They’re No. 1: Catching up with Hayley Williams about Paramore’s chart-topping new album

They’ve sold millions of albums worldwide, inspired thousands of fans and influenced hundreds of bands (as well as appeared on the cover of AP four times, including this month). But there was one achievement PARAMORE had yet to unlock: earning a No. 1 album on the Billboard Top 200. All that changed today, however, when Paramore entered the charts at No. 1 with a whopping 106,000 copies sold. We quickly caught up with frontwoman HAYLEY WILLIAMS to get her thoughts on her band’s victory.

INTERVIEW: Scott Heisel

First off, congratulations on debuting at No. 1! You’re the first band to debut at No. 1 while on the cover of AP since AFI released Decemberunderground in 2006. What does this accomplishment mean to you?

I still can’t believe it. If anything, this means to me that we did the right thing by not giving up. We stuck with it and so did our fans. Continue Reading

Growing Up on a Musical Diet of Presley and Blondie

Hayley Williams of Paramore on Her New Album

The Tennessee pop-punk band Paramore, fronted by Hayley Williams, is attempting a reintroduction. It has to. Its self-titled fourth album, just released on Fueled by Ramen, follows two years of turmoil in which the brothers Josh and Zac Farro, the nine-year-old band’s founding guitarist and drummer, quit. On his blog Josh Farro called Paramore “a manufactured product of a major label” and accused Ms. Williams of hogging the spotlight. She stood up for her band and its authenticity on MTV. (Zac Farro later said his brotherhad regrets about the post.)

Now the remaining members — Ms. Williams, the Tang-haired singer and songwriter; the guitarist and songwriter Taylor York; and the bassist Jeremy Davis — have regrouped as a trio, working with the producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen, who has recorded with Beck and M83. “He let us be the band that we needed to be, and kind of weather our own storms,” Ms. Williams said. “And we found when we pushed ourselves and were a little bit less afraid of our influences as musicians, the boundaries were a lot farther.”

“If you haven’t heard any Paramore albums,” she added, “start with this one and not the first one.”

In the last year Ms. Williams, 24, also moved away from home in Nashville, renting an apartment in Los Angeles, partly so she can be closer to her boyfriend, Chad Gilbert, guitarist of the rock band New Found Glory. But she’s eager to be on the road again, even on the smaller stages where she began.

“Obviously it wasn’t roses going in a van for a lot of years; it was hard work,” she said. “I remember my butt just being numb all the time from just sitting in the van. But I’m a supernostalgic person. It’s an old energy that’s really great to feel.”

She spoke with Melena Ryzik from a tour stop in London, about the near-split and a family run-in with Elvis Presley. These are excerpts from the conversation.

Q. How was writing without Josh and Zac?

A. We started writing, and we were doing things that we had done before, and it was so boring. There was no inspiration. I remember bringing Taylor a random melody that I had saved in my voice memos, and we turned it into this song called “True.” And it was like, this kind of sounds like Paramore. We had 23 songs that all sounded like they came from different parents. We’re two men down, and something unpredicted [had to happen]. Continue Reading

In December 2010, Paramore members Josh and Zac Farro abruptly left the group, leaving a lot of questions hanging in the air. Would they continue on? Would charismatic singer Hayley Williams embark on a solo career? Would the band’s sound change completely?

Today, those questions are finally answered. The just-released Paramore, the band’s fourth album, pushes the now-trio’s vision forward. Though the band—Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and bassist Jeremy Davis—hasn’t entirely left its snotty pop-punk roots behind, they’ve fully embraced elements of New Wave, garage rock, and bubbly electro-pop.

The key to Paramore‘s coherence is Williams, whose voice has picked up more colors and whose lyrics are at their most direct and expansive on the new album. EW caught up with Williams via phone a few weeks back, where she talked about her bouts of writers’ block, the weirdness involved in choosing a producer, and the importance of the Warped Tour. And be sure to check out their just-released video for “Still Into You” at the bottom.

Entertainment Weekly: What was the first song that came together for Paramore?

