Hayley Williams joined Q’s Tom Power on Q’s podcast to talk about Paramore’s new album, This Is Why, and her struggles with mental health. She discusses their decision for coming back and their decision for taking some time off. Some quotes from the conversation are pasted below. Here you can read a part of the interview and here listen to if – it’s nearly one hour long talk.
“Zac says that I just DM’d him on Instagram one day. I mean, we were all quarantined. We hung out a little bit because we were in each other’s bubbles, obviously.… I DM’d him and I was like, “I’m ready” — and that’s all I said. And he was like, “All right, I feel like that probably means we’re back at it.”
“I’d done two solo records, and I think I did those to prove to myself that I could do it, and to hell with whatever people have said about Paramore and it being a glorified solo act. I wanted to show people that, actually, me doing a solo thing probably sounds a lot different than Paramore — and it did. But then I just missed being in my home, you know? And creatively, Paramore is my home. And thankfully, I wasn’t the only one that felt that way because maybe then it wouldn’t have happened. But all three of us were like, “Yeah, it feels right.”
“I think I’ve limited myself because it scares me what people are going to say about the band or about me character-wise. I don’t know, you see people say shit like, “It’s the Hayley Williams Show” or whatever.… The subject matter of Thick Skull is like: what if all of that was true? Would it even matter?… So it’s nice to hear you talk about, in context, that’s how the album starts and then that’s also, in a way, how the album ends.”
