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And for a while, thats what she did.
I wonder if its simply because Im a woman?
I could have had a dick and the story wouldnt have gotten any traction.
Farro and his brother Zac leftthe bandin 2010, and over the years Paramore went through multiple member changes.
(Zac returned in 2017.)
After a tour in 2018, Williams decided that she, too, needed a break.
She admitted herself to an intense therapy clinic.
she says, smiling.
Welcome to my bed.
It usually takes more than a couple meetings before I get someone in here.
I went to Mikes to talk about what the live show was gonna look like.
We were getting ready to rehearse.
It was the longest hang.
Pizza in the living room with a huge screen to show all of the ideas.
It feels like ten years ago.
You recently postponed your tour until 2021.
Lately, Ineedto feel like this is coming out of me.
Ive been pregnant with it for so long.
If I were to push this back, I would probably feel really depressed right now.
Youve done a lot of work in therapy for your depression.
In 2018, you wrote in anop-edinPaperthat at one point youd hoped to die.
What made you write that?I felt scared to talk about depression for a long time.
When I wrote that, I hadnt been diagnosed.
Im a smart enough person.
I can think through what Im going through even when Im really down on myself.
A lot of people with anxiety or depression are intellectual and can understand, but its bigger than that.
Its a chemical problem.
I was realizing how out of my control it was.
It mattered to talk about it.
Getting that down in front of me was a turning point.
Who responded to it?People who were close to me who had not understood everything.
We were learning how to speak to each other on an adult level.
That was a good primer for me.
By the time I did thePaperessay, Id been articulating these feelings to my family.
Even if we just need to vent.
Its just my existence.
It would be like someone being to anyone: Whats it like to have nipples?
Ive always had them.
You cherry-pick the ones you want to put in a song.
Anger was my medium for a long time.
When it comes to whats underneath that anger, that shit is so scary.
Putting some of it out there has made me more empathetic and connected to my fellow female artists.
I could have always had access to this community of people who need each other.
Juliens life is so different from mine.
She grew up in Tennessee and has anxieties Ive never had to deal with.
A lot of things are innate to a womans experience in the world and also in the music scene.
I had to find the door and whisper some secret word.
I needed to be vulnerable in a new way.
Bethany Cosentino has used anger as a medium in the past, too.
We struggled with so many of the same manifestations of anxiety.
Hormonal stuff, skin.
We have a text thread thats basically Acne Anonymous.
We had a couple nightsbefore she got sober.
We were playing a casino.
Best Coast was opening for Paramore, but her hotel room was so much nicer than mine.
I was like, Holy shit!
Im staying here tonight!
We hung out in her room and did face masks.
I had a massive hangover the next day.
We have amazing guys in our bands.
I wish it didnt have to be a word feminism.Its just common decency.
Was there a point when you didnt like the wordfeminism?Yes.
I just talked to Alicia [Bognanno] from [the Nashville-based punk band] Bully about this.
For a long time, people would ask us about being women.
I dont want to be treated specially.
The shit she had to put up with as a woman in her 20s is obscene.
People saying [to her], Who are you fucking?
when you walk into a venue.
People thought I was a merch girl.
I looked like I was 12.
I wasnt fucking anyone, you know what I mean?
Paramore is almost two decades old.
Watching old webisodes the band made, you were always the only female in male spaces.
Its not a glamorous world.
Were there ever times when you were told you were high maintenance?No.
I made sure I would never be high maintenance.
I got shit for not wearing lip balm in a photo shoot.
The first time we got offeredWarped Tour[in 2005], Id been waiting.
Never attended, was too young, wasnt allowed.
The guys and I didnt listen to pop punk before writing Pressure.
We listened to heavier stuff like Deftones.
We wanted to be darker.
Suddenly, we wrote Pressure, and that was it we were gonna write emo bops!
Im psyched that happened.
But suddenly the bang out of attention we were getting was different.
I did not know how toxic that world could be.
The Warped world?The pop-punk and emo scene in the early 2000s.
It was brutally misogynistic.
And I was really feisty.
