10 years of Riot!: The Evolution of Paramore
This text was originally published in RADICL Magazine on 9th May 2017 and was edited by Jake Scott. This updated version was edited by myself in June 2020.
I remember hearing a Paramore song for the first time. This is a sentence I don’t say about a lot of bands which surprises me considering a lot of my memories are deeply tied up with music. I was sat on my family desktop computer, connected to the dial up modem browsing my friends Piczo page. It was then that a minor miracle happened and the course of my musical history was to be changed forever. Thanks to Music Jesus – an incredible website the let you embed music onto your Piczo pages - “For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic” started playing out of the speakers and I was enthralled. Before this momentous event, my music taste was based largely around what most people liked at the time. Sure, I had the ‘emo’ tendencies in me, with the first albums I ever bought with my own money – from Borders nonetheless R.I.P – being Green Day American Idiot, Good Charlotte Young and Hopeless and Linkin Park Hybrid Theory. Yet this was something unlike I’d ever heard.
There was, and still is for me, something captivating about Hayley Williams’s voice and the unapologetic way that Paramore present their music. Since hearing it, of course I immediately had to buy both Riot!, their sophomore album, and their first ever album All We Know is Falling. That was 10 years ago now. I’m no longer a 12 year old listening to a Paramore CD on my Sony Walkman Disc Player, but some things don’t change, and my love for this album is one of the things that I don’t think ever will. The platform that I listen to them on may have, but my love for Riot! stays strong 10 years down the line so here’s a look back into the evolution of the band, right up to the latest release “Hard Times” off their upcoming 5th album After Laughter.
Let’s go all the way back. It’s 2005 and Paramore (original line up of Hayley Williams, Josh and Zac Farro, Jason Bynum and briefly Jeremy Davis before he quit) release their debut album All We Know is Falling. It’s definitely the album that’s most firmly seated in the ‘rock’ category, with some songs being a bit too heavy for my liking. It is however, the album that brought us “Emergency” and “Pressure”, the latter of which appeared on The Sims 2 as a song on the rock radio station, a very crucial piece of information…
2007 saw the reinstatement of Jeremy Davis as bassist and the release of Paramore’s sophomore album Riot!, which I’m including here solely for chronological purposes, as I’ll later go onto wax lyrical about how it influenced me irrevocably.
So let’s instead fast forward to 2009 and we have the release of Twilight, or as it’s fondly known by the vast majority ‘Twishite’. Forgive me father for I have sinned, I’ll admit that I loved (love)Twilight. I was (am) one of those obsessed Twi-hard teens who went to see it 7 times in the cinema. True story, a sad one, but nonetheless one thing I’ll never live to regret is hearing that soundtrack. At risk of going off on a tangent, The Twilight Saga really did deliver across all its soundtracks, but with not one but TWO Paramore singles on the first, it makes it truly something. “Decode” was a moody and brooding song that encapsulated the film perfectly in both tone and ambience. It also served the purpose of catapulting Paramore into the stratosphere along with The Twilight Saga. The jaunty and jangling “I Caught Myself” also featured, a stellar song that’s underused in the film itself, relegated to being played as background music whilst Kristen Stewart mopes about the fact that’s she’s been dragged dress shopping as opposed to going to some back alley bookstore. Because, you know, she’s not like other girls and much prefers to hang out in book stores researching whether her crush is a Vampire, not like vapid and silly Anna Kendrick who likes that kind of stuff …
Tangent over. Later that same year, Brand New Eyes the band’s third album was released. This album retained the essence of Paramore, but felt more ‘grown up’ in terms of shedding light on the discord within the band. This is particularly resonant in lead single “Ignorance” a song penned by Williams about her fellow band mates. It’s a diss track, but a banger. The track chronicled the feelings of growing up and growing apart, a feeling that was ruminated upon across the album in its entirety.
Brand New Eyes brought us more self reflection and an altogether softer side to Paramore, with the mainstream “The Only Exception” hitting audiences that wouldn’t ordinarily listen to Paramore, here meaning my mum. Shoutout to you Karen, I know how much you love that song. It’s not that Paramore hadn’t shown this delicacy and fragility before; Riot! features “We Are Broken” a beautiful piano led song, but there’s something in the simplicity and raw openness of “The Only Exception” that reached the masses.
Four years later, the self titled album Paramore revealed yet another layer to the ever growing band. In a turn of events that none of the fans could foresee, Josh and Zac Farro announced they would be leaving the band, with a statement that read:
“A couple of months ago, Josh and Zac let us know they would be leaving the band after our show in Orlando last Sunday. None of us were really shocked. For the last year it hasn’t seemed as if they wanted to be around anymore. We want Josh and Zac to do something that makes them happy and if that isn’t here with us, then we support them finding happiness elsewhere. But we never for a second thought about leaving any of this behind.”
With this rather controversial loss not long after the release of Brand New Eyes, this album took on new meaning, it was discovering a new vision and sound for the new trio.
