Paramore: “The creativity is about to get cranked up”

Newly independent and fresh off Taylor Swift’s world-dominating Eras tour, Paramore’s future feels wide open. Promising to “keep touring until we physically can’t,” with demos for new music already in the works, and their creative ambitions more expansive than ever, Dork catches up with HAYLEY WILLIAMS to discuss what’s next for a band who, after all these years, can be anything they want.

Words: Ali Shutler.
Photos: Zachary Gray.

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“Paramore has never really fit in any space,” says Hayley Williams. For years, it meant the band were uncomfortable outsiders of the alt-rock scene they came up in, and, despite being one of the most influential guitar bands around, it gave Paramore what Hayley describes as a “junkyard dog mentality”. 

In the past few months, though, Paramore have lent into doing things their own way. They’ve done it without apology as well. They confidently invited the likes of Remi Wolf, Foals and Bleachers to do whatever they wanted for the groove-led ‘This Is Why’ remix album, while Talking Heads’ David Byrne covered ‘Hard Times’ for Record Store Day, with the band returning the favour with their snarling take on ‘Burning Down The House’. The twisting, tender and aggressive ‘This Is Why’ also saw Paramore finish up their major-label deal with Atlantic Records after first signing it in 2005. What better way to celebrate their newfound freedom than supporting friend and pop titan Taylor Swift in stadiums across Europe as part of her gigantic Eras tour? “We know we’ve never fit in,” says Hayley. “But maybe that’s been a gift.”

Their stint on Eras is the longest tour the band have ever undertaken, and they are, understandably, exhausted. “We’ll always be able to say we were part of this historic moment and support someone we’ve grown up in the industry with,” says Hayley, 46 shows into the 48-date run. “But it’s given Paramore a lot as well.”

Despite initial worries about how Swifities would react to Paramore’s unique brand of pop-rock, it’s been a perfect fit with the two acts both finding joy and community through emotionally charged singalong anthems. “The energy that the fans have cultivated in Taylor’s world has been really cool to experience as well,” says Hayley, her guitar case full of hundreds of friendship bracelets that she’s going to keep forever. “I grew up in a scene where it really wasn’t okay to be anything but a straight white guy, but this tour has been a real celebration of something different. It’s been so good for me to see young music fans feeling free to love pop music, feeling free to be super feminine and feeling free to be whoever they want to be.”

“This tour has taught us so much, and we’ve gained so much from it,” Hayley continues. “I can’t wait to take that directly back to our people.”

As well as introducing new fans to the giddy world of Paramore, Eras has also allowed the band to really play in the pop sandpit, with colour-coordinated outfits and light choreography for ‘Burning Down The House’ and ‘Ain’t It Fun’. It’s something of a natural evolution for Hayley and bandmate Zac Farro, who regularly takes the spotlight at Paramore shows with funk-driven songs from his other project Halfnoise, but Taylor York has spent the past two decades happily in the shadows of stage left.  

“You should have seen his face when I lightly suggested we try to take up more space on the stage,” laughs Hayley, even if Taylor was the first one to say yes to the Eras tour invitation. He got another shock when, after a call with Swift’s production manager to find out just how big the stage was, they started practising in the parking lot of their warehouse practice space. “But what a fucking star,” says Hayley. “I’m so proud of him. We’ve always challenged ourselves musically, but Taylor is someone who is very introspective and introverted with the way he takes music in. It’s hard to try new things, but honestly, sometimes I think he’s better out there than me.”

“Can I also just say in an interview that I think Zac is the most underrated drummer in whatever fucking genre we’re in,” says Hayley, still struggling to find a label for the band. “When he was 11, and I was 13, I saw him play for the first time, and I just knew.” She can’t explain how she knew, because what does anyone really know at that age, but at the end of every Eras show when the rest of the band huddles around him for the furious, cathartic conclusion to ‘This Is Why’, it’s every dream Hayley ever had for the band come true. “I’m so grateful Zac came back for ‘After Laughter’ because he’s the backbone of Paramore. He makes us better.”

“It’s such a good moment in our band’s history, especially when there’s been so much drama in the past,” continues Hayley, with the Parafour (touring bassist Joey Howard, guitarist Logan MacKenzie, percussionist Joseph Mullen and guitarist Brian Robert Jones) adding to the feel-good vibes. “When I finally get home, and my dog Alf gives me the cold shoulder for two days because we’ve been gone so long, I know it’ll have been for a good reason,” she says.

“Zac is the most underrated drummer”

Hayley Williams

Paramore’s story has always been one of perseverance. “We never knew who was gonna leave the band or who was gonna suddenly hate me,” says Hayley, with ‘This Is Why’ the first Paramore album recorded with the same lineup as the one before it. “I’ve been in so much therapy throughout our career, just trying to deal with abandonment issues and feeling like, well, if all these people are leaving, if all these articles are being written, then maybe it is me,” she explains. She didn’t exactly get an easy ride in the press, either. “It was really scary to be a young girl in these interviews with men that were twice my age. We weren’t speaking the same language anyway, so it’s no wonder that I would feel misunderstood so often.”

