Willa Ford brings her pop comeback to WeHo Pride.
Willa Ford went back to the Y2K era—and brought her new amanda chapter along for the ride.
The pop princess took over the WeHo Pride Street Fair on Sunday, June 7, delivering one of her first major live appearances since returning to music after more than two decades.
A delayed start and early audio issues did not derail Ms. Willa Ford from a performance that had been a long time coming.
INYIM last caught Ford at The Abbey a few months earlier as she announced her official return. This time, she arrived with dancers, live string players and a hype woman handling backing and rap vocals as the Rainbow Stage stretched her comeback into a complete pop show.
Technical difficulties tried it. Willa Ford kept strutting.
Stream Willa Ford’s first album in 25 years and revisit the MTV-era pop that started everything.
As an Amazon Associate, INYIM Media earns from qualifying purchases.
A late start could not stop the Willa Ford comeback.
Ford was scheduled for a compact evening set on the free Rainbow Stage, but the performance began later than planned and initially wrestled with uneven audio.
Instead of allowing those problems to flatten the moment, she leaned into the crowd, her dancers and the supporting performers surrounding her.
The result felt less like a perfectly sealed television appearance and more like an actual comeback unfolding in real time—messy around the edges, emotional underneath and completely determined to keep moving.
Ford later described WeHo Pride as only her second show back since resuming her recording career. That made the appearance feel less like another promotional stop and more like an artist actively rebuilding her relationship with the stage.
Twenty-five years after her first album, West Hollywood was watching Willa reclaim the whole thing in public.
Willa Ford lights up the WeHo Pride Rainbow Stage.
Dancers, live strings, backing vocals and a crowd ready for Y2K pop surround Ford as she moves between her new musical chapter and the songs longtime fans came to hear.
amanda shares the stage with Willa’s MTV-era classics.
Ford’s set introduced West Hollywood to her first full-length album in 25 years, amanda, a 12-song project named after her birth name and released in March 2026.
The newer side of the performance included songs such as Burn Burn, Love4Life and Flex, placing the dance-ready rebirth of amanda directly beside the material that made Ford an early-2000s pop fixture.
Her catalog portion reached back toward the club and TRL era with performances connected to Did Ya’ Understand That, F*ck the Men (A Toast to Men) and the inevitable I Wanna Be Bad.
The live string players added another layer to the nostalgia. Their presence echoed Ford’s recent orchestral reinvention of I Wanna Be Bad, which she introduced on The Kelly Clarkson Show before releasing it as a standalone 2026 single.
That arrangement strips the familiar club record down and rebuilds it around sweeping strings, allowing Ford to revisit her signature hit without pretending she is still standing in exactly the same place she occupied in 2001.
Willa Ford has finally reclaimed the bad-girl era.
For years, Ford wanted little to do with the music that first made her famous. Her comeback has involved finding a way to honor that period without allowing it to overshadow the person and songwriter she became afterward.
At WeHo Pride, those two versions of Willa were finally allowed to coexist. The woman behind amanda performed beside the pop provocateur who gave LA’s 2000’s era club TigerHeat dance floors a permanent command to be bad.
The Pride audience understood both assignments. New songs received room to breathe, while every familiar Y2K beat immediately activated a crowd that had waited years to hear them live again.
New album. Old-school club energy. Live strings. Full choreography. The return is no longer theoretical.
Check out INYIM’s exclusive footage from the night below. The opening number is missing due to our own technical difficulties, but the rest of Willa Ford’s West Hollywood comeback is present and accounted for.
Watch Willa Ford live at WeHo Pride 2026.
INYIM’s exclusive performance footage begins with Ford’s second song and captures her Rainbow Stage set with dancers, live strings, backing vocals, new amanda material and Y2K fan favorites.
Sources: INYIM Media’s exclusive performance video provided the featured footage and images; the City of West Hollywood provided the official Street Fair and lineup details; Apple Music provided the album release and track details; Red Light Management provided background on amanda and Ford’s musical return; and PAPER Magazine provided additional backstage and comeback context.
Reader Reactions
What’s Your Reaction?
Tap the response that fits.