The self titled album brought the fun, something that, thinking about it, hadn’t particularly been in Paramore’s repertoire. Bear in mind, this is a band that grew up as we did. Songs like “Misery Business”, whilst they had their moment and were extremely seminal when I was 12 years old, I just didn’t have the rage anymore. That teenage angst that was once all consuming, now burns dully. I wanted positivity, I wanted something that was messy and full of doubt and vulnerability, but that ultimately sounded overwhelmingly fun.
“Fast in My Car” is exactly made for that purpose, for screaming along with your friends whilst driving around god knows where. Tracks “Ain’t it Fun” and “Still Into You” saw a massively poppy era of Paramore beginning, one that some long standing fans took issue with. It was this album that saw a defined shift in the target demographic. Fans left, fans arrived and genres were blurred.
Even in these pop/rock songs though, you can still hear the thing that makes them Paramore — those relentless guitars and Hayley Williams’s impressive and distinctive vocals. “Still Into You” also marked the move of Paramore songs into most clubs – yes I am thinking specifically of Mosh Leicester right now – but it was a song that wouldn’t just be played in the pits of bottom floor indie/rock, but also the middle floor of chart lands. “Ain’t it Fun” is a playful song that exudes happiness in terms of its soundscape, but glance over the lyrics and you’ll see the paradoxical nature of the band in full force:
“Ain’t it fun
Living in the real world?
Ain’t it good
Being all alone?
Ain’t it good to be on your own?
Ain’t it fun, you can’t count on no one?”
This spirit of just about getting by, of dragging your mortal vessel through the trials and tribulations of early adulthood was beautifully on the nose. “Ain’t it Fun” is the song of a generation, a generation that grew out of being an emo to become a nihilistic, snarky person with the best sense of humour biggest smiles on their faces as the world crashes down around them. Yes, I’m applying my own circumstances to swathes of Paramore fans now.
Their latest releases “Hard Times” and “Told You So” the lead singles from their upcoming 5th album due for release May 12th, carries over this sense of fun. With another line up change, seeing Jeremy Davis leave for the second time back in 2015 and Josh Farro return to the band, it’s another step on the tumultuous journey of Paramore. It retains the light-heartedness of the self titled album and carries itself on the partially indie jingling guitars but keeps the signature Paramore-esque lyrics that juxtapose the happy music.
But let’s temporarily go back to Riot!. There’s something un-ageing about songs like “Misery Business”. Whilst it may not be the most feminist song ever written, you can’t really say that you’ve never felt like this. It’s one that you still scream at the top of your lungs when it comes on in a club and angrily mouth the words to in your bedroom.
There’s a timeless endurance to Riot! that’s hard to explain. I’m not sure if it’s a personal bias, but speaking to fellow Paramore fans they agree: Riot! is a special album. To this day there is only one song on the whole thing that I skip (@ “Fences”) and that’s purely because for me it’s my least favourite on the album, it’s by no means a categorically bad song. It’s an album that has nostalgia built into it, an album full to the brim with teenage angsty goodness and a sense of self-righteous anger because the world really was against us. This was EXACTLY what we all needed in 2007, my 12 year old self didn’t even know that this was what had been missing in my musical journey until I heard Hayley Williams through those tinny speakers.
“That’s What You Get” is the ultimate scorning and bitter track aimed at yourself for being infatuated with someone you know better than to do so with. It’s positively snarling, sung with real vitriol and self-hatred that spoke to me. “Hallelujah” is a surprisingly uplifting track about exactly the opposite; letting yourself fall in love and that overwhelming and optimistic joy that it can bring, with some incredibly powerful vocals from Williams. “When it Rains” fulfils the near perfect ebb and flow that Riot! possesses, one of uplifting and downtrodden perfection that any good alternative rock album of the time should have. “Let the Flames Begin” is an anarchic and smart beat, an unrelenting switch between quiet yet powerful verses and then explosive and signature Paramore choruses. It’s a personal favourite from the album and one that holds a special place in my heart due to it’s chaotic nature and unpredictable soundscape.
I could honestly try and analyse why this album has a longevity for me that most other albums have managed to fall short of, but much like music itself, there’s something inexplicable about it. Maybe it’s Hayley Williams’s voice, maybe it’s just because this is a band that I grew up listening to, one that saw me transition from socially awkward and inept pre-teen into a somewhat more competent 20 something year old, but Riot! holds a power and an aura that’s magical and makes me feel everything that I felt when I first heard “For a Pessimist, I’m Pretty Optimistic” blaring through those speakers 10 years ago. The enduring spirit of Paramore, with all their line up changes, members leaving and then joining again and then going solo, has carried me through the past 10 years, playing out in the background, much like “I Caught Myself” did for Kristen Stewart in that dress shop.
Whilst it’s undeniable that this new sound isn’t the Paramore sound of my youth, it’s one that I can’t help but be satisfied with. We’ve all grown up a bit and whilst Riot! took root in my heart in a way that no other Paramore album has since, it’s time to make way for a more grown up and generally more chipper Paramore. But in the meantime, catch me listening to Riot! to tide over the wait. Cheers for the 10 years plus Paramore.