Paramore releases new album ‘This is Why’

1/3

Hayley Williams, lead singer of Paramore. The band has released a new album after a six-year hiatus. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 10 (UPI) — Paramore is back. After a six-year hiatus, the emo rock band from Tennessee has returned with a brand-new release This is Why. Lead singer Hayley Williams says the title track was the last song written for the album, summing up the challenges she and her bandmates have gone through since the last release.

“It summarizes the plethora of ridiculous emotions, the rollercoaster of being alive in 2022, having survived even just the last three or four years,” Williams said. “You’d think after a global pandemic of [expletive] biblical proportions and the impending doom of a dying planet, that humans would have found it deep within themselves to be kinder or more empathetic or something.”

This is Why is the band’s first release since 2017’s After Laughter. One of the reasons for that is the trio’s solo projects. Williams did an album called Petals for Armor in 2020, with Paramore’s guitarist Taylor York, who is also her boyfriend. Drummer Zack Farro, released several albums under the name Halfnoise.

But there were other reasons for the hiatus, the band says.

“The entire world went through a traumatic season that we’re still in and recovering from and trying to figure out,” York told Entertainment Weekly. “The world shutting down – gosh, we’ve learned a lot and we all went through a lot. That’s why this record, there’s a lot more aggression than we’ve had in a while.

“There’s different types of an emotional release in certain songs that I don’t think we’ve had in a little bit,” York added. “A lot of that was a product of the times, and not only trying to reflect on what had happened but also taking that long of a break, we were able to rediscover different sides of ourselves musically that was fun to dive into.”

There is an unlikely inspiration for “Running Out Of Time,” one of the songs on the new album. Williams told Apple Music’s Zane Lowe in a clip shared with People that through her friendship with Taylor Swift, she saw what it was like to be organized and prepared, something she says Swift has down pat.

On a visit to her home, Swift showed Williams a gift closet that makes it easier for her to send gifts when she wants to thank people for various things.

“I was like, ‘Oh my God, my life is so not together,”‘ Williams told Lowe. “I was like, ‘I can barely remember to send someone a card or flowers.’ There are still Christmas gifts at my house that I have not sent to my friends just sitting there in the back of my closet.

She added, “But that, I wish that I was the person that felt like I had all my s-together and I was like, ‘Oh, I had some extra time, so I’m just popping by with some flowers.’ That kind of thing, that is my idealized self.”

Paramore will open for Swift on the first night of The Eras tour in Glendale, Ariz., on March 18. Then the band begins a North American tour in support of This is Why at the Spectrum Center in Charlotte, N.C. on May 23.

Watch the full Zane Lowe interview.