Songfacts®:

• Here, Willow Smith sings of her struggle with deceptive former friends who seek to exploit her celebrity. She reveals her ability to see their true nature by looking into their "transparent" souls.
• Willow wrote the song during a very introspective time at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic after coming across a quote from Hindu guru Radhanath Swami. It reads:
  
  It is said that a saintly person is so pure that he or she acts like a spotless mirror. When we come in the presence of such a mirror-like soul, we can see both the beauty and ugliness of our inner life.
  
  Willow told Rolling Stone she read the quote and it really spoke to her. "That's kind of how the idea of this song came to be," she added.
• Willow explores a confrontational pop-punk sound on the track with blink-182 drummer Travis Barker and her boyfriend and musical partner Tyler Cole. The daughter of actors Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, Willow told Apple Music's Zane Lowe her love of pop-punk began after seeing her mother's rock band, Wicked Wisdom, at a young age. "Just hearing my mom sing that music and the energy that I experienced when she was on stage and that whole vibe, it was just so intoxicating to me," she said.
• Because Willow was trained to sing R&B and pop, she'd shied away from singing rock out for fear of what others would think. During the pandemic, she decided to dip her toes into the type of music she loves. "I was like, 'Let me try and go through this fear and actually prove to myself if this is a genre I can do,'" she said. "And I did that journey over quarantine and a lot of things didn't work. I had to find what was authentic to me, that journey of figuring out like, 'Wow, I don't have to sound not like myself. I can sound like Willow and I can sound like me and still make this kind of music and still feel that vibe.'"
• MSFTS Music, a label founded by Willow's older brother Jaden, released the song on April 27, 2021 along with Roc Nation. It became her first entry on UK singles chart since her debut single, "Whip My Hair."
• Willow is one of several acts who have linked up with Travis Barker in the early 2020s to explore pop-punk. Other artists better known for other genres who the blink-182 drummer has worked with include Machine Gun Kelly, YUNGBLUD, and JXDN.
• The remix released on November 19, 2021 features Kid Cudi. The Cleveland artist mirrors the track's original lyrics about deceptive friends, singing:
  
  I know you're not my enemy
  In my world, there's moments seeing through the different lies
  It's all of diminishing
  But come on, you know that Imma try to make it right
  
  Willow and Cudi previously teamed up on "Rose Golden" from his 2016 album Passion, Pain & Demon Slayin'.
• The Genius community voted "Transparent Soul" their Best Song of 2021. They said: "This song is a manifesto of self-awareness, neatly packaged in an undeniably catchy musical shell."