For the longest time it made every decision she made, from song lyrics to onstage outfits, weighed down by fear. In recent months though, that’s been replaced by a constant swagger. As she explained over New York Fashion Week, “I really think I’d rather be odd than cunt all day. Maybe that’s actually the cuntiest thing about me?”

As rough a ride as Paramore have had, their live shows have always felt like a celebration. “I remember when we were touring ‘Brand New Eyes’ and our tour manager kept telling people the only time we didn’t fight was when we were onstage. I didn’t want to accept it, but he was right,” says Hayley. “We were beat down, uncomfortable, and that was such a rough time, but there’s a reason Taylor and I never quit, and it was the shows. Paramore gigs did get a lot of the poison out.”

As liberated as those Eras shows felt, they still offered Hayley and the rest of the band a chance to let the poison out in a way that was joyful and healthy. “My smile is sorta too big for my face but make no mistake, I am but a bird-sized woman still filled to the brim with rage. If I didn’t get to make music or throw my body around the stage every night, I wouldn’t survive,” she wrote during the tour.

“There’s so much to be rattled and pissed about,” she says today. “And there is so much privilege with standing on stage, but the strength people give to me when we’re singing together and the energy we create together is transcendent. As cheesy as it sounds, it’s hope, it’s humanity and it’s a reminder that we still have that.”

Obviously, stadium shows are a world away from most gigs, but “having places you can go, connect with people safely and feel like you can forget is so crucial,” Hayley continues. It’s especially poignant after the band wrote ‘This Is Why’, a song about not wanting to leave the house because the world is scary and people are horrendous to each other. “I’ve realised I can’t be alone,” says Hayley. “I can’t be by myself in this, so I guess we’ll keep touring until we physically can’t. Can you imagine seventy-year-old Taylor York doing light choreography on stage?” she laughs. “Honestly, I am so excited for the next incarnation. It feels like there’s something in the water.”

“My smile is sorta too big for my face but make no mistake, I am but a bird-sized woman still filled to the brim with rage”

Hayley Williams

So, shall we ask the big question: What is next for Paramore?

Well, the band have already started toying with new music. At home, before the tour began, Paramore created some early demos that “really surprised” Hayley, with the tracks taking inspiration from the Bjork-fronted alt-rock band The Sugarcubes. But they’ve also spent a few days off from tour in the studio. In Hamburg, they visited Clouds Hill Studio and started messing around with another idea that “felt like it was on the other side of the tracks to what we’d been working on at home,” offers Hayley. “But that excites me.”

“Lyrics have always been a huge driving force for me as well. I feel a deep sense of discomfort when we go home to the American South in this political climate and a lot of poetry that I’ve been writing lately feels like adulted versions of the themes I was writing about in ‘Brand New Eyes’.” The band’s third album was an exploration of faith, betrayal, community and pain. “Also your mid-30s are wild. I was told they were supposed to be breezy but it’s like another puberty.”

After the overwhelming positive reaction to the glistening pop of ‘After Laughter’ and the scuzzy rage of ‘This Is Why’, there’s a real sense of liberation to whatever comes next. “I know not every music fan loves it when their favourite bands switch things up, but we’ve always done it,” explains Hayley. Even their first two albums were inspired by more than straight-up pop-punk. “It does feel like there’s more space now to do whatever it is we’re inspired to do and not look back,” she adds. “It doesn’t have to be one thing either.”

Right now, Hayley is inspired by the fearless, slightly chaotic world of pop that’s being ushered in by the likes of Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo and Chappell Roan. They’re not afraid of messy feelings and they don’t care if they don’t have all the answers either, which is something Paramore have always done really well. “You have all these women really ruling that world, and I don’t think pop has ever been cooler,” says Hayley. “It’s so inspiring to see young artists being really bold, expressing themselves freely and making good shit that everyone wants to sing along to, while also speaking about things that perhaps don’t always feel good to speak about,” she adds, with that new generation of pop stars kickstarting discussions on politics, abortion rights, body image and predatory fan behaviour. “I hope that I had anything at all to do with helping clear some shit from the path because that boldness is something I didn’t feel was safe when we first started out,” adds Hayley, who reached out when things first started blowing up. “Hayley Williams is the strongest bitch ever,” Chappell told Rolling Stone recently. 

“But there’s also so much exciting stuff happening with guitar music as well,” Hayley adds, name-checking Amyl And The Sniffers and “sick” new band Font. “I’ll always love indie sleaze and bands like The Rapture and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but I’m ready for whatever comes next in the dystopian future that we’re all entering. We need punk music, and we need those underground movements,” she explains. “Not because I want to hide from pop music, but because there’s life there that I want to live.”

