem to be Here, exactly. Her debut reeks of gloss, all lightweight uptempo tracks ("Jokes on You," "Prince Charming") and schmaltzy ballads ("Tender"), many of which are generated by such impressively avant producers as DJ Skribble and seem to bear little trace of Ford herself. "I'm about to break all the rules," Ford sings on "I Wanna be Bad," her ironically tame first single, but it's following the rules too closely -- and leaving out anything that seems remotely fun -- that's backed her into such a corner: Anyone fond of dance pop who hasn't already done so would better advised to check out Britney's far superior Oops! ?I Did It Again, which serves as both the blueprint and the high water mark for teen diva dance pop.
Brad Cawn
CDNOW Contributing Writer
Reviewer: A music fan from New Jersey
This CD is nothing the average pop fan hasn't heard. The only difference is that, rather than going to a professional songwriter, Willa Ford wrote her own cheesy pop lyrics.
Her voice is nothing to jump about; she can barely handle her own simple melodies. And when she blatantly goes off-pitch in Joke's On You and Dare, you can do nothing but laugh.
And in Tired, the self-glorifying egomaniac's theme song, the line "One hit wonder melodies who cannot sing a note," seems to be more autobiographical than anything else. Lets hope the title is prophetic, and that Willa will be a thing of the past REAL soon.
When I read the reviews for this album which said Willa has a 'fresh' sound and was doing something different, I couldn't help but laugh. In reality, that couldn't be further from the truth. On her debut single Willa claims she is 'about to break all the rules', but her debut album is actually packed with sub-Britney styled pop songs. Tracks such as 'I Wanna Be Bad' and 'Did Ya Understand' follow the rules too closely, and are quite blatantly Britney inspired, so why is Willa claiming to do something different? Not only that, but the melodies on such tracks are boring and uninteresting, meaning that Willa doesn't even do it as well as Britney.
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