Willa Ford Reflects on &x27;Character Building&x27; Rise During the Early 2000s Pop Music Boom (Exclusive) Ilana KaplanTue, March 10, 2026 at 11:26 PM UTC 0 Willa Ford In Hollywood, Calif.Credit: L. Cohen/WireImage Willa Ford is looking back on experiencing pop star fame in the early 2000s "The women, and anybody in that era, we worked so hard," the pop star tells PEOPLE Ford's first album in 25 years amanda is out now Willa Ford is reflecting on her rise to fame as a pop star.
Willa Ford Reflects on 'Character Building' Rise During the Early 2000s Pop Music Boom (Exclusive)
Ilana KaplanTue, March 10, 2026 at 11:26 PM UTC
0
Willa Ford In Hollywood, Calif.Credit: L. Cohen/WireImage -
Willa Ford is looking back on experiencing pop star fame in the early 2000s
"The women, and anybody in that era, we worked so hard," the pop star tells PEOPLE
Ford's first album in 25 years amanda is out now
Willa Ford is reflecting on her rise to fame as a pop star.
In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the "I Wanna Be Bad" hitmaker opened up about being a pop star in the early 2000s, which she referred to as the "greatest time to be alive," but also the "hardest."
"It's only character building," Ford, now 45, says of the experience. "It's all it can be. You cannot play the victim and you cannot look at things in the past and be like, 'Well, what or should, could have.' It doesn't help you."
Willa Ford in New York CityCredit: Theo Wargo/WireImage
Ford says she was "so fortunate and lucky" to be in the spotlight back then and also spoke about the idea of female pop stars at that time like Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson and Mandy Moore being "pit" against one another.
"It was hard," she recalls. "The women, and anybody in that era, we worked so hard. So to pit anybody against each other was such a fault because we didn't even see each other. We couldn't even have beef because we never saw each other because we were working too hard."
She praised her fellow female pop stars from that time as "some of the hardest working women in the industry that you'll ever meet."
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Ford noted that her fellow female pop stars were "pit" against one another in the way that people would think they all looked or sounded "alike."
"I was like, 'Okay, well that's part of the machine,'" she recalls. "But if you sat down with Jessica and then you sit down with me, we're probably so different. It would be like saying your friends are alike because they have the same hair colorist."
Ford added, "What is so cool about it now is those same girls, if you listen to our records, we bring something so different to the table now. Everyone's so different."
According to the "Disassociate" musician, "it would be a dream" if the early aughts female pop stars could do one giant tour together.
"Every night [we'd be] like, "You're the s---, you're the s---, you're the s---." But back then we were too young to understand what was going on in a lot of ways. And I'm not saying a 20-year old's not smart, I'm just saying it was a lot."
Ford's first album in 25 years amanda is out now.
on People
Source: "AOL Entertainment"
Source: Entertainment
Published: March 11, 2026 at 01:36AM on Source: MANUEL MAG
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