“I don’t think pop has ever been cooler”

Hayley Williams

There’s more to the next era of Paramore than just new music as well, with the band getting used to their recent independence. Not having a label is the closest Paramore have ever got to the “total freedom” they felt when they first started the band. “I think the creativity is about to get cranked up,” offers Hayley. “Not having any deadlines used to be scary, but I’ve realised that since we first started, the music industry has never been the same for more than a year, and neither have we. So now we just get to do what we’ve always done without worrying about fitting into the bottom line of some conglomerate.”

They’ve also been teasing a new project called Fine Print, which they’re currently building from the ground up. “We’re still figuring a lot of stuff out about it, but it excites me to know we’ve gotten far enough in our career and have enough of a platform that we may not have to follow certain rules now. And we might also be able to pull the drawbridge down in certain ways for others as well.”

With Fine Print, Paramore want to find a balance between creating art and living life, especially because “the music industry does not reward taking care of yourself,” says Hayley, who is also asking questions about fairer payments for musicians and how to support new artists as well. “I still believe that there are ways to champion the humanness of sharing music, but I don’t know if that falls under the Fine Print umbrella,” she admits, with the project still in its early days. 

“I need to take some meetings with people who are smarter than me but it does feel possible to do things differently,” she continues. “When the algorithm is God and labels are turning into content machines, thank goodness for [Phoebe Bridgers’ label] Saddest Factory and [Zac Farro’s] Congrats. I think artists are going to have to be the ones to lead the way in making this an okay universe for other creatives.”

And that starts at home. “Fine Print is about creating a better ecosystem for our creativity,” explains Hayley. And that includes potential solo stuff as well. “Paramore has always been the thing that I want to do the most, and I get really passionate and protective of it,” says Hayley, but something shifted after seeing that nothing major changed with the band after releasing solo album ‘Petals For Armor’ and follow-up record ‘Flowers For Vases / Descansos’. “I don’t feel done with that at all,” she adds. “And that feels so good to say.”

Originally she wanted her solo music to be released under the Petals For Armor name because it felt like a nice cloak. “Even when I was doing press for ‘Petals’, I was really worried people would think I was done with Paramore because those rumours fly so fast, but now I don’t feel that fear at all. I know the three of us will be creative until we die, and that’s going to manifest as a million different projects,” she explains. Some projects will be Paramore, sure, but others might be Zac shooting music videos on film or Taylor acting as a producer for other people’s records, like he did with ‘Petals For Armor’. “I think Fine Print is going to be a really great catch-all for those things.”

Paramore are still laying the foundations for Fine Print but the whole thing is being built on the same ethos of their 2018 Art and Friends festival. “If it’s not people I would be happy to have a cookout with, I don’t want them involved,” says Hayley. “Music is community. It’s such a great connector, and that’s the energy I want around anything that we do.”

“If it’s not people I would be happy to have a cookout with, I don’t want them involved”

Hayley Williams

Newcomers to the band might not be aware of just how massive it is for Hayley to be talking about the future of Paramore with such certainty, with the trio usually focused more on trying to survive the immediate present than worrying about what comes next. “We had a conversation about this at the end of last year, and I told Zac and Taylor that even if we said we were done with Paramore, we’re still always going to be in Paramore,” explains Hayley. “We’ve been in this band since we were kids, and it’s the story of our friendship. It’s the vehicle for every lesson we’ve learned,” she continues, with the band finally in a place where they are not defined by their own turbulent past. “Even if we wanted to take a ten-year sabbatical, we’re still Paramore. It’s nice to accept that rather than feeling resentful of it,” says Hayley, before quickly adding: “We’re not going to take a ten-year break though; I feel like that needs saying.”

“For the longest time, everything felt very serious but I’m really thankful we’ve gotten to whatever space this is,” she offers. “It’s still life, and I’m sure we’ll always have ups and downs, but I just think it’s about time we get to enjoy.”

Paramore might be looking to the future, but the past eighteen months have seen the band come to terms with their own legacy. They returned to their guitar-driven roots on ‘This Is Why’, revived a number of classic songs for their live gigs and headlined the first-ever When We Were Young Festival while addressing their history with the punk scene. “Nearly 20 years later, we find ourselves a pillar of the very scene that threatened to reject us. And me,” Hayley wrote at the time.

