Hayley Williams Reflects On Ten Years Of 'Paramore' & 'Reality Show-Style Drama'

It’s been ten years since Paramore released their self-titled fourth album, featuring the mega-successful singles Ain’t It Fun, Still Into You and Now (and some of their best songs, Part II and Future). It also earned them a Grammy Award for Best Rock Song with Ain’t It Fun.

Between 2009’s Brand New Eyes and 2013’s Paramore, the band experienced monumental conflicts, resulting in the departure of brothers Josh (guitar) and Zac Farro (drums) - the latter returned in 2016. 

That turbulent period resulted in much of the media wondering if the band could go on with vocalist Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and bassist Jeremy Davis. 

Davis left the band in 2015, drawing further quarrels between the band members and triggering the reworked album cover to Paramore, which you can see above.

Celebrating ten years of Paramore, Hayley Williams has issued a heartfelt message about the life-changing album. Here’s the full note:

“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.

“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”.

Paramore released their sixth album, This Is Why, in February. This Is Why debuted at the top of the ARIA Albums Chart and the Vinyl Albums Chart in its first week.