 Inside.com; January 29, 2001 The bubble-gum hopeful hasn't even released an album, yet she's already the object of furious flaming, online death wishes and other Web-driven venom. Could it be...Satan? Sample hate from one of the many anti-Willa sites. (http://www.pop-stars.net/willaford/) They say, with the self-righteous anger only teenage girls can summon, that she's the spawn of Satan, a stupid ho, a skank from hell. One Web site commands visitors not to ''support her crimes against music.'' Another slams her as a ''talentless freeloader.'' She's been accused of beating her boyfriend and kidnapping his dog. Her defamers log on to message boards in Yahoo's clubs section -- there are currently 42 such clubs devoted to her, with cute names like ''The Abusive Slut Has Herpes'' -- and call for her death. Some anti-fans create vulgar homemade cartoons in her dishonor, while others express their dislike in rhyme, Eminem-style: ''I got an itch on my trigger finger/ Oops I unloaded the clip/ Now she's deep in the dirt/ I've ended her life and placed her under the earth.'' The target of all this venom isn't Britney, Christina or Courtney. Her name is Amanda Williford, she turned 20 last week and -- at least for the moment, and by a wide margin -- she's the most hated singer in teen pop. If you're wondering why you haven't heard of a phenom who's attracted such poison-tipped slings and arrows, it may be this: She's never even released an album. 'The Internet is like high school on steroids,' says Willa. 'It really is! It's like he-said she-said, but even worse.' So what, if anything, did Williford -- known on her forthcoming Lava/Atlantic Records debut as Willa Ford -- do to deserve this? A tour of the numerous anti-Willa sites on the Web reveals one contributing factor: beginning in 1998, Ford dated Nick Carter, the most boyish of the Backstreet Boys. Ford and Carter are no longer together. But Backstreet fans -- a passionate and devoted bunch who, from the looks of things, may be a bit too credulous when it comes to stuff they see on the Internet -- are still chewing over the details of the couple's relationship. One anti-Willa site, Willa Ford: The Siren Nick Can't Fight, alleges that while dating Ford, Carter was ''bruised, slapped, yelled and screamed at by this girl who claims 'to love him' ''; the BoycottManDuh home page (Willa was previously known as Mandy, then Mandah) collects anecdotes about alleged Ford meanness under the heading Mandy's Control Over Nick -- More Than Any Normal Girlfreind Does (sic), with another Web site, ''Nick and Mandy-Will a Ford-The Complete Story,'' listed as the ''sorse'' on the story. Willa is also accused of mistreating Backstreet fans who approached Carter for autographs while the two were together (a mortal sin in teen pop, where boy bands bend over backwards to give props to the fans who've supported them). And she has been flamed for allegedly using her relationship with Carter to land an opening slot on a Backstreet tour. When Williford was first signed to MCA Records -- Atlantic since bought out her contract -- angry anti-fans bombarded the label with phone calls, faxes and e-mails, demanding that she be dropped. ''I've never experienced anything like it in my life,'' one MCA staffer remembers. A group of Swedish high school students even submitted a petition -- complete with 150 signatures -- warning MCA about the ''big mistake'' it would be making if it released her music. ''She's ugly and mean,'' the petition charges, ''and she will never make it into the music business...Everyone on these lists are from Sweden and we will hate Willa forever!!'' (MCA says that the hate-Willa campaign was not a factor in its releasing her from her contract.) At MCA's suggestion, Williford eventually changed her stage name from ''Mandy'' to ''Mandah'' to ''Willa Ford.'' She also dyed her blonde hair dark brown. MCA says it encouraged Ford to change her image in order to avoid marketplace confusion with another blonde teen-pop contender, Mandy Moore. But many Willa-haters dismiss these moves as a craven shell game, the music-marketing equivalent of the Witness Protection Program. Atlantic, which included the Mandah track ''Lullaby'' on its 1999 Pokemon soundtrack, will release Willa's debut single, ''I Wanna Be Bad,'' in April, and her album -- ''a new brand of urban meets pop perfection,'' according to her official bio -- in June. ''Dawn,'' a Willa non-fan from Florida (who spoke on condition of anonymity), says she's boycotting the label as a result. Displaying an understanding of vertical integration worthy of a seasoned media consultant, Dawn is also boycotting pop bible Teen People (for its continued support of Willa) and Procter & Gamble, because it makes Pantene shampoo, which is using Willa as a spokeswoman for its Pantene Pro Voice Music Competition, which is co-sponsored by the Ford Motor Company, the TransWorld Entertainment family of record stores (including Coconuts and Camelot Music) and Seventeen magazine. All of which are also on Dawn's boycott list. Dawn says that because the Boys