Paramore — “Misery Business”

Imagine the angstiest, cringiest art you made as a teenager. Now imagine the entire world singing to it in their cars and at karaoke forever. Today, Rob is breaking down the emotionally turbulent emo-bop factory machine that is Paramore. He applauds the incredible and messy lyrics of ‘Riot!,’ which differentiate the album from those of similar bands of the time. Later, he talks to The Ringer’s Rob Mahoney, Paramore’s OG fan, to discuss the exponential improvement between ‘All We Know Is Falling’ and ‘Riot!’ and Hayley Williams’s incredible vocals on “Misery Business.” Host: Rob Harvilla Producers: Justin Sayles and Olivia Crerie Additional Video Editing: Kevin Pooler and Chris Sutton Guest: Rob Mahoney Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm pro football Hall of Famer Brian Dawkins, and I lived for a long time with something I did not know the name of: major depressive disorder. I carried sadness and anger because I thought I could handle it alone, but I couldn't. Now I want to make sure others know that that support is out there. If you're experiencing similar symptoms, talk to a healthcare professional. Visit MDDAllies.com to watch my story.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Paid partnership with Johnson & Johnson. Brian Dawkins has not prescribed Caplyta lumateperone.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I needed more from my antidepressant, so my doctor added Caplyta lumateperone, proven to provide greater relief from depression symptoms than an antidepressant alone, building on my progress without starting over. Caplyta is for adults with major depressive disorder when used with an antidepressant and is available by prescription only. Individual results may vary. In clinical trials, weight gain was not common.

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Elderly dementia patients have increased risk of death or stroke. Caplyta is not approved for dementia-related psychosis. Call your doctor about new or sudden mood changes, behaviors, or suicidal thoughts right away. Antidepressants may increase these risks. Report fever, confusion, stiff muscles, which may be life-threatening, or uncontrolled muscle movements, which may be permanent. High cholesterol and weight gain may occur, as can high blood sugar, which may be fatal. Monitoring is recommended. Common side effects are sleepiness, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, feeling tired, and diarrhea. These aren't all the side effects.

• 1:24Speaker 02

  Ask your doctor about Caplyta. Learn more at caplyta.com or call 888-252-4824.

• 1:30Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by Boar's Head. You know what I love about football season? It's the football, but also the football-watching food. And nothing hits like a Boar's Head sandwich when I'm watching a game. Really, any game day sandwich better with Boar's Head. Philly cheesesteak, layer-up buttery slider rolls with Boar's Head and London broil roast beef, American white cheese, and picante provolone. Delicious. Then add roasted onions, peppers, and Boar's Head pub-style horseradish sauce. I love horseradish. And you've got the ultimate game day cheesesteak. They've also got a whole lineup of premium meats, cheeses, hummus and dips, condiments and more to serve up on game day. Head to your local Boar's Head deli counter to shop now. For game day sandwich inspiration and more, visit Boar'sHead.com. Boar's Head, committed to craft since 1905.

• 2:21Speaker 04

  So what we got here is one of those rad action movie scenes where the dastardly villain reveals his coolest and deadliest weapon. This is my moon laser. This is my red double-bladed lightsaber. This is my dolphin that I unwittingly train to kill the president of the United States. That sort of thing. So here we got a military-grade nuclear bomb-type suitcase with the dastardly villain's name stenciled on it. And the movie score swells ominously. And the dastardly villain's two henchmen open the suitcase and a super ominous keyboard goes bong, bong, bong. And you even get an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western riff.

• 3:06Speaker 04

  Ooh, ooh, and there it is. The coolest and deadliest weapon the world has ever known. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  What is that? I don't know. I'll tell you what that is. Jenny Lewis and Fred Savage. It's the fucking power glove.

• 3:52Speaker 04

  Power glove.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  Dig the sexy film noir saxophone that kicks in as the dastardly villain flexes his power glove. It is 1989 and I'm watching a real movie called The Wizard in the theater because there ain't nothing else to do in 1989. The titular wizard is a troubled nine-year-old video game prodigy who busts out of a mental institution with the help of his teen-aged half-brother. Played by Fred Savage and at a bus stop, they meet a spunky young lady slash love interest, played by Jenny Lewis and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Eventually, the wizard wins $50,000 in a video game tournament at Universal Studios Hollywood. Whatever, man.

• 4:44Speaker 04

  Noted movie critic Roger Ebert gave The Wizard one star and described it as, quote, "A nasty pileup down at a screenplay factory," end quote. Also, Roger Ebert angrily points out that during the climactic video game tournament, the announcer says that the players have reached the third level of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game, but Roger observes in his review that they're clearly still playing the first level of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game. Roger Ebert knows ball. All right. Get that weak shit out of here. Whatever, man. This movie's legacy is Power Glove Kid.

• 5:28Speaker 04

  The rudest, meanest, toughest, most punchable movie villain of 1989 in a remarkably crowded field. Jack Nicholson, playing the Joker in Tim Burton's Batman in 1989. Yeah, Jack Nicholson's Joker had some wonderful toys, but he ain't got no Power Glove. And now we watch as Power Glove Kid menacingly blows through the first level of the game Rad Racer for NES and Jenny Lewis is entranced and Fred Savage is tremendously concerned that Jenny Lewis is entranced.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  Dig the lethal weapon sexy ass Clapton-esque electric guitar that kicks in as the Power Glove Kid plays Rad Racer. Let's get a few things straight. Number one, the Power Glove is trash. The Power Glove is garbanzo. You can't control. You ain't playing jack shit with a Power Glove. You try to- Play Rad Racer with a Power Glove and your red Ferrari's tires will never touch the road. This shit was unusable. The Power Glove sold 1.3 million units worldwide at like 100 bucks apiece and all 1.3 million people who bought a Power Glove got fed up and threw it

• 7:00Speaker 04

  out a window and into a tree. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game sucks also. That game was ludicrously, offensively hard. It was a Russian psy-op. Even Roger Ebert couldn't make it to level three of that shit. This doesn't matter. What matters is Jenny Lewis's response to Power Glove Kid. The dazed, intimidated, wary, captivated look in her eyes and the dazed, intimidated, wary, captivated tremor in her voice as she says, "Jeez."

