Watch Willow bring heavy metal fury to US TV institution Saturday Night Live

Willow made her first appearance on iconic US comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live at the weekend, and shook up the long-standing institution with a blast through Muse-gone-metal rager ur a stranger.

The 21-year-old musician actually performed two tracks from her just-released Coping Mechanism album on the show, debuting with the R&B-flavoured alt.pop power ballad curious/furious, released as a single last month, but it was her second song – featuring crunching riffs and a furiously screamed mid-song breakdown – which stole the show, the singer concluding the performance by smashing her guitar through an onstage TV prop and kicking over her mic stand.

The singer ruffled a few feathers last week when she suggested that heavy metal has been “gatekept” for too long by “older white men”.

“I am always hoping to spread more joy,” she tells Guitar.com. “I think the only reason why it’s older, white men mostly listening to this music is because metal has been gatekept for a long time by these people.

“[Now,] new people of colour are coming to say that that’s really not the way that it should be. Rock is for everyone [and] I’m gonna bring my people to the space and we are gonna vibe it out like we always do… hopefully the old white dudes vibe it out too.”

Watch Willow’s SNL performances below:

Willow posted a photo of herself and her leather-clad band on Instagram ahead of the performance, with the caption “it’s called historybeingmade.com”

Coping Mechanism is the followup to 2021’s Lately I Feel Everything, and features the previously released singles Hover Like A Goddess, Split and Maybe It’s My Fault.

Source: loudersound.com