are technically at fault for unleashing Willa upon the world, she's ''seriously considered cutting BSB out of my life totally... It was something I have grappled with continually, off and on. However,'' she adds, ''the situation was complex. I came to understand that having Willa as the opening act for their tour was completely against the wishes and better judgment of all BSB members, their management, their band, their record label, etc., and that her spot on that tour was to preserve Nick Carter's sanity and reputation, because both would have been destroyed by Willa had she not been allowed to perform. The same goes for all the other times she butted her face in at BSB-related events. It was certainly not a case of Nick wanting to help her career or give her great advice or because she was his sweetie-poo -- he merely wanted to survive and that was the only way he perceived it was possible.'' Willa isn't the first rock paramour to have her name dragged through the mud by irate fans, of course -- the vituperation on these sites recalls the vituperation directed at pop-icon widows like Yoko Ono and Courtney Love, especially now that Willa has embarked on a music career of her own. The difference, of course, is that those women garnered their infamy through association, however misplaced, with the breakup of the world's biggest rock band (in Ono's case) and the suicide of alt-rock's favorite son (in Love's). Willa, by contrast, may or may not have stolen Nick's big-screen TV after they broke up. Willa herself says she first became aware of the phenomenon about a year ago. She says the Web -- and the ease with which rumors can spread there -- is partially to blame. ''The Internet,'' she says, ''is like high school on steroids. It really is! It's like he-said she-said, but it's even worse because you don't have to look people in the face.'' Indeed, if today's teen pop, with its online ''street teams'' and gushy fan-created GeoCities shrines, owes much of its success to the coalition-building power of the Internet, the Willa-hater subculture represents the trend's more-than-a-little-bit-scary flip side. Many of the young fans who've made megastars out of bands like the Backstreet Boys have grown up in an age of interactivity, an era in which the entertainment industry -- in awe of their numbers, and of their unprecedented media-purchasing might -- has been telling them for years that their opinion matters. Generation TRL is feeling its cultural oats, and perhaps it was only a matter of time before they decided they could vote somebody off the island. Teen People entertainment director Lori Majewski, who -- boycotts aside -- plans to feature Willa in the magazine's April issue, says that given Carter's fame, the existence of a vocal anti-Willa contingent is no surprise. ''I imagine that one of the reasons why Britney Spears didn't want to go on the record as being Justin Timberlake's girlfriend,'' Majewski says, ''was because she feared that kind of backlash. It always happens -- girls love their teen idols so much that they consider them almost their personal property.'' ''I'm betting,'' she adds, ''that many of them will change their minds when they hear her music... It's a little pool of poison that's making its way into the mainstream, but that can easily be reversed. If you have a great single, all will be forgiven.'' Lava Records president Jason Flom says the label remains confident that Willa will be able to transcend the negative online buzz. ''It's great that people are talking about her,'' he says. ''We certainly wish that people didn't have these negative things to say, but I believe that they'll be turned around. There's always doubters, and there's always people who maybe spend more time than they should putting things down.'' If anything, Flom adds, the way Willa has handled the situation is just further proof that signing her was a smart move. ''She handles it with a lot of grace,'' Flom says. ''She harbors no ill will toward any of these people. Whatever those negative feelings are, they're not mutual, and I think that's an incredibly mature approach for someone who just turned 20.'' According to Willa's bio, there's a song on her album about ''people who just can't mind their own business.'' It's called ''Get a Life.'' This apparent kiss-off to the player-haters aside, Willa isn't letting the situation get to her. When she talks about it, she waxes motivational about it -- it's like talking to Punky Brewster, Puff Daddy and Tony Robbins all at once. ''I'm not gonna let these girls stop my dream,'' she says by cell phone from her home in Florida. ''They can try to hold me down, and they can try to say they're not gonna let it happen, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna let the music speak for itself and work my butt off. My mom's scared for me, but Mom doesn't want me to have to give up what I love either... All this negative energy that they're throwing on me, I turn it right back around and it's like a positive. It's like a kick in the butt for me. I can totally deal with this.'' [Back] |