Willow Smith, famous for whipping her hair back and forth, and Machine Gun Kelly, at this point famous for Megan Fox. Who could blame him though? Regardless, who would have thought that the heir to the throne of Bel-Air and the Travis Barker wanna-be would collaborate to create the song “emo girl”. 

Lyrically the song “emo girl” was nothing out of the ordinary for the pop-punk scene. Alike many other punk love songs the lyrics revolved around romanticizing a- you guessed it- emo girl. Nothing too bad or cheesy except that Willow seemed to sing every lyric in the TikTok created style “cursive”. The term refers to singers like Lorde or Halsey who unnecessarily slur their words so that they blend together. 

The majority of the song was relatively tame with cursive. There was enough slurring that only the trained ear could hear Willow’s accent, but by the end of the song, Willow seemed to add more cursive to her singing. The last line was distinctly in cursive and completely noticeable.

Despite the repetitive nature of the lyrics, the actual instrumentals were a classic feature of punk music. A typical heavy bass from Travis Barker, producer and member of band Blink-182, offered a solid skeleton for the song. 

Overall, the song was catchy and a future Billboard hit. Willow’s singing was the only downside. With less spoken cursive this song would have definitely have become more popular.