Two days after a live tv performence of Rose-Colored Boy on CBC’s The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Paramore explained the meaning behind the song. The message was posted on Twitter.
Rose-Colored Boy is a song about feeling pressured to look at the world with blind optimism when you actually feel very hopeless about the world & your part in it. there is so much social pressure to be (or appear to be) “happy” that we can actually feel shame when we aren’t. Adding shame to sadness is a pretty toxic cocktail. It’s hard enough to deal with sadness, depression, or any type of anxiety without the added societal expectations. It’s important & more healing to meet ppl where they’re at – EMPATHY – than to try & paint everything rosy. Thx the Late Show with Stephen Colbert for letting us perform our song on television. We hope that somewhere out there, staring into a screen, someone was made to feel less alone by the ideas in Rose-Colored Boy.