We got offered Warped tour, and there was a caveat: Its a stage called the Shiragirl Stage.
I wanted to qualify for a real stage.
When Ive been offered female opportunities, it feels like a backhanded compliment.
But people sometimes think thats anti-feminist, that I dont wanna be grouped in with the girls.
That summer we went out, and Ill never forget [it].
We played in Florida, and the stage was a truck that had a flatbed on it.
It was so flimsy it would shake and fall apart.
There might have been one other female in a band [on tour], and people were gawking.
I dont think in a pervy way.
They were confused, like,Whats in this for me?
Whats she singing about?
Im a guy how do I relate?
You think it was that overt?I purposely wrote without pronouns for years because of it.
Then I was like,Fuck it, I dont care.
Some things wont have pronouns, but when its my experience it will.
We had to prove ourselves very hard.
I would spit farther, yell louder, and thrash my neck wilder than anyone.
The next summer, we moved up to a slightly bigger stage.
That was the year of the fucking condoms.
The year of the condoms?Dude, yeah.Summer of condoms, 2006.
I got condoms thrown at me.
In 2005, I wore T-shirts every day.
In 2006, I was a little more comfortable.
Id wear a tank top.
But my chest was exposed.
I was so embarrassed.
I started talking shit because I was so young and arrogant.
I dont think I was wrong.
Its just I have more anxiety now than I did at 16.
I had way more confidence then.
In front of me.
And
One of whose friends?They were embarrassed.
I dont wanna give them away.
It wasnt a huge band one of the openers.
I was literally 16, about to turn 17.
No one paid fucking attention.
I was like, Why do you think its cool to refer to my pussy?
How old were they?In their late 20s.
The guy and the girl that were in the band … Fuck it.
The band wasStraylight Run one of the guys from Taking Back Sunday andhis sister.
She was my saving grace.
It was the first time Id ever toured with a woman.
She was much older than me.
But John [Nolan from Taking Back Sunday] was sopissed.
Only two years later, I became pretty silenced.
There was stuff in the press that was wrong.
I hate to feel misrepresented.
I was a little quieter the more confused I became about who I was.
Or if it was a perfect storm of both.
So Josh leaving was necessary?Yeah, he made those incisions himself.
That was so painful.
But the toxicity between the five of us?
We werent really friends at that point.
Now, when I run into Josh, I barely feel anything.
No part of me is triggered.
Do you feel any love toward him now?You know what I feel?
We said, We did something that was so crazy and unbelievable.
One day we were at school together.
The next minute we were at Wembley!Wembleywas a shitty show.
What happened?[Pause.]
[Josh] asked me what monetarily I thought he was worth.
How did you react?I looked at him and said, Im not good with numbers.
Are you kidding me?
Dont ask me that.
I dont remember everything he was going to fight for, but he ended up not.
Its not easy to fight your friend.
What I like to believe is there was a moment when he realized it wasnt worth it.
It all got dropped.
You didnt think you would come out of it.
And [Paramore has] made two albums since then that are the best weve ever made.
Did you understand the ramifications of being the only name on the contract?No.
I thought I was smarter than everyone.
Im 15 at the time.
I wonder what words I used because I didnt have the perspective I do at 31.
I didnt want to do that.
It was a very empowered moment.
My voice was shaking.
A boardroom meeting?Yeah, attorneys and shit.
There was a bidding thing going on.
It was the early 2000s.
Avril Lavigne was fucking massive.
Kelly Clarkson was on her heels trying to do guitar pop.
Ashlee Simpson had signed with Geffen and is pop punk.
Suddenly I was this prospect for a label.
My dad and my mom wanted me to be smart.
They didnt want me to pass this up.
Id have that talk with them, then go to the guys and be like, I dont know!
I didnt want to do this as Hayley.
During that time, we found our manager, Mark [Mercado].
I really thought a contract didnt matter.
In a lot of ways it doesnt.
I was so ashamed of myself for being the only name on the contract.
Later, Mark was like, Here are all the bands where only one person is signed.
Im not gonna list them.
Im not gonna be a rat.