“This thing that I’ve fought for my whole life, people were maybe seeing it more like I saw it, and that felt fucking great”

Hayley Williams

It was backed up by several articles that championed the band’s influence and importance for an entire generation after the band were largely quiet during the ‘After Laughter’ era. “We needed that cycle to be about us three hanging out again and me getting through my divorce,” says Hayley. “We didn’t play the game, which the label wasn’t happy about, and then we took a break that people have called a hiatus, so now I’m calling it that as well. But I saw the shift in how people were talking about Paramore in real-time. It really was humbling, but it made me feel vindicated,” says Hayley. “This thing that I’ve fought for my whole life, people were maybe seeing it more like I saw it, and that felt fucking great,” she explains.

That reembracing of their past is still happening as well, says Hayley. “It’s not come without a lot of struggle, though. I am very hesitant to look backwards because it’s scary. What I went through in my personal life, what the band went through, it wasn’t fun,” she offers.

Originally, Paramore weren’t going to play ‘Misery Business’ on the Eras tour. “I was proud of that. I wanted people to know that we didn’t need that song to put on a great show, and I wanted people to know we didn’t endorse its message.” The band previously retired their breakout anthem in 2018 due to its anti-feminist message. Early on the tour, the band went out with Taylor Swift to the sort of star-studded party that saw them singing a Lenny Kravitz song to Lenny Kravitz. “It was very cool, very wild, but why were we invited?” asks Hayley, refusing to name-drop any further. 

That same night, Swift asked Hayley why she wasn’t playing the track. “Everyone knows you’re a feminist,” Swift added. “You’ve got kids in the crowd who will know that song and then follow you on what comes next. They will get to hear the other songs that you’re maybe prouder of or don’t have this sticky film on, but you’re still legacy building.” 

It was a conversation that reminded Hayley that Paramore weren’t done yet, that there was still plenty of life to live. “I’ve really enjoyed seeing young music fans at these shows because it just makes you feel like the world isn’t ending,” she offers.

She had a similar moment with ‘The Only Exception’. Despite adding it back to the setlist during their ‘This Is Why’ headline run and knowing she would perform it in the middle of those stadiums on Eras, Hayley still felt uncomfortable about a gooey love song she’d written when she was a teenager. “It’s not ‘Misery Business’, but I didn’t want to endorse that message either,” she explains. This time it was her vocal coach who had a word. “He said, ‘You’re in a band with your partner. Just look at him and pretend nothing else ever existed’. You know what is so dumb about me?” asks Hayley. “I felt so stupid doing that at first. I felt stupid having this pure expression of adoration and tapping into the hopefulness I had as a 19-year-old. This tour completely changed my relationship with that song though. Now when I sing it, I feel happy.”

“I am a quilt of every awful thing that I’ve ever experienced, seen or done”

Hayley Williams

Thanks to a renewed interest in 00s alt-rock, their slot on Eras and the brutal relatability of ‘This Is Why’, Paramore are currently bigger than they’ve ever been. As more people discover them, more people are falling in love with their open-hearted, empathetic rock, but it comes at a time when so many of their peers are tied down by nostalgia. So why do Paramore feel more vital than ever?

“If I can be really, really vulnerable… I don’t know,” admits Hayley. “There are days that I feel old and washed up, there are days that I’m on top of the world and there are moments that make all the attention scary, because what if we can’t live up to it.” It’s what she loves about Charli xcx’s ‘Brat’. “It feels like she’s peeling back the curtain on something we all feel.”

“We’ve spent years not fitting in, and that’s always triggered my loser complex from being a weird homeschooled kid, but the important thing is learning how to not get defensive with that underdog mentality,” she explains, with Paramore all about welcoming in the new. “The only thing that’s not welcome is bigotry, but that’s a whole other conversation. I want people to know that if they’re along for the ride and if we do it right, they’ll just feel like they’re growing with us. Hopefully we’re communicating that in a way that’s helpful as well,” she adds.

“As much as the façade of the band can seem so unrelatable, we’re literally three school friends that have been through all these seasons of life together, so hopefully, people can see the humanity of the band,” she continues. “At the end of the day, it’s a dysfunctional family, and who doesn’t have that?”

There’s also the fact that everything about Paramore feels so warm and empathetic, in a world that seems to reward being heartless and selfish. “That comes from realising that there’s really no surviving without each other. That keeps me soft,” says Hayley, taking a deep breath. “Man, when I’m really going through it, I can clam up and my shell gets real thick. Being in the sort of loving relationship that I’m in with Taylor now, I’m learning so much, and it’s not easy. I am a quilt of every awful thing that I’ve ever experienced, seen or done and I think the only thing that keeps me from running from that and hiding away is knowing that there’s no way through this world without staying open,” she offers. “It’s hard sometimes but connecting with other people makes it feel like there is some of a future.” 

It’s taken over twenty years, but Paramore are finally at a point where they’re comfortable fitting in “in our own way,” explains Hayley. “I can’t wait to keep building either,” she adds with a grin. “It feels hopeful and God, I need that.” ■

Taken from the October 2024 issue of Dork.