Paramore’s upcoming album is their “most political”.
Vocalist Hayley Williams has revealed that social issues crop up on ‘This Is Why’ on songs such as ‘The News’ and ‘You First’.
She explained in an interview with Entertainment Weekly: “It’s our most political album in the sense that, I would expect or I would hope, any single person can find something that they fully understand that they’re directly impacted by when it comes to social politics or otherwise.
“And I don’t think that you should have to be a minority or a marginalised person to have enough empathy to see it and to not only see it, but to try and figure out what the step is that you should take. Doing that type of soul searching and also paying enough attention, it just naturally brings up a lot in a person. I know for us it has over the last four years, and we’ve talked about it ad nauseam to the point of exhaustion where it feels like you almost become apathetic from realising how far down deep the rabbit hole goes.”
Williams hopes the album – which is released on Friday (10.02.23) – will provide an “escape” amid challenging times.
Hayley added: “The album explores more than just the surface level of that tension.
“I tried lyrically to express what was going on internally for me as a human being living on this Earth in this time. The album reflects something of what all of us are experiencing currently and the anxiety of it. But there’s also the hope that our album and, of course, our shows can be a wonderful release for people, an escape or a shelter from what’s happening. It’s balancing the acknowledgement and acceptance of shit is not okay and something needs to be done, and then also having a five-minute time out every now and then just to give yourself the opportunity to recharge and protect your energy.”
Williams insisted that while they can’t “fix everything” wrong in the world, they want to show their “solidarity” with the young people growing up in these times and try and make “some sort of change”.
She added: “It’s hard to care about anything now without caring about everything, and it is very tiring to care about everything.
“But that’s just where we’re at. We all really feel for young people that are coming up and coming of age in this world as we know it, because if I’m overwhelmed as an almost 34-year-old woman, I can’t imagine. We’re just trying to reflect that and also speak to it from a position of we know that we can’t fix everything, but we still want to speak to it. We still want to show solidarity and try to use our platform and our opportunities to make some sort of change, whether it’s a big one or a little change.”
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