Hayley Williams says that Paramore bonded over “trauma.”
The 34-year-old singer is best known as the lead vocalist, primary songwriter, and keyboardist of the rock band – which also currently consists of Zac Farro and Taylor York – and took to social media upon the 10th anniversary of their self-titled chart topper on Wednesday (05.04.23) to reflect that it took “a lot of guts” to make the album after Zac left the band for the first time along with his elder brother Josh.
She wrote on Instagram: “10 years ago we put out a record that took a lot of guts and self-determination to make. Mainly because after losing 2 members of the band there was so much discourse around whether or not the band could make anything worthwhile – let alone stay together.
“The story of Paramore has been rife with reality show-style drama. Well, until the last 6 or 7 years. It’s really great to be able to look back from where we are now, knowing the story didn’t end when some said it would.
If all that led to our Self-Titled album hadn’t happened, we’d be the most boring band of all time. If we hadn’t been forced out of our trauma-bonded comfort zones, we would’ve never known what we might be capable of.”
The ‘Misery Business’ hitmaker went on to thank record producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen for his work with the band after that period for allowing them to “expand” their repertoire before also thanking the fans for “accepting” a different version of Paramore as they continued to release hit albums.
She added: “Thank you Justin Meldal-Johnsen for expanding our musical vocabulary and believing we could be more than a band from one specific scene. And thank you Carlos de la Garza for engineering the shit out of the album. Thank you Ken Andrews of Failure for mixing it, singing backups on it, and being a musical hero to us.
Taylor and I wrote these songs having no idea if people would accept a reformed, more liberated version of Paramore. Our fans not only accepted but championed our rebirth. Thank you for allowing us the room for creative risk and for keeping this story going.
We love you. Paramore forever. H”