Paramore’s Growing Pains Are Public on Riot!

We’re sticklers for spelling at this mag (grammar—screw it), so the moniker of Franklin, TN emo-poppers Paramore has always confounded us. Comprised of four barely postpubescents (age 16-22) who could moonlight as American Apparel models, they play jubilant, volatile guitar rock, somehow blending At the Drive-In with Kelly Clarkson without ensuring a place in hell. Point being, they’re 180 degrees removed from Limp Bizkit—don’t they friggin’ know that it’s spelled “paramour”?

“Actually, [Paramore] was one of our friend’s mom’s maiden name,” reveals vocalist Hayley Williams. “We just thought it sounded gorgeous. We thought it was really cool and sort of had a darkness to it, but at the same time the meaning [of ‘paramour’] is ‘secret love,’ which isn’t really too dark. There’s a contrast within the name itself and it really represents everything that we are.”

In lieu of asking Williams to use it in a sentence and disclose the language of origin, we’ll take that at face value. And agree. Paramore stood out as an endearing little sparkplug on their 2005 debut, All We Know Is Falling (Fueled by Ramen), guitarist Josh Farro’s clever cleaving complementing Williams’ empathetic hotline calls. But on just-as-appropriately-named follow-up Riot! (Atlantic/Fueled), the kids take things to the next level, eschewing emo bombast for far more revelatory songwriting—gang vocal-bolstered first single “Born for This” (the band generously enlisted their own fans to shout along during the verse and bridge) references not only the chorus to Paramore’s own breakout “Pressure,” but post-hardcore heroes Refused’s inflammatory classic “Liberation Frequency.”

“I just kept listening to ‘Liberation Frequency’ over and over again when we started writing ‘Born for This,’” Williams confirms. “I was like, ‘I really want to write some vocal lines that this can fit in with.’ It took a while to get clearance on it—I was afraid we weren’t going to be able to use it—but we finally got it and I’m pretty stoked about it.

“As soon as we wrote the song we knew that we needed [our fans] on it, because it’s totally about them and it’s totally for them. I realized [the parts] needed more than just my voice on them and we felt like there was no one better to do that than our fans.”

If Paramore are indeed mounting an army to storm the pop and alternative charts, Williams must be a lonely general—the genre and touring circuit are dominated by whiny boys and their issues. For the time being, the frontgirl is shrugging off seeking out kindred XX spirits in favor of simply improving her band’s craft.

“Most of the women I listen to are not even in the alternative genre at all and I find enough connection in those artists to not feel so alone in this genre,” she notes. “It sucked the first couple of years to be pigeonholed into one thing, and it’s no one’s fault but ours. We wrote All We Know Is Falling and we’re still proud of it, but even at that time there was more to us than that. I think we were just too afraid to let it out.”

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