• 7:36Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 7:41Speaker 05

  I love the Power Glove. It's so bad.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, uh, just keep your Power Gloves off her pant, huh?

• 7:52Speaker 04

  I love the Power Glove. It's so bad. Get a load of the riz on this kid. People who were alive in 1989 shouldn't say riz, but nonetheless, Fred Savage is right to be concerned. Power Glove Kid is Mr. Steelio Girl incarnate. I was curious, so I looked up the actor, the kid who played Power Glove Kid. Don't do that. I regret doing that. I do too much research for this show. I've been thinking this. Not all knowledge is power. Power Glove Kid is a world historically dastardly villain. He's a smug creepy bully with suspiciously voluminous hair. He's only

• 8:36Speaker 04

  in this movie for product placement and just to reiterate, his product sucks. He's a snake oil salesman with snake oil in his hair. He's bad news. Baby, he's bad news. He's just bad news, bad news, bad news. And yet, and yet, and yet.

• 8:56Speaker 04

  And yet, one cannot deny the terrible malevolent allure of Power Glove Kid. He is a two-bit bad boy for an eight-bit age. And his malevolence and his allure, they only grow as the years pass and the graphics of his video games improve. Think of it like this. Here's a thought experiment for you. Every 90s and 2000s pop punk song, every classic, lovelorn, manipulative, badgering, low-key to high-key problematic emo song, I want you to imagine that every one of those songs is either sung by Power Glove Kid or sung to Power Glove Kid.

• 9:40Speaker 04

  He is either the pursuer or the pursued. And his swagger and his dastardly talent for shameless, debasing emotional manipulation knows no bounds. He's controlling your emotions like he's wearing some kind of... Taking Back Sunday, the 2002 hit "You're So Last Summer", by Amity New York emo legends Taking Back Sunday. This song is spiritually sung by Power Glove Kid.

• 10:24Speaker 04

  You could slit my throat, and with my one last gasping breath, I'd apologize for bleeding on your shirt. That's just like something Power Glove Kid would say. That's so bad. It's a trap. He's gaslighting you. He's bad news, bad news, bad news. Meanwhile, Skater Boy...

• 10:47Speaker 04

  By Avril Lavigne, a substantially bigger hit from 2002. The whole skateboarding thing is a red herring. On Skater Boy, Avril is totally singing about Power Glove Kid. And Avril is totally dissing her romantic rival. The ditzy girl who failed to grasp the romantic potential of Power Glove Kid.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  He had a power glove, but too bad now we're in love. Try it. Try it with any song from any era, really. Video Games, The Song by Lana Del Rey, obviously. Canonically, Lana Del Rey is singing about Power Glove Kid. Open up a beer and you say get over here and play a video game. Obviously, that's about him. The justifiable terror in Fred Savage's eyes as he watches Jenny Lewis watch Power Glove Kid. Never mind how the movie ends. Never mind any background information about any of these actors.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  A biblically terrible, decades-long, toxic situation ship is born right here in this one-star movie when Power Glove Kid grabs Jenny Lewis's arm with his non-Power Glove hand and he drops his best, his oiliest, his most nefarious, his most manipulative pickup line.

• 12:26Speaker 04

  By the way, I'm entered in the championships too. And by the way, I'm entered in the championships too. And Jenny tries to shake off Power Glove Kid and stare him down with disinterest, with contempt, but there is no disguising what she's really thinking. And what she's thinking is, I can fix him.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  It is 1998 and Jenny Lewis is gonna be a rock star now. She's in her early twenties, she's a veteran and by now mostly retired child actor. Perhaps you also caught her on TV shows and movies ranging from Troop Beverly Hills to The Golden Girls to Roseanne. But Jenny is focused now on her Los Angeles-based, sweetly vicious indie pop band, Rilo Kylie. This song is called "The Frug." The blank, deadpan look on Jenny's face in this video, and the softness, the smallness,

• 13:37Speaker 04

  the delicacy of her voice, to some extent, these are shrewd actorly tricks. These are gentle manipulations. These are weapons. Do not let this band's sweetness blind you to this band's entrancing viciousness. Also, she really can do all those dances. Do not underestimate this person. She's entered in the championships, too.

• 14:17Speaker 04

  Ah, yes. Her bandmates. I love it when the boys in Rilo Kylie pipe up at the end there. "She cannot do the smurf." Rilo Kylie consists of Jenny Lewis on vocals and guitar, etc. Blake Senet on lead guitar and vocals, etc. Pierre De Reader on bass and Jason Bosel on drums. Rilo Kylie are, emphatically if tumultuously, a band. And from the onset, on the band's 1999 debut EP, an EP called either Rilo Kylie or The Initial Friend, from the onset, Jenny Lewis and Blake Senet are both writing and both singing.

• 14:56Speaker 04

  And this band's sweetness and viciousness only intensify when their voices intertwine, as they do here on the line, "You're the most exhausting girl I ever knew."

