(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 28 December 2025 1:00, UK
As of late, Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams has dived headfirst into her solo career and has come up for air with a huge grin on her face.
On her recent 20-track album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, Williams has softly removed the inky tentacles of the band she has fronted since the age of 14 and uncovered exactly who she is behind the rage facade. It’s her third solo album so far, but it’s undoubtedly the most brutal, yet confident, of her discography. Take ‘Ice In My OJ’, the album opener, which sees the vocalist scream “I’m in a band!” over a guttural looped distortion which, somehow, transforms into a catchy chorus.
Despite this foray into the world of independence, there was a time when Williams lived and breathed the pop-punk band. If we rewind half a decade to the strange placidity of the first Covid summer, Williams found herself with more time than usual to wield a reflective web. At that time, she took to Twitter to reveal her top five Paramore songs, a task many Paramore fans would spend agonising hours attempting with no success.
The list Williams posted seemed to suffer from recency bias, for it consisted almost entirely of songs from the pop-inflected 2017 album, After Laughter, an album as jovial as it was nihilistic, catchy and commendable yet often criticised for the Nashville group’s supposed turn away from a more hardcore experimentation.
Starting from number five of her first list, Williams chose, specifically, the live version of ‘I Caught Myself’, a song that can be heard in the background of a prom-dress scene in the vampire phenomenon series, Twilight. While it wasn’t released as the main Paramore single on the soundtrack, ‘I Caught Myself’ is as ferocious and delicious as you’d come to expect from the alternative stalwarts. Turning away from their rockier roots, Williams’ fourth choice was After Laughter’s ‘Rose-Coloured Boy’ and her third was ‘Pool’, two songs that chime with the spiky highs of an eerie delirium.
Taking that all-important second spot was ‘Hard Times’, a track that has been since covered by long-time collaborator David Byrne, whose vocal affectations it was initially modelled on. The misleading lyrics ruminate on suicide in Hamlet style while a formidable bass shakes the hips and bops the head. This was second only to ‘Told You So’, a lesser-known 2017 track that was originally accompanied by a fabulously stylish music video.
As ever, Twitter was insatiable, wanting more from the redhead than her heavily biased list offered. She was happy to oblige, but not without the caveat that “the last two Paramore albums [at the time] are our best, no contest.” Another hoppy song sat fifth on the newer list, ‘Ain’t It Fun’, which sees Williams’ soaring voice intermingle with a full gospel choir, paying homage to her Christian upbringing.
Her fourth pick is the tear-jerker ‘Last Hope’, which paints a picture of persistence despite an all-consuming depression. However, the third choice is the often-overlooked ‘Fast In My Car’ from the self-titled 2013 album, which sees Williams’ vocals take on more of a rugged edge while Zac Farro’s drumming steadily thrusts forward. Some 13 songs later comes Williams’ second pick, ‘Crazy Girls’, which follows more of a narrative-driven lyricism than the band were used to. A24 completely slept on the crazy-girl psychosis the singer managed to get across in her vocals alone.
So, putting After Laughter aside, which Paramore track did the frontwoman say was her all-time favourite? True to form, Williams went against the grain and picked ‘Future (live)’, the final track on their 2013 self-titled album. It’s one a lot of people skip, mostly thanks to that long pause in the middle where the band just let the silence hang. But on the stripped-back version, Williams delivers a line that hits hard: “I’m writing the future / I’m leaving a key here / Something won’t always be missing / You won’t always feel emptier.” Feels like she saw it all coming before anyone else did.
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