“From the outside, ‘Paramore’ was our most successful record,” says Hayley NME. “We won a Best Rock Song Grammy for ‘Ain’t It Fun’ and I got engaged – all this insanely cool shit was happening.” Despite the success it wasn’t the best time in her life. “What always amazed me,” she says, “was that when the lights went up – even if I could still feel the heaviness – real joy would set in. It was confusing! Only now, in hindsight, can I understand. I was just starting to learn that as humans, one of the toughest and most vital lessons is: learn to hold both of those extremes. Make space for your deepest sorrow and your brightest joy. All of it can happen together.” Click HERE to read the interview.
“I remember walking into Good Vibrations, a record shop in Mississippi, with my dad when I was about eight. I heard [British soul band] Sade for the first time and that moment has never left me. Sade’s grooves are so sexy, but they’re tough: there was an overt feminine nature to them, but there were teeth, too.”
“Bluebeard changed my entire perception of why I had to leave a toxic situation and why I needed to figure out where my voice was coming from – what it sounded like, what it tasted like. People don’t really like angry women. But angry women have brought about so much wonderful change for society. It gets judged so quickly, but women’s rage has been such a catalyst for beautiful things, and it doesn’t need to be depicted as monstrous.”
“As a woman I felt like it was important to take responsibility and make a bold statement like that,” Hayley says reffering to Misery Business. “Now I’m doing this project which is so rooted in my discovery of my own femininity. I feel like giving people a break to think about why we made that choice was the first step. We grew up in such a fun scene, but I don’t think a lot of the girls realised what we were inundated with day in, day out. I don’t hate anybody for it – I was part of it. I just want to grow from it.”