“I can vaguely remember having a conversation about how crazy it would be to hear people say we were a part of why they made something. It was such an abstract thought,” Hayley Williams reminisces, finding herself alongside bandmates Zac Farro and Taylor York on the cusp of releasing Paramore’s first album since 2017.
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Williams’ abstract thought first began to take shape back in the early 2000s when the group was a five-piece and Williams was a teenage vocalist rivaling those twice her age. Now, nearly 20 years into their tenure, the trio has the full force of fame and nostalgia backing them up as they foray back into the music world after a nearly six-year hiatus with This is Why.
What was once simply a musing has become a very real fact with many of today’s artists—genre be damned— citing Paramore as inspiration for their own careers.
Few bands from their scene have amassed the cultural capital that Paramore has. Their sound has become synonymous with the “emo” subculture in a way that many find it hard to accept that they—inevitably—are aging, changing their tastes, and evolving. But the group quickly decided that concern would not guide their return.
“There is a struggle of certain fans wanting you to be a former version of yourself,” York tells American Songwriter. “But, I think if we made the record that some people want us to make, they’d realize it’s not what they want. They already have that record.”
“Not that we are ashamed of it by any means; it is a part of our story, but it’s like an old photo,” Farro adds. “We want to keep progressing and make a record our fans maybe didn’t know was going to be something they like.”
Williams sums up their mindset by dubbing the group as “very nostalgia adverse.”
“We have a lot of young people discovering our music, which is amazing. From that aspect, it’s nice to tap back into some of our old inspirations, but we’ve tried to be discerning about how deep to go into that,” she says.
Everyone from Olivia Rodrigo and SZA to The 1975 has heralded Paramore’s contributions to the world of alt-rock. With every musician that utilizes a crashing chorus or a piercing guitar line in today’s music scene, Paramore is often used as a point of reference. Though the wide breadth of their influence continues to amaze the trio, they avoid checking their rearview mirrors as much as possible.
“We want to discover new things and figure out who we are today,” Williams says. “Sometimes that conversation is really stressful—because of expectation and projection—and sometimes we are energized by a freedom to go in whatever direction we want.”
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Paramore is flexing that freedom on This Is Why, a 10-track album that holds the tension between their earliest influences and the new wave sound they have been fleshing out for several years now. Their previous record, After Laughter, established the dichotomy between dance floor anthems and self-reflective meditations. This Is Whyperfects it.
On This Is Why, Williams shares a frenzied address about the modern experience as she tries to find inner peace in the face of a cultural war.
“This album is a primal scream into the void,” Williams says. “I am constantly both energized and terrified of survivalism. It feels like everyone is in such a state of survivalism. In some ways, that can help you find your people, fight injustices, or help push the world forward, but at the same time, it’s a really terrifying notion.”
She continues, “You can’t help but be impacted by current events and you can’t help but be impacted by your own bullshit every day.”
On “The News,” Paramore dissects the onslaught of information that our “collective heart” has to bear each day: All together every single head shakes / Shut your eyes, but it won’t go away, Williams sings. Elsewhere they open up the floor for discussion on toxic masculinity on “Big Man, Little Dignity” and shutter at the thought of the public’s discerning eye on “This Is Why.”
It’s an album that is a mouthpiece for its era, which is no surprise. Paramore has always been at the crest of the counterculture, and with This Is Why, they prove they still have a very firm foothold in that space.
The record was a long time coming. Prior to this release, the group hadn’t shared a project since 2017 and their ever-growing fanbase was getting antsy. As to what held them off for so long, the group says they felt the pressure of their return in more ways than one.
They “went in blind” to the project in the summer of 2021 while in a studio space back home in Nashville. Despite announcing their return that fall, it was nearly a year before the first sounds of This Is Why were heard. “When we started, we would spend a month in the studio,” Williams explains. “Now it always takes at least six months to make a record. We’re picky.”
Adds York, “I think that’s the trade-off of when you do what you do for so long. You learn more tools, you learn what you like, and your ear gets more discerning. You hold yourself to a higher standard. Letting go and just being creative becomes a little tougher.
“We will get through a few sections of a song and just realize it’s not really what we want and start over,” York continues. “That happened so much on this record. Also, I think there is a lot of pressure to be able to do everything as a musician. There’s nothing wrong with being able to do it all yourself, but that is definitely a change.”
