Willow the Cat – the creative musical brainchild behind multi-hyphenate talent, Eric Thompson – effortlessly blends jazz, soul and R&B with hints of psychedelic rock. The result is a unique brand of hip-hop that is paradoxical in nature, somehow toeing the line between light-hearted and dark subject matter and teetering between gentle instrumentals and raucous compositions. Now, the artist drops “Songs About My Internet Ex-Girlfriend”, encapsulating the essence of a romance founded in an online relationship.
The 9-track project is an eccentric, semi-fictional masterpiece that acts as a social commentary on the contemporary modern dating scene, a scene that has become increasingly reliant on technological advances to connect with others. The narrative and themes are deftly scored with gritty beats that wondrously weaves intricate instrumentation, emotive lyricism and infectious grooves. With a dynamic range of sounds and themes, “Songs About My Internet Ex-Girlfriend” is an exciting new project from the rising star.
Listen to the album…
Accompanying the project is the video for “Light Blue”, an enigmatic dystopian short film starring Eric himself, offering a visual representation of themes explored throughout the album.
Watch the video…
During our link-up, we chat with Eric about the new music video for “Light Blue” and the creative process behind using Spike Jonze’s “Her” as the inspiration behind the project.
Read the interview…
Hey! You’ve just dropped your debut album, what are your immediate thoughts after its release?
I’m psyched – I started it 3 years ago and it needed to happen. I probably would have worked on it forever, but it was time. People have been telling me good things about it, so hopefully, it was worth the wait!
What narratives and themes are you aiming to convey with the project?
I think the theme you could take away from “Songs About My Internet Ex-Girlfriend” would be that letting go of someone you’ve never gotten the chance to fully know can be harder than if you really got the chance to go through the motions and, ultimately, make a decision whether this person was right or wrong for you. You live with this idea of what it could have been, and your imagination fills these empty spaces. I made the decision to try to carry parts of the person I wrote it about through me rather than letting go completely because I didn’t know why we met or what it was all for. There are also a lot of allusions to becoming overgrown by feelings and watching the seasons change around you, the stars pass you by, suns set, moons wax and wane, and you end up in these never-ending patterns of watching the world move around you rather than moving with it when you can’t move on.
You drew inspiration from ‘Her’ for this. What is it about this film that inspired the project?
The movie tells the story of a man falling in love with a hyper-realistic AI personality. My album is about falling in love with a girl on the Internet. I had rewatched that movie time and time again, and there’s a line in it where Scarlett’s Johansson says, “I had this terrible thought – like, are these feelings even real?” and it struck me in the worst way. I really had fallen in love and spent a very long time getting over this girl and yet there was this feeling in the back of my mind because we had never met in person, or formed a physical connection, that what I was feeling was not the real thing even though it hurt just the same. There’s also this scene in the movie where Joaquin Phoenix’s character is galivanting around the city and showing this robot (who he carries in this phone shaped device) his world through a camera, taking selfies everywhere. There was a point where I did the same thing with this girl basically and we were sharing all these pictures of our daily lives with each other and just keeping this mystery alive, one frame at a time.
How did you implement elements of the film with “Songs About My Internet Ex-Girlfriend”?
That line I mentioned ended up being a transition at the end of the song “her” which I named after the film. I also sampled “Moon Song” from the movie that Scarlett’s Johansson sings. My friend D (her artist name is Ola’D) sings it on the album on the song “Brand New”. I chopped it up, so it felt extra robotic.
You’ve also dropped a music video for “Light Blue”, can you run us through the creative process for creating the visuals?
It was super dope. I knew the director Pat through mutual friends from the DIY music scene in Syracuse and really dug his work. We tossed around ideas and Pinterest boards remotely beforehand with the goal of illustrating a parasocial relationship. Initially there was supposed to be this whole abandoned swimming pool shot and we met in the Catskills to film that but the entire pool had been buried. But we ended up filming most of the video in-studio and mimicked some shots from “her” around Bushwick, and one of them where I’m walking on this pier in Greenpoint.
Your sound dips into hip-hop, jazz, soul, R&B and psychedelic rock. How do you embrace those genres into your work?
I think most of the album has RnB pulses and feel but the hip-hop moments really drive the story forward as hip-hop does. The switch up on “Brand New” into “Fixation” was really important moment on the album that needed to be rapped to bring you into the place I had gone in my head with conviction. That same point gets really psychedelic, and I would say the instrumental takes you into the world I was in. On the first song “Peach” I say this line ‘you’re the sun to my moon, so I guess my light is yours’, and on “Brand New” I was thinking “what does my world sound like when there’s no sun?”, when it’s completely blotted out in an eclipse, so this is quite literally a dark side of the moon moment (which is the epitome of psychedelic rock lol). I didn’t mean for it to happen that way but it did.
As far as jazz, I think I’m able to use it to capture blissful moments and maintain a sense of mellow throughout my music despite sometimes heavy emotions.
I think my music can be soulful, but that’s less about embracing a genre and its purpose and more just about living and letting time do its thing to my voice and my attitude towards writing melodies. I love sampling soul music too though.
What artists do you take inspiration from?
Kendrick Lamar, Amy Winehouse, Dijon, Frank Ocean, FKA Twigs, Billie Eillish, The Neighbourhood, Dominic Fike, Brockhampton. A lot of people but those ones are up there.
How does the rest of your year look in terms of projects, collaborations, and live performances?
I’m probably going to be producing more in the near future for other artists but I’m also bouncing ideas around for collab projects with some friends of mine. I will hopefully be performing a lot more with the goal of figuring out how to make my live performance match the production of my album.