• 15:21Speaker 04

  This song is called "Papillon." That's French. Blake Sennett is also a veteran child actor, most famously in the Nickelodeon summer camp sitcom Salute Your Shorts. Blake Sennett's voice is also deceptively soft and delicate. I'm having some trouble wrapping my head around the way this song "Papillon" ends. Presented without comment.

• 16:01Speaker 04

  I love mess. There's your comment. That's a little uncouth, Blake. There is a perpetual ill-advised horny volatility to Riley O'Kylie. This band will not hesitate to air their grievances and/or invade your privacy. The New Zealand pop star Lorde, Royals and so forth. Lorde is like two years old in 1998, which I shouldn't have looked up. Too much research, but later. When she grows up, Lorde will sing "Bet You Rue the Day You Kissed a Writer in the Dark." You hop in bed with a rock star and the rock star might transcribe your bed dialogue

• 16:45Speaker 04

  into a rock and roll song. And look out if the writer you kissed in the dark is also in your band, writing songs for your band that are about kissing you in the dark. Somewhere early in the Riley O'Kylie timeline, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett become a real-life romantic couple. Somewhere later in the Riley O'Kylie timeline, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett cease to be a real-life romantic couple. And despite this breakup, the band rumbles on tumultuously. The exact details and the exact timeline of their real-life romance are obviously none of our business. But also, obviously, none of our business is not an operative concept in rock and roll.

• 17:33Speaker 05

  How many blows to the belly will this thing take that we refer to as our true love? We both know it's dead and it's been dying for some time, but we refuse to let it go.

• 17:52Speaker 04

  This song is called Bulletproof. Are Jenny and Blake singing sweetly about their own dead true love? That's none of our business. And also, yeah, sure, they might be. Talking to the New York Times in 2025 about her relationship with Blake and the death and resurrection of Riley O'Kylie, Jenny Lewis says, quote, "I think the end was nigh the moment we first hooked up. We never really fixed the issues that we had as a couple. I remember a fight that we had after we had first broken up, where I threw Blake's Pink Floyd CD out of the window. And then we were hanging out with other people, which got very messy on the road." End quote.

• 18:36Speaker 04

  I wonder what Pink Floyd CD she threw out the window. I hope it wasn't Pulse, the Pink Floyd two-CD live album with the blinking red light. That costs like 35 bucks. I would be super pissed if my bandmate slash ex-girlfriend threw my Pulse CD out the window. That song Bulletproof appears on the first full-length Riley O'Kylie album, which comes out in 2001 and is called Takeoffs and Landings. The album cover features a technical drawing of a row of airplane seats. And yeah, from the album title on down, this couldn't look more like an early 2000s indie rock album if it tried.

• 19:16Speaker 04

  Mundane instruction manual-type phrases and images freighted with mysterious palpable outsized emotion. If you know, you know. The first great Riley O'Kylie song is called Pictures of Success.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  Emphatically, if tumultuously, Rilo Kylie are a band. The hypnotic rolling bassline here, the pristine pinging guitar harmonics, ding ding ding, the deceptive softness and delicacy of Jenny Lewis's voice as she sings, "I'm a modern girl, but I fold in half so easily." Everything is in its right place. This song, "Pictures of Success," is alarmingly beautiful, in a way that emphasizes both the beauty and the alarm. What is missing here, if anything's missing, is a sense of mess. But the mess ain't missing for long.

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Nobody swears quite like Jenny Lewis. Every F-bomb drops like an atom bomb. The second Rilo Kylie album comes out in 2002 and is called "The Execution of All Things." This song is called "A Better Son/Daughter." It sounds like a panic attack led by a marching band. This is the best Rilo Kylie song by several orders of magnitude. And if you think it's the best song by anybody released this century so far, that's fine with me. Though I hope you're doing okay. You okay? You all right? You need anything? You need a hug?

• 21:43Speaker 04

  The self-harmony there. The multitude of Jennies kicking in on, "You'll fight it, you'll make it through." Holy shit. This is possibly the best song by anybody released this century so far. I feel fine, thanks for asking. "A Better Son/Daughter" has national anthem energy. This song is zeitgeist-defining, generation-defining. If you were a young person of a certain emotional disposition in 2002, the lyrics to this song were auto-loaded into your AOL Instant Messenger away message. I personally always found Rile O'Kiley to be slightly, extremely intimidating. They're very Los Angeles. They're very former child actor.

• 22:28Speaker 04

  They're very ultra-cool in a way that discouraged me personally from being bold enough to find them relatable. There appears to be a deep, traumatic, personal core to this song, which starts with Jenny Lewis arguing with her mother on the phone. They seem to have a super gnarly and very LA-sounding mother-daughter relationship that Jenny will explore in greater detail later on her first solo album. But in my early twenties, this song broke some kind of coolness containment for me. "A Better Son/Daughter" pulls off that wonderful magic trick where the lyrics are so personal and specific and painful that they achieve this ecstatic universality, right?

• 23:11Speaker 04

  This is a frantic, internal freak-out pep talk on a galactic scale. And for once, even the meakest listeners among us might feel bold enough to sing along.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  The guitar solo rips too, yes? Despite the chaos, despite the cacophony of this song, a better son slash daughter, everything is in its right place here as well. This is immaculately structured, full band mess. Jenny Lewis, though, she can really swear now, can't she?

• 24:15Speaker 04

  That song's called "Spectacular Views", and it's the slight loss of vocal control there. The way all the delicacy in her voice shatters on the words, "it's so fucking beautiful", that is also beautifully alarming. This record, The Execution of All Things, comes out on Saddle Creek Records, based in Omaha, Nebraska, the domain of Connor Oberst, aka Bright Eyes, aka the vanguard of early 2000s oversharing indie rock. But Rylo Kylie are also audibly sharpening and brightening and angling towards some sort of pure pop mainstream adjacent breakthrough. And I suppose this is it. The key word here is "camer."

