Willow Avalon (2025)

One Liner:  Cutesy country with too much tremolo affectation for my tastes

Wikipedia Genre:  country

Home: NYC (via Carlton, GA)

Poster Position: Second Quarter - Line 10
Weekend One Only.
Friday.

Thoughts: She was at Two Step Inn this year, so I've already jumped in to check her out just a few months ago.  First impression was that this is pretty enjoyable little country stuff, but I have to say that the tremolo that she adds to her voice in a lot of these songs makes me really annoyed.  I can't stand when Post Malone does that stuff, and it is creating the same feeling here.  Just sing the damn note. 

When I looked for TSI, she had no Wikipedia, but for some reason I found is a two-page word document that automatically downloaded to my computer with a very in depth biography of her.  She now has Wikipedia, and it says that her real name is Willow Martin.  She's from rural Georgia, and her first word was apparently Elvis.  She taught herself guitar at age 12, left home at 15, and briefly lived in her car.  She now lives in NYC, but when she was 14 she earned an opening gig for the Drive By Truckers in Athens, GA, which is a pretty big deal. "Willow gained overnight fame via a massively viral late-2022 video in which she gave a tour of her apartment, showing off her now-departed pet possum Bowie (whom Willow often dressed in sweaters and cowboy hats) along with such thrifted treasures as a set of medical encyclopedias from the ’40s, a Stainer violin with a rattlesnake tail stuck inside, and the antique typewriter on which she writes many of her lyrics."  I couldn't find that video on YouTube, which is too bad.  Wikipedia also states that she is the daughter of musician Jim White.  I do not know that guy.

Two EPs, 2024's Stranger and 2024's Country Never Leaves, and one album 2025's Southern Belle Raisin' Hell.  The early hit single, which ended up on Stranger, is called "Drivin'" and has 6.3 million streams.

I get no country vibes in there at all, just more like a Stevie Nicks thing.  That is definitely an outlier compared to the rest of her tunes, which are more directly country for sure.  The biggest streamer overall is on both the newer EP and the new album, "Tequila or Whiskey" with 10.4 million streams.

Yeah, it's fine.  The vocal affectation is still really bothersome to me, but otherwise it's a cutesy little number that gets my head bobbing.  I don't think I'd go see this one though.