However you may or may not feel about Paramore, you can't help but admire the tenacity of its spunky lead singer, Hayley Williams. At a time when her peers were crushing on the latest teen idol, Williams was on her way to becoming one. And while most 16-year-old girls are focused on getting their driver's license and shopping for poofy prom gowns, Williams was fronting a band who were signed to a recording contract and heading out on the road to share a concert stage alongside bands like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.
What began in 2004 as an after-school music project between vocalist/keyboardist Hayley Williams and brothers Josh and Zac Farro on lead guitar and drums respectively, has evolved into one of the hottest alt rock/emo-pop punk bands on the charts today. In the six years since Paramore's inception, they have released three studio albums (All We Know Is Falling in 2005; Riot! in 2007; brand new eyes in 2009), two live albums and one EP, and have had two songs included on the soundtrack to the wildly popular Stephenie Meyer's vampire saga, Twilight. To date Paramore have moved over 4 million albums worldwide and recently sold out London's Wembley Arena in a matter of hours, where the likes of Zeppelin and Queen have graced the stage. "I love doing this," Williams insists. "If you don't work hard and love it, you drown in all the other bull***t that's coming out. You have to work hard."
Hayley Williams, originally from Meridian, Mississippi, moved to Franklin, Tennessee, a town just outside of Nashville, after her mother and stepfather began having marital problems. She and her mother moved in with friends whose daughter sang in country bars, as many people do in the Nashville area, and although she loathed country music, Williams, who had begun taking vocal lessons in Franklin, began singing in bars too.
Music soon became a welcome distraction for Williams who was not well liked in her new public school. When vicious rumors began circulating about her for befriending an equally isolated classmate who happened to be in a band, Williams quit school. She was 13 years old.
Her mother then enrolled Hayley in a private church-run school where she met the Farro brothers, they with a budding band. Williams began hanging out with Josh and Zac after school, writing songs with them and when she joined their band, she brought along bassist Jeremy Davis with whom she sang in a funk cover band named The Factory. Calling themselves Paramore, the band later added Williams's neighbor Jason Bynum on rhythm guitar. Bynum eventually left the band and was replaced by Hunter Lamb, who himself left when he married. Paramore carried on as a quartet for a time after Lamb's departure before just recently adding rhythm guitarist Taylor York to their lineup.
Success came quickly for Paramore. Within 18 months of forming, the band were signed to the Florida label Fueled by Ramen and made the leap from playing local hangouts to landing a slot on the 2005 Vans Warped Tour. The flame-haired, headbanging Williams, armed with all her teenage angst, railed against phoniness in all its many forms with a commanding stage presence that won over audiences worldwide. "It takes a girl who'll grow b***s for an hour and a half," she says of fronting Paramore.
With the huge success of their second studio album, Riot!, and with so much media attention focused on the pint-sized Williams, resentments began mounting within the band. Rumors swirled about a possible break up amid cancelled shows. Paramore came off the road and retreated from the music scene to try and work through their issues. They approached the writing of their latest album, brand new eyes, as a therapeutic exercise to help them hash out their differences. With everything on the line, all the junk out on the table, band members were able to have honest conversations that worked to resolve their internal rift and remind them of why they started the band in the first place. The writing and recording of brand new eyes proved to be a cathartic experience for Paramore. Released in September 2009, the album came in second only to Barbra Streisand's Love is the Answer, her first studio release in four years. Paramore have toured tirelessly over the years and last summer supported the upcoming release of brand new eyes as special guests of No Doubt, who were on their first tour after a five-year hiatus. This August, Paramore have second billing at the UK's Reading and Leeds Festivals.
Hayley Williams is over the moon with the success of Paramore and optimistic about the band's future. "I look back at old pictures and videos, and think, ‘What did they see in us?’ I looked like a prepubescent boy. We were so lucky," she says. While luck may've played a small part in their success, it was a work ethic and self-discipline beyond their young years, coupled with a little business savvy and enormous talent, that got Paramore where they are today. Williams keeps a LiveJournal blog which allows her to correct any inaccurate press about her or the band as it comes up, an exchange that helps Paramore preserve their wholesome image while nurturing the bond between the band and their impressive fan base.
Paramore's latest single from brand new eyes, "The Only Exception," is due out April 12th. The band will be out on the road in the coming months, bouncing back and forth between the States and Europe from mid-April through September of this year. Check out Hayley Williams's LiveJournal for news on Paramore and visit the band's website at www.paramore.net for upcoming tour dates.