• 25:10Speaker 04

  Here we have Rylo Kylie on Late Night with Conan O'Brien in 2004, playing their modest breakthrough hit, "Portions for Foxes." Man, Jenny sure does scream the word "camer," doesn't she? The whole point of building a rock star persona around your masterful sense of control and composure is that it's extra shocking and thrilling when you lose your composure, right? Meanwhile, Blake Senet's front and center here, making legit awesome guitar god faces.

• 25:54Speaker 04

  And that clearly is the hugest, shiniest, catchiest, late-night talk-show-est Rilo Kiley chorus of them all. That song, Portions for Foxes, appears on Rilo Kiley's 2004 album, More Adventurous. This band is steadily growing in public profile and esteem. Also, alas, this band's gonna make one more album and break up and not reunite until 2025. The final Rilo Kiley studio album comes out in 2007 and is called Under the Blacklight. This song's called "Breaking Up." Don't read too much into it.

• 26:44Speaker 04

  It's hard not to read into that a little bit, though. Yes? By 2007, Jenny Lewis and Blake Sennett have both established solo careers. Blake has already put out two albums with his West Coast country-ish band, The Elected. And in 2006, Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins put out a phenomenal record called Rabbit Fur Coat, which is also pretty country-ish, come to think of it. Rabbit Fur Coat gets way more attention. Jenny Lewis gets way more attention. There's no way around this. Whether your band is tumultuous or not, the primary lead singer gets most of the attention. To the end, Blake Sennett is singing

• 27:24Speaker 04

  lead on a song or two on every Rilo Kiley album. And unfortunately, he's peaking as a songwriter just as the band is ending. My favorite song on Under the Blacklight is called "Dream World." It sounds like Fleetwood Mac.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  That is alarmingly beautiful guitar tone, dude. I am not joking. I wouldn't joke about guitar tone. I am moderately impressed with myself that I waited this long to say the words, "It sounds like Fleetwood Mac." L.A. pop grandeur, thorny intraband dynamics, at least one failed romance, a dead true love charted song by song from both perspectives. Rilo Kylie have distinct, unavoidable Fleetwood Mac energy. This is Stevie Nicks versus Lindsey Buckingham all over again. Well, no, not chart-wise. No, Rilo Kylie do not have an album one-tenth as huge as Fleetwood Mac's rumors.

• 28:37Speaker 04

  No, nobody does, really. There is no recreating 1977 Fleetwood Mac in any sense. But that song, "Dream World," is pure 80s Fleetwood Mac to me. Tango in the Night era Fleetwood Mac. 1987, humid, pristine, island-vacation dream pop with disquieting, personal undertones. Tango in the Night is Fleetwood Mac's best album. I might actually believe that. This song's called "Big Love." Lindsey Buckingham's probably singing about someone else by now. But maybe he's not, though.

• 29:31Speaker 04

  You see what I mean? That is also alarmingly beautiful guitar tone. I used to listen to Tango in the Night on cassette on repeat in 1987 while I played The Legend of Zelda, the original Zelda for the NES with a gold cartridge. I hear Tango in the Night now and it sends me right back to Death Mountain. I beat that game. I beat Ganon and nobody paid me $50,000. Big Love is also too daunting a point of comparison. Forget comparing anybody to 1977 or 1987 Fleetwood Mac. You know what every great 2000s indie pop band is chasing, though? 1997 Fleetwood Mac.

• 30:28Speaker 04

  Silver Springs, from the 1997 Fleetwood Mac live album and concert movie, "The Dance." They left this song off of rumors. This ridiculously incredible song qualifies as a deep cut. That's the magnitude of rock band we're dealing with here. Any rock band from anywhere, from any era, with any sort of public, real-life, intraband romance component, any rock band of sweetly vicious ex-lovers is chasing the glory and the absolute terror of this moment during Silver Springs, when Stevie Nicks turns to Lindsey Buckingham onstage

• 31:08Speaker 04

  and death stares him and visibly tries to kill him with a song written by her about him, on which he is harmonizing and playing guitar. This is Stevie's coolest and deadliest weapon. The way she just wails, "You'll never get away," at her poor doomed bandmate, who will, indeed, never get away, even if he gets kicked out of the band, which eventually happens.

• 31:45Speaker 04

  And if we're honest, this is not a reachable peak for a 21st century rock band either, in terms of combining arena rock force with Titanic romantic intrigue. Fleetwood Mac are forever the ultimate, in terms of stuff that's none of our business being very much all of our business. Plus, I hear something else, and I hear someone else, in Rylo Kylie, on occasion, in Jenny Lewis's voice. One of my favorite Rylo Kylie songs is from 2004, from the "More Adventurous" album. It's called "Does He Love You?" It is a tale of infidelity, of betrayal, of heated romantic rivalry, with a shocking reveal that deserves its

• 32:28Speaker 04

  own spoiler alert. And this song starts very politely, with softness, with smallness, with delicacy. But this song peaks with Jenny Lewis very strategically totally losing her composure.

