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Willa Ford Says 9/11 Attacks Contributed to Her Music Career Fizzling

Willa Ford
Willa Ford attends the 14th Annual Inspiration Awards in 2017. David Livingston/Getty Images

Willa Ford is blaming the September 11, 2001 terror attacks for contributing to the demise of her music career. 

The singer, 36, who got her big break with her 2001 hit “I Wanna Be Bad,” told Billboard there was a “perfect storm” of events that led to her stardom fizzling out. “A lot of people don’t realize this, but my second single was released on September 11, 2001,” she said in an interview, which was published on Tuesday, July 25. “Everything that happened that day froze; the world stood still, as it should have. My second single didn’t do well because anything that launched that day kind of got canned. I know that sounds silly, but on radio they slate things, but it really fell to the wayside. I didn’t think it was a big deal because we were making a new album anyway.” 

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She added that her record label was sold, and the company’s president left shortly after. “I felt like this pop machine had taken me and put me in the wash cycle and I had been spinning out of control,” she said. “I wanted some time to refocus myself. I started re-evaluating what I was doing.”

Ford explained that she took a step back from the industry to find her niche. “I was a classical opera singer with musical theory — a real, legit musician. I loved what I was doing — I wrote the songs, but I felt like the authenticity wasn’t there. I knew that it wasn’t going to have the staying power that I wanted it to have,” she shared. “I really took a step back because I felt like I wasn’t doing what I was supposed to be doing at the time. I know that sounds crazy, but it was the perfect storm, and I walked away. It’s really hard when you walk away to go back to it.”

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Now, Ford runs an interior design business, WFord Interiors, in Los Angeles, which started as a side project during her acting days. “I started doing it for friends and everyone was loving what I was doing. It was word of mouth,” she said. “I did a movie, and the producer of the movie asked me to work on their home. Before I knew it, I was doing really high-end homes.”

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While she’s found success outside of the music industry, she’s not ruling out a comeback, especially since she still has a strong fan base in the LGBT community. “I have thought about coming back, and I know who my community was and who would embrace me,” she said. “When I look at Kylie Minogue, she did [her comeback] really right. She did ‘Loco-Motion,’ she went away for 20 years — which is almost how long I’ve gone away — and then she comes back with this amazing dance-pop record.”

The musician said her family would be a big factor in her decision to give music another try. She has a 10-month-old son, Elijah, with her husband, former NFL player Ryan Nece. “I have a family now, so it’s something that I need to have the support of my husband, and I have a child now. It’s one of those things I’ve been thinking about, and when it’s time, I’ll reach out to the right producers,” she said. “I think I want to create the record on my own without a record company.”

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