Hayley: “Proof” was the first song that we came up with. It was one of the first sets of lyrics I came up with, and I had this melody idea for it and I took it to Taylor, and like the next day we had the song. So that one came really easily, but then we had two and a half months of the worst writers’ block you could possibly imagine. That’s when we wrote the interludes. We needed something to laugh about and soften the blow that we couldn’t write any songs that we loved. And it was weird, because as soon as those interludes were done, the songs started happening. We realized we don’t need to take ourselves so seriously. Continue Reading

Let’s get one thing out of the way now: Paramore is a trio that, despite all odds (lineup changes, highly publicized rumors of inner-circle turmoil), will likely persevere. And it’s because they are constantly finding new ways to elevate their sound: from the teen-punk angst of their 2007 breakthrough Riot! to folkier terrain on 2009′s Brand New Eyes to, well, now. Leading the charge is Paramore’s tenacious, citrus-haired 24-year-old front woman, Hayley Williams. Their new self-titled album is out now, and let’s just say it bears the mark of tenacity I just mentioned. I got the chance to catch Hayley a month ago while she was en route to South by Southwest, where she and the guys would be performing along the likes of Tegan & Sara and newcomers Kitten and Twenty One Pilots. We chatted about life on the road, girl power, and of course, Hayley’s pop culture obsessions. Tune in!

As a band, you’ve been through a lot of changes in your career and you’ve all experienced success from a young age. What holds you together?

Hayley: One of the only constants in our lives has been the three of us. This process of making this new album was really a test of patience with ourselves and endurance as artists. It was quite telling; by the end of it, I felt like we’d won some marathon. It was tough, but it was worth it. Continue Reading

After a turbulent couple of years, Paramore is officially putting the past firmly behind them with today’s release of Paramore, the band’s first album since the acrimonious departure of the Farro Brothers. The patron saints of the Warped Tour generation (as our own Jim Shearer dubbed them) have already knocked Justin Timberlake off the top of the iTunes charts, as their massive fanbase has been downloading their own official copy of the album in droves today. Before the band taped their segment on Big Morning Buzz Live, we were able to grab a few minutes with Hayley Williams, Jeremy Davis and Taylor York in a quiet conference room where we talked about everything from shadow puppets to Black Flag tattoos to their current “weirdly emotional” state of mind.

VH1 TUNER: So, I know that it’s been a difficult couple of years for you guys on a personal and professional level, but your new album is out today! Hayley, you stated on your Twitter on Sunday night that you’re getting “weirdly emotional” about its release. Can you expound on that a bit, and why this release is stirring up feelings for you that you consider kind of “weird”?

HAYLEY WILLIAMS: One of our friends who shot our cover of AP texted me a super encouraging message for us all, and it just kinda caused me to think back on everything. We talk about the last two years all the time, and how crazy fast that it’s flown by, and I really was just thinking about the way each song happened, and the things we had to go through to get to that point. I just feel like sometimes you see things crystal clear, and then other times it’s foggy, but either way, you just kinda have to go with the flow. But last night, I felt like I really understood that every record that we’ve made, and all the things we’ve been though as a band, we had to get through them. We had to do those things. I feel like this record is our band’s purpose, and the reason that we all met in the first place. I feel like it’s the most important thing I have ever been a part of. So, yeah, it was weirdly emotional. (Laughs) Continue Reading

‘PARAMORE’ (FUELED BY RAMEN / ATLANTIC)

There’s a line approximately halfway through ‘Fast In My Car’ – the first track on ‘Paramore’ – that sums up everything we’ve come to learn about its creators as of late. Namely: “No one’s the same as they used to be”. Rarely has a truer word been spoken, let alone so quickly. Nearly four years after the multi-million selling ‘brand new eyes’ was first unleashed, Paramore are finally back on the grid and riding high after a period that nearly broke them – several years older and two men down. And as the song in question tells us, the trio have stepped back into the sunlight in a much different form to the unit that temporarily slipped into the shadows. Having barely set foot in front of an audience for the past two years, let alone in front of a camera, the band’s self-titled fourth album quickly reveals that in re-emerging, Paramore have done so in a very, very different form. Continue Reading

Scott Heisel, an Alternative Press journalist, posted his own review of Paramore’s new album, ‘Paramore’. You can read it below, do you guys agree with what he said?

It’s not a huge secret regarding what Paramore went through in the past few years: The Farro brothers, guitarist Josh and drummer Zac, quit the band in 2010, taking with them the primary source of Paramore’s songwriting. An intense creative rebuilding period followed, eventually resulting in what you hear on Paramore, the band’s fourth album, a sprawling, 17-song, 64-minute monster that is without a doubt the finest music these three artists—vocalist Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and bassist Jeremy Davis—have ever made. Continue Reading