• 33:01Speaker 04

  And I hear something and someone else here. It's the unrestrained wind machine howl in Jenny Lewis's voice. The expertly controlled total lack of control. The glorious transubstantiation of none of our business into all of our business. I hear a classic rock star archetype here. A hallowed rock and roll lineage. The superstar singer who is emphatically, tumultuously part of a messy, chaotic, exasperating, and absolutely necessary band. And she will never give up the spotlight, but she doesn't want to give up the band either. And your band can break up and reunite, or you can lose members and find them again

• 33:46Speaker 04

  and lose them again. And you can threaten to go solo, and maybe you do, but maybe you come back later. And you can write beautifully vicious songs about your bandmates, who you might be semi-secrety dating, and then sing those songs, whether those particular bandmates are onstage with you or not. But you will always just be writers kissing other writers in the dark. And you will never get away, never get away, never get away.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  My name is Rob Harvilla. This is the 36th episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s: The 2000s. And this week, we are discussing Misery Business by Paramore, from their 2007 album Riot. Riot exclamation point. Paramore are a tumultuous, electrifying, era-defining pop punk band from Franklin, Tennessee. Rilo Kylie at their rowdiest, remind me of Paramore. Paramore at their most delicate, remind me of Rilo Kylie. Two of the highest compliments I can offer any band. It didn't take quite as long as usual to hit the ad break, but let's not get cocky about it.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  This episode is brought to you by The Home Depot. The Home Depot has everything you need to launch your holiday season in style. Upgrade your yard with this year's hottest holiday decor, including the showstopping towering Santa. Oh, I like that one. And his impressive reindeer, both 8.5 feet and both designed with incredible detail that stands out day or night. When you want decor that delivers impact, The Home Depot has it. Make your home Santa's favorite stop with the holiday decor you want, all waiting for you at The Home Depot. This episode is brought to you by Panda Express. Telling someone you love them, it isn't always easy, but showing them through food, sometimes that's better than words, especially when that food's wok-cooked at Panda Express, a Joe House favorite.

• 35:50Speaker 03

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• 36:37Speaker 04

  Delightful. If you're like me and you've wondered if Jenny Lewis of Riley O'Kylie and Haley Williams of Paramore ever appeared on stage together? Well, for once, I've got great news.

• 37:04Speaker 04

  Some knowledge is power. Here we've got Jenny and Haley onstage in February 2025 at the Hollywood Palladium at a charity event called Give a Fuck L.A. to benefit victims of the January 2025 L.A. wildfires. They are singing a Rilo Kiley song called "Let Me Back In." When Los Angeles rock bands aren't singing about their personal messy love affairs, they're usually singing about Los Angeles itself. Pierre Derider of Rilo Kiley is onstage too, along with Katie Gavin of the great L.A. pop band Muna. Katie's on violin. Though, of course, the main event here is finally getting to hear Jenny's and Haley's voices sweetly intertwine.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  And of course, we get some rando in the crowd. It is just like a man to go woo just as Jenny and Haley really start getting after it. Shut up. This is for charity. How about you donate your respectful silence? Also, Jenny and Haley do a little tap dancing.

• 38:32Speaker 04

  That's nice. You can go woo all you want during the tap dancing part, dude. That's fine. So Haley Williams is born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1988. Her parents split up when she is very young. In an interview with Vulture in 2020, Haley says, quote, "My parents' divorce was the pivotal moment of my life. I keep discovering ways in which it asks me how to work on myself," end quote. Haley's mom starts a new relationship with a man Haley will later describe in an interview with The Guardian in 2020 as, quote, "a nightmare of a stepfather," end quote. I am dissatisfied with the sound of my own voice in conveying any of this backstory to you.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  I am inclined to let Haley take it from here.

• 39:32Speaker 04

  In 2020, Hayley Williams put out a solo album called Flowers for Vases/Des Conso. This song is called "Inordinary." I was hung up on this song for a very long time. It is the absolute funerario quiet of this song. The stillness, the delicacy, the terrible gravity, all of that. Yes. If you've ever seen Paramore, the tumultuous, electrifying, era-defining pop punk band in concert, Hayley is bouncing around. She's dancing like literally everyone in the arena is watching. She's headbanging, she's rolling around, she's bellowing. She's exultant even during her angriest songs.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  So to hear Hayley's voice barely registering above a whisper here, a generally loud singer getting super quiet is just as shocking as a generally quiet singer getting super loud. This is Jenny Lewis screaming "Come here" in reverse. And it's four words here on this song "Inordinary" that stop me cold every time. The four words are, "She said, 'Don't worry.'"

• 41:00Speaker 04

  And it's beyond the fact that Hayley's voice gets just a little louder there, that she slides up into her head voice on "Don't worry," that there's a slight wounded bulletproof hitch in her voice on just the word "worry." It's that when Hayley Williams sings those four words, she sounds simultaneously like a mother trying to soothe a worried child and like a worried child trying to believe her mother. Paramore is a band of broad, rapturous pop punk strokes. Bombast, chaos, volume, exploding color, joy, fury, mess. But it's important to understand from the beginning that Paramore's lead singer can sing just four words

• 41:44Speaker 04

  that quietly with that much raw, heart-stopping power. So teenage Hayley Williams and her mom moved to Franklin, Tennessee, 20 miles south of Nashville. In 2025, on the Ringer podcast "Good Hang" with Amy Poehler, Hayley says she first learned about the power of her own voice as a teenager while singing in church, singing boring hymns. Hayley realized that singing soothed her anxiety, quieted her stomach ache, slowed her down, grounded her. Paramore are never quite a Christian rock band, technically, but they are never entirely not a Christian rock band spiritually. All right, let's start a band full of teenagers.

