Willa Power
Don't hate her because she's beautiful,(hurl) she
dated a backstreet boy, and she could be the new Britney. (yeah
and pigs might fly) Willa ford has her detractors, especially online.
Lauren smith meets her in person and lets love rule.
"This is the story of a psycho bitch. Her name is Willa Ford. [On this
Web site] we will expose...concrete evidence that Willa used her ex-boyfriend,
Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, to attain her own selfish goals. We will ridicule
and make fun of Willa as we see appropriate. We WILL NOT back down! We will
show the world the truth!"
(from http://spazekadet.homestead.com/Introduction.html)
"Willa...
-Likes to watch guys use the restroom
-Needs to wash her face more often
-Has hair, *actually, stubbly* pits"
(from http://www.pop-stars.net/willaford/index1/html)
Willa Ford is a nice girl with a bad reputation. At first glance, she's just a
tough little pop singer who's working hard to release her first album next
month. But she's also the ex-girlfriend of Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, and
that's where everything takes a turn for the nasty. Thousands of jealous
14-year-old girls hate Willa Ford, ne้ Amanda Williford.
I hate that - we are
not jealous 14 year old's who hate her cause she was Nick's girlfriend, I
actually LIKE Tiffany, Nick's current girlfriend - we hate Willa because of
who she is, not because of who she dated!!!
Passionately. They host Web sites devoted to despising her. Ironically, they
circulate online petitions in an effort to "keep Willa from getting
famous." When Willa was featured on MTV's video countdown show Total
Request Live, and anti-Willa fan called in live to host Carson Daly and
threatened to blow up MTV's Times Square studios. For a girl whose music is
just barely beginning to be audible behind the booming chart-toppers of
Britney and Christina, Willa's already well on her way to public notoriety,
whether she deserves it or not.
But at least she's maintaining her sense of humour. Sitting across from me at
a midtown pizza joint on a rainy afternoon, Willa laughs about it all. Petite
and smiley, she looks about 16, but is actually 20, with long straight blond
hair and big, light brown eyes that betray her tough-chick image. Still, she
talks like a trucker. "If I had a Web site," she says, twirling a
long strand of mozzarella around her fork, "I'd call it Willa Don't Care.
Or maybe, It's My Butt-Kiss It!" She laughs. After years of being taunted
and abused by the teenage girls of America, Willa's ready for the ultimate
revenge: a first-rate pop album they're all going to fall in love with. (so
where is it then? . . oh well . .) Or so Lava/Atlantic Records
hopes.
Her album has been a long time coming. From her early performances as a member
of Entertainment Revue, a local Florida kids' chorus, to her lost chance as a
member of a now-defunct small-time girl group, FLA, Willa's been preparing for
her solo moment at the mic all along. Even now, as we talk over lunch, she
slides my Dictaphone closer to her side of the table. It's a smart, calculated
move. She's been in the business for almost 10 years, (what
business - my god - all she's done is miming a couple of songs as a support
act for the BSB's on a few shows, a stupid little Nautica mall tour, and a
song at the charity bball match she tagged along to with Nick! - and that was
only in the past couple of years) and she's ready to finally be heard.
Talking to Willa it's hard to think that she hasn't known since she was a kid
that she would one day be eating pizza with a magazine writer, promoting the
album that could either launch or extinguish her solo career.
Her earliest memory of performing was as a third-grader in Ruskin, Florida a
small town outside of Tampa that she still considers her real home. "It
was a Christmas-caroling show in the Cash and Carry convenience store parking
lot," she recalls, grimacing. "We called it Cash and Trash, (and
she was the trash!) I think we preformed in front of a trailer. At the
time I thought I was hot stuff." (you still do
'Willa' and your still very much mistaken) Right now she's staying in
New York indefinitely, as she prepares for the release of her album, Willa Was
Here. Between promotional events, she makes appearances on the downtown party
circuit as often as possible and squeezes in lots of cardio work with her
personal trainer, whose call she takes on her cell phone at lunch. She's a
girl with a town car, and she knows how to use it. But New York doesn't feel
like home yet. For now, her record company has put her up in a pre-furnished
corporate apartment on the Upper East Side. "Its just a place to stay for
now," she says, "but when I find somewhere permanent, it'll be in a
trendier neighborhood. I'd really like to live in SoHo. Or even have a house
in Jersey and commute in." Jersey? She did grow up in the suburbs.
The waiter comes by our table with dessert menus. For Willa? "Oh yea, the
chocolate mousse cake, definitely," she says, grinning at him and
inadvertently flipping her hair. He's instantly bashful.
Unlike some of her young blond contemporaries, Willa actually writes most of
her own lyrics, and, while they're not particularly deep, they are telling.
