Paramore

• 1. Introduction

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  Paramore is an American rock band from Franklin, Tennessee, and its story begins with a doubtful bass player. When Jeremy Davis arrived for the first practice, he was stunned to learn that the drummer, Zac Farro, was only fourteen years old. Davis later said, "I had very, very, very, little faith in everyone in the band because of their age." After that first practice, he changed his mind and felt sure the group was onto something. That swing from doubt to conviction repeats across the band's history. Singer Hayley Williams, the Farro brothers and Davis would part ways, reconcile and argue in public over more than two decades. Several questions run through what follows. How did a teenage singer who already belonged to a major label end up in a band on a smaller one? Why did the lineup keep changing, and why did some departures prove temporary? And what did a group that began as after-school friends become once lawsuits, hit records and enormous tours arrived?

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• 2. Franklin Beginnings

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  In 2002, thirteen-year-old Hayley Williams moved from her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, to Franklin, Tennessee. At a weekly supplemental program for home-schooled students, she met two brothers, Josh and Zac Farro. Soon afterward she began taking vocal lessons with Brett Manning.

  Before Paramore there was The Factory, a funk cover band that included Williams, Davis and a friend named Kimee Read. Josh and Zac Farro, meanwhile, had been practicing together after school.

  The Farro brothers and their circle were at first "edgy about the whole female thing" of having Williams as the vocalist. Friendship won out, and she began writing songs for them. Williams remembered her first impression of the group this way: "They were the first people I met who were as passionate about music as I was."

  The band became official in 2004. Josh Farro played lead guitar and sang backing vocals, Zac Farro played drums, Davis played bass and Williams sang lead. Williams' neighbor, Jason Bynum, later joined on rhythm guitar.

  The name Paramore, Williams said, came from the maiden name of the mother of one of their first bass players. When the group learned that the word sounded like paramour, which means "secret lover," they kept the name and chose that spelling.

  Their first song written together was "Conspiracy", which later appeared on their debut album. Williams' parents usually drove the band to shows around the Southeast. Looking back, she said, "I don't think any of us really knew this would turn out to be what it's become."

  One member of that circle, however, already held a contract that the others did not.

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• 3. Two Labels

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  Atlantic Records signed Williams in 2003 as a solo artist, a year before the band formally existed. Her managers, Dave Steunebrink and Richard Williams, had discovered her and given her a production deal, which Atlantic later bought out. Jason Flom eventually signed her to the label.

  Atlantic's original plan was to shape her into a pop singer. Williams pushed back, because she wanted to play alternative rock with a band. Steve Robertson, the band's A&R at Atlantic, told HitQuarters, "She wanted to make sure that we didn't look at her as some straight to Top 40 pop princess. She wanted to make sure that she and her band got the chance to show what they can do as a rock band writing their own songs." Label president Julie Greenwald and her staff decided to go with her wishes. According to the account behind this story, Atlantic was the only label willing to let her stay in a band rather than go solo.

  The label's marketing department then made a surprising call. It decided the band would look better if it were not attached to a major label at all. Paramore would instead release music through Fueled by Ramen, a niche rock label.

  The arrangement split the group in two. Williams stayed signed to Atlantic separately, while the rest of the band had to sign to Fueled by Ramen. Lyor Cohen, the head of Warner Music Group, had already picked Fueled by Ramen as a label worth partnering with. Robertson said that when the band was presented to Fueled by Ramen's CEO, John Janick, "he got the vision of the band immediately."

  Janick traveled to a Taste of Chaos show in Orlando, Florida, to see Paramore play live. In April 2005, after a smaller private performance at a warehouse, the band was signed to both Atlantic Records and Fueled by Ramen.

  The paperwork that day treated the singer and her bandmates differently, and that difference would be quoted back at the band in December 2010.