• 42:29Speaker 04

  In Franklin, Tennessee, Hayley meets fellow homeschooled musical prodigies Josh Farrow and his younger brother Zach Farrow. Hayley briefly plays in a funk cover band called The Factory, which includes a bassist named Jeremy Davis. And he joins this new band of teenagers as well. A little farther down the line, they add a guitarist named Jason Bynum. A fellow teenage prodigy named Taylor York is hanging around a lot and co-writing songs a little bit, but he won't join up officially until 2007. So never mind him for now. This is Paramore for now. Hayley Williams on vocals, Josh Farrow on guitar, Zach Farrow on drums, Jeremy Davis on bass,

• 43:13Speaker 04

  Jason Bynum on rhythm guitar. Hayley and Josh will write most of the songs. That's simple enough. Paramore signed to Atlantic Records. That's nice. And the first Paramore album starts with an angry song about how their bassist has left the band already.

• 43:40Speaker 04

  I love mess. Yes, the first thing you need to understand about Paramore is that the first line of the first song on the first Paramore album is about internal strife within Paramore. The band's debut album is called All We Know Is Falling. This song is called All We Know. And yes, the line, "We tried so hard to understand, but we can't." I love the way she holds that last word. She holds "we can't" for that long. This line is addressing former Paramore bassist Jeremy Davis, who in fact had quit the band just days after arriving in Orlando to record the band's debut album.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  Which raises the question, what would the first Paramore album have been about primarily if their bass player hadn't left immediately before they started making it? By the way, Jeremy will rejoin the band after this album is out and he will play bass in Paramore until 2015. Here's the All We Know Is Falling album cover. By the way, it's an empty couch because their bass player isn't sitting on it. Mundane, color saturated images freighted with mysterious, palpable, outsized emotion. This couldn't look more like a mid 2000s pop punk album cover if it tried. And it's really trying. Meanwhile, check out the video for All We Know.

• 45:07Speaker 04

  Check out how offensively young these people are. I personally have never been this young in my entire life.

• 45:28Speaker 04

  Teenagers, as William Shakespeare wrote, "Teenagers scare the living shit out of me." Sorry, that was my chemical romance. Sorry. As Emily Bronte wrote, "We're teenagers, we don't know anything." Sorry, that was Hayley Williams' solo on the soundtrack to the movie Jennifer's Body. Later. Sorry. Paramore are teenagers. They're kids. The All We Know video is a basic live performance deal, plus backstage footage of the band goofing around, right? Smiling and pointing at the camera, and hugging and hauling amps around, and gazing wistfully out the window of their touring van as they conquer America.

• 46:13Speaker 04

  Such is the power of the myth of rock and roll, that this agonized grouchy Paramore song about their bassist leaving can still mythologize the act of being in a rock and roll band. This rock video makes being in a rock band look cool and fun and easy. This album, All We Know Is Falling, comes out on Fueled by Ramen Records, the cool punk rock subsidiary of Atlantic Records. All right, another quick thing. Only Hayley Williams is signed to Atlantic Records. Only Hayley Williams is signed to Paramore's record label. They signed her as a solo artist back in 2003 because they wanted her to be

• 46:56Speaker 04

  a pop punkish solo superstar, just like Avril Lavigne, just like Since You've Been Gone era Kelly Clarkson, just like Ashley Simpson, just like solo Gwen Stefani. But Hayley doesn't want to be a solo star. She wants a band. Talking to the podcast Behind the Brand in 2017, Hayley says, quote, "I would see movies like The Temptations or even Spice World, and I just thought, they're all having fun with their friends, making music, and it's their thing. It's their job. And I wanted that. I wanted that us against the world kind of thing." End quote.

• 47:38Speaker 04

  As bands go, The Temptations and The Spice Girls are not exactly the most conventional and stable band models available, but let Hayley cook. So Paramore are a band because Hayley Williams wants them to be a band. Paramore are emphatically and tumultuously and defiantly a band. Paramore are also secretly, not technically, a band contractually, and the other guys in the band will not be psyched to learn this later, but mostly they'll get over it unless they don't. Hey, this song is called "Pressure."

• 48:31Speaker 04

  "Pressure" is the first minor Paramore hit and the first great Paramore song. Dig the huge, chunky anthemic guitar chords. Dig the wheedle-deedle-dee heavy metal guitar riff. Dig the lyrics about being better off without you that are probably still addressed to their old bass player who will be back soon and then leave again eventually. Plus, dig the new temporary bass player rolling off the guitar player's back in the video while the sprinklers overhead drench everybody. Being in a band looks awesome and fun and easy. And writing gargantuan, arena-sized pop punk songs looks super easy, even if you're writing them by accident.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Talking to Vulture in 2020, Hayley Williams says, quote, "The guys and I didn't 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. Sick. I'm psyched that happened. But suddenly, the type of attention we were getting was different. I did not know how toxic that world could be." End quote. She means the Warped Tour.

• 50:06Speaker 04

  And here we have Paramore onstage at the Warped Tour in 2005, doing a song off their first record called "Here We Go Again." Hayley Williams can ring the pathos out of just a few notes, just a few words, words like "we can't" and "you ran." Or, like, right now, she can expertly and melodically cram a whole bunch of angst-ridden words into 15 seconds, words like "regret" and "take it back" and "forget the things we swore we meant." Hayley Williams is 16 years old in summer 2005, and drummer Zach Pharoah is even younger. As both a band and as individual people, Paramore sound a great deal more remorseful and jaded and wistful

