Chart-topper Hayley Williams talks depression, her ‘growing-up years’ and Paramore’s stunning return to form
The trio’s latest European jaunt includes a sell-out show at London’s O2 Arena tonight
THERE’S Paramore mania in Barcelona, where the Nashville band are due to play their first-ever gig in Spain.
It is day one of Tour 3, the trio’s latest European jaunt, which includes a sell-out show at London’s O2 Arena tonight.
At Barcelona’s Sant Jordi Club, excited fans line the streets around the huge sports centre next to the Olympic Stadium.
And backstage, things are not much calmer.
The crew are busy setting up the stage while singer Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York and drummer Zac Farro are rounded up for a meet-and-greet with fans.
“We are excited to be back on the road,” says Williams, 29, lighting a candle in the dressing room. “I’m dying to get out there and perform some new songs we’ve never played before.
“When I’m not singing and am in the empty venues listening at the sound check, I feel so spoiled that I sing with these guys.
“Obviously they are my friends but they are the best musicians I’ve ever seen. And as a band, we are on the best form ever.”
Last year Paramore released fifth album After Laughter to great reviews.
As a band, they have faced problems since forming as teenagers 14 years ago. But the past 24 months have been the toughest so far.
Williams revealed she was battling depression in 2015. Then her marriage broke down and there were issues with the band’s line-up.
All these experiences helped inspire the new songs, including single Hard Times.
“We usually look back at an album and what events influenced it,” Williams says as we sit down to chat.
“But with this one, we are still living through those things. I’m not even sure what I’m going through mentally right now. That’s why some songs transcend a certain situation.
“But sometimes I feel we are playing songs with words I listen to and realise that I still feel the exact same way. This album is like therapy.”
The last time I met Williams was in 2013 for the band’s self-titled album. That came in the wake of a messy split when Williams’ guitarist ex-boyfriend Josh Farro and his brother Zac quit the band in December 2010.
On his blog, Josh claimed they were leaving due to controlling behaviour by Williams and their record label. He accused the rest of the band of “riding on the coat-tails of her dream”.
Paramore continued as a trio — with Williams, York and bassist Jeremy Davis.
In 2015 came more upheaval when Davis left and sued the others, claiming he was owed songwriting credits and royalties.
The band settled with Davis before the release of After Laughter.
But in another twist, Zac rejoined last February. York, 28, says: “Zac and I reconnected. We’ve been friends since we were young and he came back just to play drums on the new album.
“Then we asked him to rejoin and he was very honest and said he would come back only if he could contribute more. We were happy with that.”
Zac, 27, had been making his own music as HalfNoise and is now writing for Paramore.
“He showed up at my house every day and it felt like the support I’d never had musically,” says York.
“Then we wrote some of our favourite songs on the whole record. He started the song Grudges, then I came in and helped him. I had Pool but couldn’t finish it and he came and helped me. Then we wrote Rose-Colored Boy together.”
For Zac, it was a case of stepping out of brother Josh’s shadow and establishing his own position in the band.
He says: “Rejoining was like getting re-acquainted with someone familiar but it had to be a whole new entity.
“I’m very loyal to my family, so I had to question whether I was betraying my brother.
“But it didn’t feel like the same band any more. We are all older, different. I was scared but soon we realised how we all needed each other.
“It gave us a new confidence. At the start of the band, I was hurt because I felt my ideas were garbage.”
For Williams, York’s Eighties pop-style music pushed her to up her game with her own writing.
She says: “At first I was so intimidated because this was like the best things I’d heard, ever.
“I had to write the lyrics and at first I didn’t know if I could.”
Williams reckons After Laughter is the album from which they have learned the most, “not only in emotional terms but musically too”.
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She says: “It worked with Taylor co-producing with Justin Meldal-Johnsen again — like on the last album.
“Then Zac brought things that he had learned in HalfNoise to Paramore. Then there was me in the middle of all that, constantly very inspired and messing around more in the studio with instruments.
“It was an incredible learning experience for us. I knew we wanted to grow and change musically. This new music inspired me so much.
“When I heard Grudges, it felt like The Smiths or The Cure, who I am a fan of, so I felt an ease about this new sound.
“Then Rose-Colored Boy was a dream. We were being propelled into a brand-new dimension and I love where we’ve gone.”
Throughout all this, the three friends have been there for each other.
In particular, Williams says she was helped by her bandmates during her break-up with New Found Glory’s Chad Gilbert, who she married in February 2016, after nearly eight years together.
Talking about her subsequent divorce, she says: “I do really feel like the band just saved me. It gave me a place to put my purpose, something to look forward to.
“Having honest conversations with my friends is being able to take all the defences away and any personal agendas. That is something I’ve always really cherished — in my friendship with Taylor, especially.”
The tight-knit trio have also learned to do only those interviews they want to.
In the past year they have done just three in the UK — this one included.
York says: “We’ve just learned to say no. Unless it’s something we really believe in or we are ready for, then what is the point of this until we are ready?”
Williams feels she has learned also to be a more understanding person.
She says struggling with her own depression made her realise how she could have sympathised more in the past with York, who has also battled the condition.
Williams adds: “Being really honest, I don’t think I was as empathetic as I should have been in the past to Taylor — and my mom, even.
“These people have struggled with this in front of me. I just thought, ‘No, you just wake up and you choose to be happy’.
“But now I’ve done more therapy and taken the time to really think about the kind of person I want to be, it’s helped me understand.
“With the last self-titled album, Zac and Josh had left and Taylor and I were hurt.
“We were sad and didn’t really know how to show it. So my way of dealing with things for a very long time was to put on the cape and just be this powerful person.
“I’ve learned from being a frontwoman that you’ve just got to go up there and do it.
“I mean, just look at the outfits I wore in the past — like Latex outfits and Frankenstein boots! I just wanted to be so tough.
“But with this record, I went through things I’d never felt before. I realised I couldn’t use my armour to get through it.
“I didn’t feel like that person any more and that made me feel ashamed for a minute.
“Like our song Fake Happy, I had to be honest. I had to take it all off and bleed it out for a really long time.
“It allowed me to go back and think about how I treat my friendships and be more compassionate.
“I apologised to T (York) and admitted I didn’t really understand what it felt like until I also went through it.”
As our interview time comes to an end, the trio agree their turbulent recent past has been their “growing-up years”.
But now on their fifth album, they are still all in their twenties.
I don't feel like the person I was any more
Hayley Williams
It has been hard coming of age in the spotlight and they admit social media has not always been kind.
“It can be dangerous,” admits Williams. “It’s important to have restraint.
“You have to be yourself, not the person some fans think you are. Idle Worship was an important song on this record for those reasons.
“It stated who I was and how I felt people saw me. It helped me shed that old person once and for all.
“The biggest learning for us — which has allowed us to still be here and playing these incredible shows — is that we’ve learned how to support each other and communicate.
“We have come out of some rough things.
“Looking back, it’s crazy in all senses of the word. Crazy-cool and it’s crazy-weird.
“But the fact we have come through has given us hope.
“It’s shown us the power of Paramore’s music.”
- Paramore play London’s O2 Arena tonight. After Laughter is out now.