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• 4. Album About Absence

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  Orlando, Florida, was where the first Paramore album took shape, and where Jeremy Davis walked out. Shortly after the band arrived to record, he left, citing personal reasons. The remaining four members kept going and wrote the song "All We Know" about his departure. They then built the whole album, All We Know Is Falling, around that idea.

  The cover art carried the same grief. Williams explained, "The couch on the cover of All We Know is Falling with no one there and the shadow walking away; it's all about Jeremy leaving us and us feeling like there's an empty space."

  Before touring began, the band brought in John Hembree to play bass. That summer, Paramore appeared on the Shiragirl stage of the 2005 Warped Tour. After the band asked him to come back, Davis returned following five months apart and replaced Hembree.

  The album came out on the 26th of July 2005 and reached number 30 on Billboard's Heatseekers Chart. The first single, "Pressure", had a video directed by Shane Drake, in which the band plays in a warehouse and is sprayed by sprinklers. The song failed to chart. Hunter Lamb replaced Jason Bynum on rhythm guitar in December 2005. Years later, the RIAA certified both the album and "Pressure" Gold.

  In January 2006, the band joined the Winter Go West tour alongside the Seattle bands Amber Pacific and the Lashes. That year Paramore also covered "My Hero" by Foo Fighters for the Sound of Superman soundtrack. At the Warped Tour they sold The Summer Tic EP, available only during the tour.

  The first US headlining tour opened on the 2nd of August 2006 to a sold-out crowd, with This Providence, Cute Is What We Aim For and Hit the Lights in support. Readers of the British magazine Kerrang! voted Paramore "Best New Band" that year.

  The same magazine would soon run a cover story that Williams said contained not one bit of truth.

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• 5. Riot!

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  Hunter Lamb left the group in 2007 to get married, and Paramore carried on as a quartet. Then, before the next album was started, Josh Farro announced that Davis had been expelled for "his lack of work ethic and participation in things that Zac, Hayley and I didn't agree with." After an agreement involving the three remaining members, Davis was reinstated. Taylor York became the new guitarist. He had played in a band with the Farro brothers before they ever met Williams.

  Producer David Bendeth, whose earlier clients included Hawthorne Heights, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and Killswitch Engage, oversaw the recording in New Jersey. Riot! was released on the 12th of June 2007. It entered the Billboard 200 at number 20 and the UK charts at number 24, selling 44,000 units in its first week in the United States. The title meant "a sudden outburst of uncontrolled emotion," a phrase that, the band felt, "summed it all up."

  The first single, "Misery Business", grew out of a teenage grudge. Williams said she wrote it about the girlfriend of Josh Farro, on whom she had a crush at age 13 or 14. Josh did not return her feelings.

  The record turned Paramore into a mainstream name. In August 2007, the "Misery Business" video was the most-streamed video on MTV.com for weeks. The "Crushcrushcrush" video, in which the band plays in a barren desert and is spied upon, debuted on American television on the 11th of October 2007. Riot! went Platinum in the US, and the band was nominated for Best New Artist at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards in February 2008.

  Critics were more divided. A reviewer at NME likened the band to "No Doubt (stripped of all the ska bollocks)", while another writer, Jonathan Bradley, heard little difference between Riot! and the songs of Kelly Clarkson or Avril Lavigne. Alternative Press said Williams "has more charisma than singers twice her age." In October 2007, John Mayer praised her voice on his blog as "The great orange hope", a nod to her hair color. Williams herself named heroines such as Debbie Harry, Siouxsie Sioux and the Shangri-Las.

  Video games and film carried the songs further. "Crushcrushcrush" became a downloadable track in Rock Band in March 2008. "Misery Business" appeared in Guitar Hero World Tour, where Williams did motion capture and became an unlockable character. "Decode", released on the 1st of October 2008, was the lead single from the film Twilight.