• 50:51Speaker 04

  than a band of literal teenagers ought to sound. Or, all teenagers sound this jaded and regretful everywhere, always. It's one of those two. Anyways, here we have Paramore onstage at the Warped Tour in 2005. The Warped Tour, if you are unfamiliar, being the legendary, multi-stage, maximum-chaos, traveling, summer punk-rock festival that launched in 1995 and got steadily huger and more chaotic as pop-punk and emo got steadily huger and more chaotic. Specifically, here we've got Paramore on the Shira Girls stage, which is indeed an all-girl band Warped Tour stage named for Shira Girls, the Southern California punk band.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  The year before, 2004, Shira Girls got themselves a cheap RV and painted it pink, and they crashed the Warps Tour. And so here in 2005, the Warped Tour made the Shira Girls stage official, which is great, even if it does require Hayley Williams to perform literally below a giant sign that basically reads "Girl Stage." I feel like you can hear how hard 16-year-old Hayley is head-banging right here, even if you can't see it.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  She is head banging extremely hard in that video. In that 2020 Vulture interview, Hayley describes the Warped Tour as brutally misogynistic. She talks about being pissed initially that Paramore were invited to play on a girl stage at the Warped Tour. She says, quote, "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." End quote. She means that Trojan condoms was a 2006 Warped Tour sponsor, and people in the crowd

• 53:09Speaker 04

  threw condoms at her onstage, and at least one got stuck to her chest. She talks about the awful and gross shit boys and men would say to her as a now 17-year-old girl. She's talked specifically in other interviews, including a New York Times PopCast interview in 2025, about gross stuff No Effects frontman Fat Mike said about her onstage at the Warped Tour when she was underage. There's another great solo Hayley Williams song from 2025 called "Good Old Days" with a chorus that goes, "Who knew the hard times were the good old days?" I'm pretty sure she's talking about other hard times, but this is a person who's been

• 53:51Speaker 04

  talking about hard times and good old days from the very beginning.

• 54:13Speaker 04

  My favorite song on the first Paramore album is called Franklin, named for the band's hometown, which is no longer their home at all. Their home is the road now. Their home is the band now. It is Paramore against the world. Franklin is a power ballad of sorts. Hayley sings, "Everything has changed." The boys in the band sing, "'Cause you remind me of a time when we were so alive." Do you remember that? Do you remember that? Teenagers, jaded and wistful teenagers. Teenagers scare the living shit out of themselves. I dig the whole first Paramore album. I like that song Franklin quite a bit.

• 54:58Speaker 04

  And so I mean no offense when I say that Paramore are about to level up dramatically and absurdly.

• 55:26Speaker 04

  The second Paramore album comes out in 2007 and is called Riot. Riot exclamation point. This song is called "That's What You Get," and it's the best song Paramore has ever done. Shout out Guitar Hero 2. If you played this song in the video game Guitar Hero 2 with the plastic guitar, then you know that the "brrrr" before the chorus is the best part of the song. "That's What You Get" is co-written by Hayley Williams, Josh Pharoah, and guitarist Taylor York, who will officially be joining Paramore very soon. Don't get me started on lineup changes. All right, we ain't got time for all that. I would need a flowchart and a true detective murder board with the pins and the strings and

• 56:10Speaker 04

  whatnot, and I would also need 45 minutes. Myriad lineup changes. Being in a band is fun and easy. This is the best Paramore song. This is the best Paramore chorus. I love four-line choruses with an A-A-B-A structure where the first, second, and fourth lines are basically identical and only the third line deviates from the pattern electrifyingly. Like so.

• 56:54Speaker 04

  I love that structure very much. I love the line, "I drowned out all my sense with the sound of its beating," very much. I love any song that uses "whoa" this many times. That's what you get is a pop punk song. It is an emo bop, as Hayley might put it, because Paramore are now a blockbuster, magazine cover, much larger, Warped Tour stage-type pop punk band. But that's what you get also would have been a monster arena rock anthem in the 70s, or a monster hair metal anthem in the 80s, or a monster alternative rock anthem in the 90s. What makes Paramore huge from this moment forward is both their "none of our business"

• 57:39Speaker 04

  personal specificity and their "all of our business" rock star universality. Just take the word "hallelujah," for example. That's a famous rock star word. That's a famous and lore-heavy song title. But Hayley Williams sings the Paramore song called "Hallelujah" like no one's ever sung that word before, or like no one's ever sung that word correctly.

• 58:25Speaker 04

  Not a Christian rock band, technically. Never not a Christian rock band spiritually. If you're like me, sometimes you just sit around contemplating the relative sameness of all rock music, right? The structure of a huge rock radio song never changes, really. Intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, second verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, guitar solo, last chorus, and you're out. That's been it, basically, for like 75 years. And yet, Paramore both adhere to and triumphantly transcend this formula by delivering a pre-chorus like nobody's ever thought to do a pre-chorus before.

• 59:19Speaker 04

  That song's called Crush Crush Crush, all one word, lowercase. The pre-chorus is even cooler if you whisper it. Everyone knows that. The 234 is absolutely essential there as well. Everyone knows that also. The whole Riot album is like this. It is a disconcerting mastery of classic arena rock form. It is immaculately structured mess. Riot comes out in 2007, when Hayley Williams is still 18. We're still dealing with teenagers here. Increasingly famous teenagers, who are historically the scariest kind of teenagers, in part because they tend to be the meanest and the messiest.

• 1:00:18Speaker 04

  A mariachi band intro. That's a new one. That's a fine addition to the huge rock radio song formula. Shout out mariachi Real de Mexico, who are credited in the Riot liner notes, in the messy, scrawled Riot album cover, no doubt type font. It took me forever to find mariachi Real de Mexico in the credits. I had to physically pick up my laptop and try to twist it to read all the words. It's very annoying. This doesn't matter. Misery Business begins with a mariachi band, and then Hayley Williams saying, "Hit that, hit that snare." And then a guitar riff worthy of inclusion in the video game Guitar Hero World Tour.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  I don't think I played that one. I'm sorry. That doesn't matter either, but it matters to me.

