Paramore Has Finally Been Getting Their Sunshine, and Hayley Williams Is Taking the Opportunity to Dance in the Light

When I was 13, I was flipping through a teen gossip magazine I had snagged in the grocery store aisle, and came across a quote from Selena Gomez praising Paramore, a band I hadn’t heard of yet. Included was a small photo of the band, and at the center was a girl who had brightly-colored hair. Shortly after, I saw “That’s What You Get” on MTV and realized, “That’s the girl with cool hair!”

When I was 14, I was wearing skinny jeans, black Converse with checkered laces, and my first Paramore shirt from Hot Topic, matching with my best friend as we filmed ourselves on her digital camera singing “Fences” and jumping off the neighborhood swings.

When I was 16, I was spending entire lunch periods defending Hayley Williams from my friends who blamed her for the departure of the Farro brothers. I was adamant that my friends were missing so much important context and didn’t know all the intricacies of Paramore, and were simply regurgitating everything the Internet had already spewed all over Twitter.

When I was 19, I was beaming in the passenger’s seat of my friend’s car, soaring high from the joy of seeing my favorite song “Last Hope” performed live for the first time, completely enraptured with this band that had held my hand through some intense growing pains.

When I was 20, I was sitting quietly in a college class while some of my classmates were discussing their favorite music from middle school and high school, bringing up bands like Linkin Park and My Chemical Romance. Someone made an offhand comment about how glad they are no one mentioned Paramore, and there was a light chorus of scoffing as they all seemed to agree. I kept my eyes down and wrapped my arms around my shirt that read, "Ain't it fun living in the real world?”

When I was 23, I was working the front desk at my old job. I had recently attended my seventh Paramore concert, and naturally, I wrote a long Instagram caption about it. One of my coworkers walks in and says they listened to “Misguided Ghosts” earlier and thought of me. “Really?” I asked delightedly, excited to exist in the same thought as my favorite band. “Yeah,” she replied. “I remember seeing your Instagram post a few weeks ago, and I thought it was funny, because I didn’t think anyone cared about Paramore like that anymore."

I’m 31 now. I’ve seen Paramore 10 times and still listen to their music religiously, spanning from nostalgia-driven All We Know Is Falling playbacks (still one of my favorite debut albums from an artist ever) to 2023’s This Is Why, a record that has spawned numerous hit singles in my home. 

Meanwhile, throughout my time as a diehard Paramore fan, too many rumors and exaggerated tales of the band’s inner turmoil have attached themselves to Paramore’s shadow, particularly feeding greedily on Hayley, since, of course, she was the easy scapegoat for people to project their misplaced misogyny. 

But, recently, I have noticed a shift online and in public discourse about Paramore’s legitimacy as a band. Their talent and musical prowess are obviously something I always easily believed in, but it’s given me a warm sense of pride knowing that everyone else finally seems to be catching onto this mainstream hidden secret. I think there are several reasons this golden age of Paramore has culminated, including:

• The open reckoning of sexism in the music industry, particularly the pop-punk scene, where Paramore first found their footing

• The band’s ability to stand out amidst their mid-2000s peers, reinventing themselves with new sounds and musical styles that depart from their roots

• Their increasingly active participation in their community and commitment to creating a safe environment for fans, their concerts becoming well-known for inclusion

No matter the reasoning, sometime in the last six to seven years, people were finally taking notice of Paramore’s artistry, like the fact that their albums have consistently been lauded by critics, or the fact that Hayley and her iconic, ever-changing hair and effervescent makeup have seemed to follow a generation around for decades now, making a noticeable splash on everyone’s consciousness. But, since the band’s fifth album, After Laughter, was released in 2017, Paramore has felt new again. Every concert is a party, the band dancing around the stage with infectious joy. Maybe people were finally taking notice of this joy and started singing along.