Hayley Williams’ surprise 17-song release is a bold choose-your-own-adventure through hope and heartache

Aug 4, 2025 - 09:02

0 0

Hayley Williams’ surprise 17-song release is a bold choose-your-own-adventure through hope and heartache

Hayley Williams’ hair company Good Dye Young launched a new product last week, a vivid marigold shade created “in the heat of the moment” that “channels the fleeting energy of warm summer nights, golden hour and missed second chances”. The limited-edition dye was named EGO – which is also the title fans have been giving the Paramore vocalist’s new surprise collection of 17 solo singles.

The rollout began when ‘Mirtazapine’, a scuzzy love-letter to antidepressants, was shared last month via a homemade CD single given to Nashville radio station WNXP. Last Monday (July 28), Good Dye Young customers were given early access to the entire project via a noughties-inspired website, and encouraged to share the link with friends before all the songs were unleashed on streaming services at the end of the week.

Adding to this community-first approach, there’s no official tracklist for this project. Williams has encouraged fans to chart their own journey through the hurt, fury and uneasy peace, depending on what they need from these powerfully vulnerable songs.

This release reunites Williams with Daniel James, the co-producer of her first solo album ‘Petals For Armor’. That 2020 record was an experimental electronic album with hushed poetry about feminine rage, depression and longing. This collection is just as sprawling but far more noisy. The snarling ‘Ice In My OJ’ makes a barbed dig at life on a major label as she calls out “a lot of dumb motherfuckers that I made rich”. Over the twinkling emo of ‘True Believer’, Williams wrestles with her own faith and the hypocrisy of Christian America. “They say that Jesus is the way but then they gave him a white face / So they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them” is one hell of a lyrical mic-drop.

The hurt doesn’t stop there either. Williams is at the end of her tether on the haunted ‘Negative Self Talk’ and the visceral ‘Kill Me’, while the sneering ‘Hard’ is a deliciously direct guitar anthem about always expecting the worst after a lifetime of let-downs. The wonky, poppy ‘Glum’ is about as devastating as breakup songs get.

Despite all the heartache though, Williams is never hopeless. Both the frustrated, angsty ‘Brotherly Hate’ and the dreamy ballad ‘Blood Bros’ keep the door open for eventual make-ups while the chirpy ‘Love Me Different’ cradles a spark of self-love and the tiniest hope for the future. It’s the closest this project gets to sounding like Paramore.

Self-released and distributed via Secretly Distribution, this project is Williams’ first independent output. Paramore signed the music industry’s first ever 360-deal 20 years ago, and have since become one of the biggest, most influential and beloved rock groups around. But they’ve had to fight for every win.

Following the expiration of that record deal with Atlantic Records in December 2023, Hayley Williams is taking great pleasure playing with her newfound freedom. ‘Discovery Channel’ features a surprisingly moving interpolation of Bloodhound Gang classic ‘The Bad Touch’; ‘Brotherly Hate’ has Lenny Kravitz-inspired guitar licks from Paramore touring member Brian Robert Jones. Each song sees Williams fearlessly stepping between familiar and fresh influences. It seems less about playing with expectations and more about what feels the most visceral. The smirking name of her own label? Post Atlantic.

As with almost every era of Hayley Williams’ career, this new release has come with questions about the future of Paramore. The determined lyrics on the tender ‘I Won’t Quit On You’ should be all the reassurance worried fans need, but if that’s not enough, there’s plenty in this brilliant, swaggering new chapter to be excited about. These songs might be about missed second chances, but Williams is certainly making the most of hers.