Beloved rock band Paramore has been in the game for 20 years, soundtracking millennials’ lives from adolescence to adulthood; from Warped Tour parking lots to office cubicles. It’s not just one-sided, though—as Paramore’s fans have grown up, so have lead singer Hayley Williams, guitarist Taylor York, and drummer Zac Farro: a trio of outsiders-turned-pop culture icons. And since part of growing up means grappling with the (often fucked-up) world around you, it’s no surprise that the band’s sixth album, This Is Why (Feb. 10), is their most biting, fearless, and aggressive work to date, as Paramore channel their rage into a tenacious call for political action and self-reflection.
They certainly had plenty of material to mine. This Is Why is Paramore’s first album in nearly six years, following 2017’s After Laughter, on which Williams’ impassioned rage was shrewdly mollified by bright-sounding ’80s synth-pop. That record largely looked inward, as Williams ruminated on the depression, anxiety, and loneliness of being in your twenties, albeit with some vibrant instrumentation cushioning the fall. This Is Why drops the candy coating, stirring post-punk, new-wave, and alt-rock into the mix; the band has cited Foals and Bloc Party as influences. The result is a tight, 10-track effort that blends the band’s past eras—from the teen angst of RIOT! all the way to the quiet confidence of Williams’ 2020 solo LP Petals for Armor—and marries nostalgia with the starkness of our 2023 lives.
Title track “This Is Why” highlights the agoraphobia and introversion that can creep up from living in such a politically charged time. “The News” takes that a step further, as Williams sings about the conflict of feeling like she should be doing more than sitting behind a computer digesting countless bad news stories, but knowing she can’t actually do much to change things. On “Big Man, Little Dignity,” the singer aims her frustration at vile, sexist men, singing with an audible eye roll, “You’re so smooth, it’s pitiful / You know you can get away with anything, so that’s exactly what you do.”
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Millennial burnout has clearly been on the band members’ minds—something Williams confirmed in a recent interview while discussing the new album’s themes.
“I look at the internet, the news, and it feels like [we’re in] Lord Of The Flies,” she told The Guardian. “When I was writing the lyrics, I was like, this social experiment—the internet—has been going wrong since day one. It exposes and exploits the general population’s blatant disregard for nuance. Some days I feel so over it, almost to the point of apathy. But that’s the struggle—that you have to fight.”
On This Is Why, that fight also turns inward, with Williams not just commenting on the outside world, but also the ways in which she internalizes the tumult around her. On the groovy, disco-adjacent “Running Out of Time,” she vents about a culture obsessed with instant gratification, rattling off the “coulda woulda shoulda’s” on her to-do list before deciding with resignation, “Intentions only get you so far / What if I’m just a selfish prick?” The bouncy, cloying “C’est Comme Ca” (which translates to “Just the Way It Is”) is equally as caustic: “In a single year, I’ve aged one hundred / My social life, a chiropractic appointment,” she sing-talks on the opening lines. On “Figure 8,” Paramore sound the closest to their oldest mid-aughts selves with a mix of pounding drums and spinning guitars as Williams angrily sneers, “All for your sake / Become the very thing I hate / I lost my way / Spinning in an endless figure 8.”
The album closes with a trio of ballads: the powerfully sung “Liar,” the nostalgic “Crave,” and the self-reflective “Thick Skull.” Of those, “Crave” is the most arresting, as Williams contemplates Paramore’s two-decade run, which has seesawed between the high highs of mainstream fame and the low lows of internal band drama. Closing track “Thick Skull” ends on a note of insecurity and guilt; clearly, it’s not just overconsuming news that’s burning (and bumming) Williams out, but also her own past mistakes. “I am attracted to broken people,” she laments. “I pick ‘em up and now my fingers are bleeding / And it looks like my fault.”
With the resurgence of acts like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Avril Lavigne, it would’ve been easy for Paramore to capitalize on pop-punk’s newfound popularity with an album of catered nostalgia bait. So you’ve got to hand it to Williams, York, and Farro for bringing something new to the table and managing to grow up with their fans. While much of This Is Why serves as a listening ear to those frustrated by the current political and social climate, it’s also a reminder that unleashing your rage can feel damn good, too—a lesson this band has imparted on fans for 20 years now. Paramore would be the first to admit they’re not getting older or wisening up easily—they’re in the business of misery, remember?—but at least they’re doing it.