There's a song on the album called "I Wanna Be Bad," in which she
repeats the line again and again, like she's trying to convince herself it's
time to grow up and quit being a cutie. When I ask her what being bad means to
her, she replies point-blank: "Using your
sexiness as a weapon against men is the most exciting thing you can do."
(all she has to sell is her body because she hasn't got
any talent) But then she softens and explains, "It's about
being that awkward 16-year-old girl and looking at these older girls on MTV,
and going, 'I want to be bad like that, but I'm just not there yet.' That was
me. I was always cute. I was always small. I was never sexy. I wanted to be
bad."
Growing up in a two-stoplight town, she had to settle for being mischievous.
When she wasn't practicing her opera singing, she and her cousins ran around
town on four-wheelers, wreaking havoc and raising hell. Her father, who still
holds down the fort in Ruskin, according to Willa, has funded these first
years of his daughter's career by farming. "First he grew tomatoes, and
then strawberries, and now he grows grass for golf courses, just fields and
fields of gorgeous grass," she says.
On the edge of 17, Willa moved in with her now ex-boyfriend Nick Carter. After
meeting through a mutual family doctor, they dated for almost three years,
crashing at her parents' house for a while, adopting five dogs and trying to
live something resembling normal couple life. In the meantime, the Backstreet
Boys rocketed to fame, leaving Willa with a boyfriend whose poster half the
girls in America kissed goodnight before going to sleep. "When I first
met Nick it was amazing. He showed up on my doorstep and introduced himself.
All day long people had made fun of these yellow shoes I had on, and he showed
up and was like 'Hey nice shoes.' I was sold." His career took off, she
got a gig opening for the Backstreet Boys, and the teen taunting started.
Girls called their house looking for Nick and threatening her. They claimed
she used Nick. They claimed she beat him up. They claimed she kidnapped his
dog. "I wont lie. I hit him once, but he deserved it. He'd called me a
bitch." (I wonder what drove him to insulting her?
something tells me that this wasn't a one time occurrence - further more, I
can't believe she's just coming out and saying it, like it's ok to hit
someone, Nick's right - she is a bitch!) As for the dog napping, Willa
laughs and laughs. "I guess it's flattering that people care enough to
take the rumor seriously, but no, all the dogs we had were dogs we had
together."
The couple broke up last fall. "I still love him to death, (love?
love? what does she know about love? when you love someone you don't hit them,
you don't tear up their family, and you don't use them for your own gains, you
don't go around using their name and their private life at every opportunity
to get attention) but nobody else wanted us to be happy together. With
that drama, it was probably the main reason we broke up," she says. They
split up the dogs. He took two, she took three. She was 19 years old.
So now Willa's 20 and finally dating like a teenager. "I'm like a girl
player," (in other words, a slut) she says
shaving off little bites of chocolate mousse and licking the spoon. "I've
been a really bad player lately. I love getting dressed up (more
like 'undressed') and going out and being a (slut)
bad girl. It's fun! She admits she has a crush on Craig David,
the talented young British singer, but she leaves it at that. They were set up
for dinner by people at Atlantic, and instantly the gossip pages were all over
it. Willa insists its nothing serious yet. "I think we're both kind of
players at this point, and we both know each other's game, so it's like well,
we can't even play with each other. I think were both like, OK, lets get this
out of our system and be friends." (basically
she has used rumors that her and Craig are seeing each other to get herself
yet more attention, in fact, he has denied that they are dating, they are just
with the same record label - she lives on scandal and rumours to get fame
because her music can't speak for itself)
There's a song on Willa Was Here called "Prince Charming," and Willa
says she's definitely in the market, but she's tough enough to set one hard
rule: "For all the guys out there, if you meet
me, and you don't call me the next day, forget it," she says pointing her
finger. "Screw you. (alright I see any
guy with any sense running a mile off - she is scary!) I'm done playing
games."
She's done with caring about the anti-fans, too. This girl's got a record to
promote, and she won't be spending much time on the Web dwelling over any of
the 65 anti-sites listed at http://www.virtue.nu/popskank/links.html.
"Hey," she says with a shrug and a smile, "Did
you know I have more Web sites than Barbara Streisand?" (and
so what? You have more anti sites - that's why. In fact you probably have more
anti sites than anyone else in the world. You are probably more unpopular than
Adolph Hitler. Don't go around saying that as if it makes you so good - for
your information Barbara Striesand has sold a record breaking number of
albums, had a career that's spanned decades, stared in some unforgettable
movies - oh yeah, and she can actually sing, - now what is it you've done
again?)
written by Lauren Smith