  Success came with strain. The Kerrang! cover piece focused on Williams as the band's main attraction, and she wrote on the band's LiveJournal, "we could've done without a cover piece. sorry, if it offends anyone at Kerrang! but I don't think there was one bit of truth in that article." On the 21st of February 2008, during a European tour, the band canceled six shows because of personal issues. Williams said the break would give them "a chance to get away and work out our personal issues." The band then went home to film the video for "That's What You Get."

  MTV.com reported that the rumors had begun when Josh Farro voiced anger at the media's focus on Williams, a grievance that would return in far sharper form.

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• 6. Losing the Farros

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  Six weeks of pre-production at Emac Studios in Franklin opened work on the third album. It was the first time Paramore had prepared an album without a producer guiding them. Rob Cavallo visited and reassured the band that they were on the right track. They had planned to record in Nashville but instead went to Calabasas, California, with Cavallo in March 2009.

  Brand New Eyes arrived with the single "Ignorance", released on the 7th of July 2009. The album reached number two on the Billboard 200, making it the band's second-highest-charting record. "The Only Exception" became a top-forty single and went platinum in Ireland and the UK. A sold-out 15-date European tour finished at London's Wembley Arena in front of 12,500 people.

  The cracks showed in early 2010. Shortly before the Australian Soundwave Festival, Josh Farro announced his engagement and stayed home to plan his wedding. Taylor York's brother, Justin York, filled in on the tour.

  On the 18th of December 2010, a message on Paramore.net said Josh and Zac Farro were leaving the band. Josh posted a statement on his Blogger that called Paramore "a manufactured product of a major-label." He accused Williams of being manipulated by her management and her parents and of treating the group as her solo project. Her bandmates, he said, were "riding on the coattails of her dream."

  On the 30th of December 2010, MTV News interviewed Williams, York and Davis in Franklin. They confirmed many of Farro's points, notably the contract split. They also called the statement irrelevant and said they had already addressed many of his criticisms over the years.

  Faith was part of the story too. The band members had once identified as Christians, and Josh Farro told the BBC, "Our faith is very important to us. It's obviously going to come out in our music because if someone believes something, then their worldview is going to come out in anything they do. But we're not out here to preach to kids, we're out here because we love music." He later cited differing views on Christianity among himself, his brother and Williams as one reason for leaving. In a 2022 interview, Williams described herself, York and Zac Farro as being "at different stages of unravelling their relationship to faith."

  On the 10th of January 2011, Williams told MTV that new music would come in 2011 and that the style would likely shift while keeping the core sound. In the Los Angeles studio with Cavallo, the band recorded "Monster" for the Transformers: Dark of the Moon soundtrack. It came out on the 3rd of June 2011 and was the first song without the Farro brothers.

  In October 2011, Paramore announced the Singles Club, a plan to release a new song each remaining month of the year. The songs were sold only through the band's website. "Renegade" premiered the day of the announcement, followed by "Hello Cold World" on the 7th of November and "In the Mourning" on the 5th of December.

  In 2011, Josh Farro formed a band called Novel American, and Zac Farro joined it later. His time away from Paramore would last until 2017.

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• 7. Third Exit, Second Wind

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  In April 2012, Justin Meldal-Johnsen was announced as producer of the fourth album. Ilan Rubin, a former Nine Inch Nails drummer, was confirmed as the session drummer. The record, titled simply Paramore, was released on the 5th of April 2013 and became the band's first number one album on the US Billboard 200. It also topped the charts in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.

  The single "Ain't It Fun", released on the 4th of February 2014, became the band's highest-charting song in the United States. It won Best Rock Song at the 57th Annual Grammy Awards, the first Grammy win for Paramore, with Williams and York credited as songwriters. A deluxe edition in November 2014 included a remake of "Hate to See Your Heart Break" with Joy Williams, the band's first collaboration on a song.

  On the 14th of December 2015, Jeremy Davis left Paramore for the third and final time. In March 2016 he entered a legal fight with the band, claiming he was entitled to the benefits of a business partnership as a co-owner alongside Williams. That claim was quickly dismissed. He then pursued Williams and York for breach of contract, seeking ownership and authorship of songs on the self-titled record, including "Ain't It Fun", along with a share of their earnings from the album. He reached a settlement with the band in May 2017.