While their prowess as musicians has made their time in the studio inherently longer, the legacy of the end result is also a point of consideration.
“Also, I think we all feel the weight of music lasting a lifetime,” Farro says. “It’s not just about, ‘Let’s get a cool chorus,’ anymore. It’s about us thinking, ‘This thing is gonna live on forever.’”
“We’re still living with decisions that we made 15 years ago,” York jokes.
Though he didn’t specify as to what decisions he was referring to, one could make connections to their “cancelation” amid the #MeToo movement when their breakthrough 2007 hit “Misery Business” found itself in the court of public opinion. Like many 17-year-olds, Williams let her emotions guide her at the time when she wrote the seething line, Once a whore, you’re nothing more / I’m sorry, that’ll never change. Unlike most 17-year-olds, she was accused of misogyny on a mass scale more than a decade later and was forced to explain that decision while the world watched.
Flash forward to 2023 and the world has forgiven the uproar around the lyric and “Misery Business” has found its way back into the live rotation. “Four years ago, we said we were gonna retire this song for a little while, and I guess technically we did,” Williams told an audience last year before playing the song for the first time in a long time. “But what we did not know was that just about five minutes after I got canceled for saying the word ‘whore’ in a song, all of TikTok decided that it was OK.”
Soon after, she brought back the group’s old tradition of inviting a fan to belt the lyrics alongside Williams, harkening back to the days before “Misery Business” had any negative color on it.
With that upset largely behind them, the band acknowledges that the atmosphere they are creating in now is a far cry from the one they came up in. After spending several years learning how to settle into their personal lives, they now have to learn how to step back into the public discourse.
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“We want to prove to ourselves that we can still do this,” Williams says. “Prove that we have something to show for all this time we’ve spent together. Then there is the other side of the coin, which is we now have to re-enter cultural conversation and a new music scene. I really enjoyed being insular in that way over the past few years. I have a foundation in my real life and relationships. Now, we’ve got to find our sea legs again alongside the world. I think that has given me more anxiety than anything else.”
“Culturally, things have gotten better,” Farro adds. “Things can’t slide nowadays. I think we’ve all done a pretty good job to not be assholes, but there’s definitely a no-bullshit mentality when it comes to treating people correctly. That wasn’t really present in our scene when we started. It would be interesting to be 14 or 15 [years old] just getting started in 2023. We’d probably be so much smarter.”
In the downtime between Paramore album releases, Williams unveiled two solo albums, Petals For Armor and Flowers For Vases, with York on production duties. Farro leaned into his HalfNoise project with two records, Natural Disguise, and Motif. Their indefinite hiatus proved to be prolific enough, so the decision to reunite as Paramore was more than one of necessity.
After spending decades working and creating alongside each other, a break seems natural. In their time away from Paramore, Williams, Farro, and York found that their bond has grown stronger with age. A sense of maturity and acceptance has been the secret to maintaining both their sonic partnership and their friendship all this time.
Like their most nostalgia-driven followers, they too had to learn to let go of their expectations for one another. “One thing that we weren’t good at when we were younger was figuring out how to be great friends to each other,” Williams admits.
“I think we were scared of falling apart, but it actually drove us further away from one another,” she continues. “We would see each other changing and that was scary. I think today, we are so free to be whoever we are around each other. Our individuality is celebrated. I think that has made us stay friends all this time.”
“You spend so much time trying to change each other or wishing each other was different,” York says. “I think we’ve learned to take care of ourselves. We look at each other now and, damn, we’re all just trying our best.”
On the heels of their album, the group is embarking on its largest tour in a decade. As a testament to just how much they were missed, Paramore is appearing on almost every major music festival line-up this year, including Boston Calling, Bonnaroo, and Hangout Music Fest. Their peers on these line-ups include Red Hot Chili Peppers and Foo Fighters, further solidifying their stature in the rock community. Paramore has also been tapped as one of the opening acts for Taylor Swift’s internet-breaking The Eras Tour, which is widening the scope of their fandom yet again.
The trio acknowledges, though, that despite the recent recognition, they aren’t “the biggest band in the world.”
“I feel like there is room for more people to become fans,” Farro says about this new era of Paramore. Though they may not be able to boast that title without contest yet, Williams, Farro, and York have done something many of their peers cannot claim: endured—and only gotten better while doing so.
Photos courtesy The Oriel
