Songoftheday 10/28/22 -Do you Understand what I need from you? Just let me be the girl to show you everything that you can be is everything I can be...

 

 

"I Wanna Be Bad" - Willa Ford

from the album Willa Was Here (2001)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #22 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 11

 

Today's song comes from singer/model/TV personality Amanda Lee Williford, who had her biggest success under the bastardization of her surname Willa Ford. A Florida native, Ford started her music career using the name Mandah, where she was eventually signed to Atlantic Records, where she had a song of the Pokemon: The First Movie soundtrack, which peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200 sales chart, and sold over two million copies. However, the exposure was sort of curtailed by her changing from Mandah to Willa Ford, and she eventually was moved to Atlantic's subsidiary label Lava (where Matchbox 20 resided). There Willa released her debut (and only) album Willa Was Here in the summer of 2001. The lead single from the record was the trying-to-be-naughty pop ditty "I Wanna Be Bad". Written by the singer with producers Brian Kierulf and Joshua Schwartz, the song is just one big cocktease where she coos about how she wants to get "dirty" with this guy she's singing to (meaning the audience), acting like "she's not usually that type of girl". Please. I remember her being marketed as the pop singer answer to Paris Hilton (who had since attempted to be one herself). The production is total Britney Original Version, albeit even more autotuned to oblivion. The radio version featured newcomer rapper Royce Da 5'9", a protege of Eminem, who is uncredited on the label but would go on to score four top-40 albums on his own as well as a #1 disc with Eminem as "Bad Meets Evil" in 2011. His rap cameo is probably the most credible thing on here, but it doesn't save the product its attached to. The music video is what you'd expect with Ford in skimpy clothing writhing and getting into auto theft, though the idea of giving cops donuts at a traffic stop is sorta chucklable...

"I Wanna Be Bad" became Willa's first and only hit on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart in August of 2001. On the radio, the song just missed the top ten on their Mainstream top-40 list at #11. The Willa Was Here album, released in July of that year, peaked at #56 on the Billboard 200 sales tally. 

A second single from the album, "Did Ya Understand That" (an attempt to copy Christina Aguilera) stiffed. Ford did get a prime position by recording the opening track for the MTV: TRL Christmas album, "Santa Baby (Gimme Gimme Gimme)", which made the Billboard 200 at #162. 

 

After a return in 2003 on Lava with the single "A Toast To Men (F**k The Men)" that only manage to scrape the Dance Singles Sales chart at #11, she was let go by the label.  But by then Willa had moved on to other areas in the "entertainment" business. That included lascivious layouts in FHM and Playboy magazines. In 2006, she was a contestant on Dancing With The Stars, coming in seventh place. Most recently, she's been tied to Kardashian-world grifter Scott Disick, with whom she's turned into an interior designer.

(4/10)

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Here's Ford performing on MTV's Spring Break show...

and lastly a televised concert at the Hard Rock..

On Monday, I'll be back with an R&B singer with little options.