  Williams later said she suffered from depression after Davis left and after her divorce from Chad Gilbert. In an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1 Radio, she called it "torment" and said she "didn't laugh for a long time." In 2015 she privately left the band for a short period, leaving York as its only remaining member.

  On the 19th of January 2016, Williams announced that the fifth album was being written. In June, social media pictures showed Zac Farro and producer Meldal-Johnsen together, and a photo of him behind a drum set confirmed he was recording drums. He said at the time he had not rejoined the band. Yet on the 2nd of February 2017, the band announced he would return as official drummer.

  On the 19th of April 2017, Paramore released "Hard Times" as the lead single from After Laughter, which came out on the 12th of May 2017. Further singles included "Told You So", "Fake Happy", "Rose-Colored Boy" and "Caught in the Middle." The sound leaned toward new wave and synth-pop. The album peaked in the top ten.

  On the 7th of September 2018, Williams told a concert crowd that the band would play "Misery Business" "for the last time for a really long time." The cause was a line in the second verse that people perceived as sexist.

  The band reversed that decision in 2022, when its festival headline slots became some of its first live shows since that night.

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• 8. Independence and Hiatus

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  On the 11th of May 2020, Williams hinted at a return to a more guitar-driven sound. She said, "We've found ourselves listening to a lot of older music that we grew up being inspired by." By January 2022, the band was in the studio on its sixth album, described as more "guitar heavy."

  On the 22nd of October 2022, Paramore headlined the newly founded When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas alongside My Chemical Romance. That October they also headlined the Austin City Limits Festival in Texas, on the 9th and 16th of the month. The lead single "This Is Why" came out on the 28th of September 2022, and the album followed on the 10th of February 2023. Its sound moved toward post-punk and dance-punk. In November 2022, the band had swapped the cover of its 2013 self-titled album for a picture of Williams from behind.

  On the 27th of March 2023, Paramore opened the first show of Taylor Swift's Eras Tour in Glendale, Arizona. From the 9th of May to the 20th of August 2024, they opened the entire European leg.

  In late September 2023, the band began teasing a remix project by posting audio snippets on its official Discord server. Re: This Is Why was announced on the 2nd of October and released on the 6th of October 2023. It was described as "almost a remix album" and featured reworked, remixed and rewritten versions of the new songs plus an unreleased B-side demo.

  The 66th Annual Grammy Awards, held on the 4th of February 2024, gave Paramore two wins. This Is Why took Best Rock Album, making Paramore the first female-fronted rock band to win that award. The title track won Best Alternative Music Performance. The band was also nominated for Best International Group at the 2024 BRIT Awards.

  Offstage, the mood had turned strange. On the 27th of December 2023, Paramore wiped its social media accounts, and the website became inaccessible. A week later the band canceled a co-headlining appearance at iHeartRadio's Alter Ego festival, set for the 13th of January 2024, "due to unforeseen circumstances." Fall Out Boy took its place, and Stereogum reported that the label contract had expired.

  A24 announced a tribute album for the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense, with Paramore's cover of "Burning Down The House" as the lead track. It was released as a single on the 31st of January 2024. On the 10th of February 2024, the band was named an ambassador for Record Store Day and confirmed it would continue as an independent band after its contract with Atlantic Records ended. A video for "Thick Skull" followed on the 1st of March.

  On the 25th of July 2025, a deluxe digital edition of All We Know Is Falling marked its 20th anniversary. On the 5th of September 2025, amid breakup rumors, Williams announced that Paramore was "taking a break" following the release of her third solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.

  In a September 2024 interview with Dork, Williams had said the band had already started making new music, with demos made before the Swift tour, so the break begins with unfinished songs already on the shelf.

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