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

Willow on SNL
(Image credit: Saturday Night Live NBC / YouTube)

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.

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.