But its not that big a deal.
My thing was, Mark, just check that everyones safe.
I dont want to know about contracts.
It never mattered to me.
I was so ashamed of myself for being the only name on the contract.
Ive never talked about this.
I still dont know how to articulate it.
I feel like the part of me that speaks on it is still 15.
I tried to mastermind like, Im gonna fuck over Atlantic Records!
This is gonna be a band after all!
I didnt wanna put out an album of songs I wrote with my bandmates and recorded alone.
Ironic because thats what Im doing now!
Thats what the song Conspiracy is about.
I felt like Id lost all my power.
Everyone was against me.
And I was like, Wearein this together.
Its just the nature of it.
You get enough people whispering in your ear and everyone starts to think some shits going down.
That was amplified in the press.
Specifically when we came to the U.K. for the first time.
The U.K. music press does have a knack for tearing the bands they love apart.Oh my God, yes.
Did that or did that not help us during some of the slower years?
Im not trying to go back and fix it.After Laughterwas such a sweet time.
Especially for me and how depressed I was.
We enjoyed each other, we talked about this stuff.
Zac [Farro] was able to talk to us about where he was when he quit.
I didnt talk to him for six years.
At all?At all.
Zac was living in New Zealand.
We were in his territory.
I was trying to take inventory of how that felt in my body.
I wasnt mad anymore.
I was surprised I felt so proud.
Six years had gone by, but I was like, Fuck, yeah, thats my boy Zac.
I looked up his email address, and I wrote him: You just came on my TV.
All I wanna say is that Im so proud of you.
Thats when the ice was broken.
We didnt end up hanging out for a while.
It wasntuntil we got into the studioforAfter Laughter.
I was nervous to hang with him again.
It was so life-affirming.
Me, Taylor, and Zac sitting in a room again.
They were the guys I hung out with when we were younger.
When I was 13 or 14 and I had a crush on Josh, he didnt like me back.
I would hang out with Taylor and Zac.
Wed sit on Instant Messenger and be idiots.
Its so surreal to me to still play music with them, let alone enjoy knowing them.
I left it because it was too painful to sort in the midst of a deafening sense of failure.
My parents divorce was the pivotal moment of my life.
I keep discovering ways in which it asks me how to work on myself.
I dont think I knew what I was saying.
Had I known what healing looked like, I never would have looked forward to it.
I would have wanted to book another tour.
I assume you had to see your ex regularly to do that?Yeah.
And theres no growing from that.
Look, maybe some couples can do that.
I had to get therapy.
I was having a lot of bad dreams.
What are the dreams?Theyre pretty fucked.
Theres often water in my dreams.
Ive always written about relationships using water metaphors.
My most memorable recurring dreams from childhood are all water related.
I started to have a lot of those again.
It resulted in me having panic attacks, and I ended up in a hospital.
When was this?Late 2018.
Its been a slow lesson for me how much power our emotions have on our physical health.
It started to happen because I was in denial.
I found a facility where I could go and be in a safe group or by myself and talk.
Thats where I was diagnosed with depression and PTSD.
Talk therapy has been more important for me than medicine.
Their experiences were carried down and not corrected or taken care of.
I went through with the marriage because I had a lot of shame about mistakes Id made.
I got into that relationshipprematurely.
He was not divorced [from his previous wife] yet.
I was very lonely.
It was the beginning of the guys and I not having a great time in the band.
I started making bad decisions: running, looking for the right door.
What was the mistake?
Getting together with him when he was with someone else?Yeah.
I felt powerless and ashamed.
It felt like the only way out was to stay in it.
[When] I tried to start dating [again], I was sabotaging potential [relationships].
I met with my mom and was like, What is wrong with me?
Why do I do this?
Dont tell me its your divorce.
I had a 4- or 5-year-old brain.
Id been trying to fix where mom and dad went wrong in my relationships.
With my ex I felt like, Finally, someone picked me.
My mom felt like that in her relationship.
But at the first sign of danger I said, Im gonna redeem this.
My dad is a wonderfully sweet man.
But they were kids when they got together.
Some of the worst parts of their relationship Ive been reenacting.
I had a lot of shame about being the other woman, about being betrayed, about staying.
The song is meant for myself.
But I stayed a lot.
I stayed so many times.
I think I like myself more than that, you know?
I listened to that song and was like, Im this person, Iminthis.
Under the Table really fucking got to me.
InVultures interview, Apple talks about being the other woman, too.
She says: I felt a boost in my ego at first.
I dont want to put her out there, because its unfair.
I dont know when this took place in Fiona Apples life.
I know that feeling.
It took me far longer than Id have liked, but we understand each other on a level.
Because I was betrayed and felt alone and stupid.
Considering that at one point we were at odds with each other, thats interesting.
Reconciling with the woman he originally betrayed healed you of your subsequent betrayal?Yeah.
The thing thats hard for people who feel betrayed is understanding that it has nothing to do with them.
Its about the offending party.
Your voice has always been synonymous with emo rage.
On Simmer, the debut single fromPetals for Armor, it sounds more muted.
It reminded me a bit of Radiohead.After Laughterwas very dance-y.
Happy songs, a bit bombastic.
This stuff felt subdued, like it was literally simmering.
Its like we had to whisper because we dont know what shit is about to burst through the walls.
The sounds Im choosing dont all have to sound angry to express that.
I was listening to Sade and Erykah Badu.
Did making this project make you feel more free to use your voice differently?Whoa.
There was no pressure to sound like Ive always sounded or to be recognized.
Every song was a different process.
Cinnamon started with me on drums.
Simmer started with me scatting into a mic.
There wasnt a map, so my voice matches whatever compass we were using.
Now I realize my power doesnt exist there.
Theres no movement there.
But when I can stand in it and its just for me, its not about proving anything.
I have more conviction.
Then the point gets across.
When we finishedself-titled[2013],we were wrecked.We won a Grammy, and we were so unhappy.
Taylors the only one thats never quit.
Between records, hes the only one that never stops working.
I said to Taylor, Never again, bud.
Were not doing this again.
We dont need it.
We made an agreement that we were gonna do things differently.
ThenI tried to quit the bandbecause I was going through personal turmoil.
Then we wroteAfter Laughterand I was not okay.
At the Rose Colored Boy video shoot, his family went through a crazy loss.
I took it seriously.
As if its that easy.
I said, Im not making a record!
And he was like, Youre making a record.
Were you scared to tell the label?Of course.
Once I tell the label, its real.
I get on the train.
Were you afraid to be a solo artist?Yes.
Imstillscared to be a solo artist.
I dont want to be a solo artist.
I will never be a solo artist.
Taylor and Zac are doing their own things.
Theyre happy we can individuate.
Its a great exercise for us.
But Im very afraid of it.
I dont prefer it.
Its more of a need.
Some days, I wake up and wish I didnt start it.
Hopefully, its a good year.
Is the lyric Nothing cuts like a mother on Simmerabout you?Yes and no.
Im obviously not a mother.
You kind of are.To Paramore?
Im working on this in therapy presently.
On the fact that divorced kids feel orphaned.
Doesnt matter how hard a parent tries or how well a parent loves, we feel orphaned.
When I was young, I related to stories about Peter Pan.
I found my family in my bandmates.
I feel an immense responsibility to our crew.
Who is taking care of me?
I would love to be a mom someday.
More than anything, Im still learning how to mother myself.
It sounds like I resent my parents.
My parents are wonderful and kind to each other.
At the same time I felt orphaned.
My parents couldnt have known what we were getting into.
We werent in a natural position.
I think about what I would tell my child.
I would say: Heres your supplements, take magnesium every night.
It fucking works, man.
Youre a 16-year-old teenager, and emotions are not going away.
But it was near impossible to learn practical solutions for a life that felt so impractical.
Its so hard for me to be light.
I do interviews, and its heavy.
I always think,God, they must think I dont have any fun.
But its the nature of the season of life that Im in, and its thick with it.
Its like were in the fucking topsoil, turning it over right now.