• 1:01:19Speaker 04

  So, what and who precisely Misery Business is about depends on when you ask Paramore. If you ask the band in 2007, when the Riot album comes out, and when Paramore appear on the cover of the great Cleveland institution, Alternative Press Magazine, when AP asks Hayley Williams about this song then, she responds carefully and vaguely. She says, quote, "The whole song is a true story. In real life, the situation was a lot darker than it was in the song. But when I wrote it, I made myself come off a lot stronger than I was at the time. It's a pretty embarrassing situation, and it took me a long time to feel strong enough to say something about it.

• 1:02:04Speaker 04

  But now, three years later, I'm no longer reliving it." End quote. Hayley also says that talking about Misery Business makes her watch you crawl into a hole. Probably that'll never change.

• 1:02:30Speaker 04

  And the permanent "none of our business" intrigue radiating off this song, it's a different story. There's way less permanent intrigue here without this second verse, without that second line in the second verse, without "once a whore, you're nothing more, I'm sorry, that'll never change." That particular word is not exactly unheard of in rock and roll, but that particular word is rare enough to be jarring, to be shocking, to drive a 20-year public discourse of controversy and recrimination and cancellation and uncancellation and gradual revelation. For example, by 2020, Talking to Vulture,

• 1:03:11Speaker 04

  Hayley is describing the genesis of Misery Business a little more specifically. Quote, "When I was 13 or 14 and I had a crush on Josh, he didn't like me back. He would go hang out with his girlfriend, who I wrote Misery Business about because I was a dick." End quote. She means Josh Pharoah, the guitar player in Paramore at the time. Teenagers.

• 1:03:49Speaker 04

  I dig the repetition of "I refuse, I refuse, I refuse" there into the second chorus. That's an elite songwriting move. Elite songwriters make the messiest teenagers. So Misery Business is a teenage pop punk song about intra-band romance with a high school set, Mean Girls-coded video. But even in 2007, Hayley Williams is working to keep even her fans from dismissing this song as mere teenage melodrama. Talking to Alternative Press, she says, quote, "I know we are a lot younger than even a lot of our fans, and it's a constant fight to get people to..." Take us seriously. I grew up with my parents fighting a lot and the guys in the

• 1:04:33Speaker 04

  band grew up with similar situations. Anyone can see what love isn't, no matter what their age. I think that's the most important message of that song, end quote. And the coolest parts of Misery Business is during the bridge when the boys in the band all crash back in on the word involving.

• 1:05:12Speaker 04

  It makes all the difference in the world that Hayley just sings involving at the end there, not involving you. This is my personal experience of Misery Business. You zoom in on the tiny, crucial, phenomenal details, then you zoom back out for, you know, the discourse. After 11 years, Paramore will stop playing Misery Business Live in 2018. Hayley will announce this onstage in Nashville before playing the song one last time. And then Paramore will resume playing Misery Business Live in 2022, including when Paramore go on tour opening for this lady.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  Here we have a 2010 song called Better Than Revenge by one Taylor Swift. When Taylor re-records this song in 2023, she will semi-gracefully change the line about the things that she does on the mattress. Teenagers, regretful teenagers. As for Paramore, somehow we have only begun to chronicle the Fleetwood Mac calamity inherent to this band. Josh and Zac Pharo leave the band noisily. In 2010, in part over the whole only Hayley is signed to our record label business. Though Zach will return in 2017, and as of 2026, Paramore officially consists of Hayley

• 1:06:50Speaker 04

  Williams, Taylor York, and Zach Pharoah. And Hayley makes rad solo albums, too, now. And there is further intra-band romance to decode at great length on the internet. And who knows when this band will record and/or tour again? But if Paramore ever do tour again, they'll probably still play Misery Business. And hopefully, they'll play this messy emo bop as well.

• 1:07:34Speaker 04

  The third Paramore album comes out in 2009 and is called Brand New Eyes. This song is called "The Only Exception." It is the second-best Paramore song after "That's What You Get." Either "Still Into You" or "Ain't It Fun" is the third-best Paramore song. You pick. "The Only Exception" is a power ballad. It is the band's most delicate, most vulnerable, most Riley Kylie-esque power ballad. It is a cigarette lighter-waving classic for a non-cigarette lighter age. It is about never getting away and never wanting to. And it is probably not about Power Glove Kid.

• 1:08:16Speaker 04

  The actual lyrical backstory here, the exact subject of this song, the personal emotional stakes for Hayley Williams and others, well, all of that real-life context gets a little gnarly. But that, of course, is none of our business.

• 1:08:37Speaker 04

  We are so delighted to be joined by Rob Mahoney, senior staff writer for The Ringer and podcast superstar and Renaissance man. You've heard slash seen him on Band Splain, House of R, The Ringer's NBA show Group Chat, The Prestige TV podcast, and many other fine programs. Rob, thank you so much for being here. Are you kidding? Thanks for having me.

• 1:08:58Speaker 04

  I am thrilled. I think you're my first Rob.

• 1:09:00Speaker 07

  It's gotta be.

• 1:09:01Speaker 04

  I may be wrong about that, yeah.

• 1:09:02Speaker 07

  So the first communion of Robs. Wow.

• 1:09:05Speaker 04

  Yeah, you should be honored to be the only other Rob allowed in this venue.

• 1:09:11Speaker 07

  Well, famously, there can only be one. I think there are some mythologies by which we would have to destroy each other to consolidate our power, but I hope that doesn't happen by the end of the pod.

• 1:09:20Speaker 04

  I think we'll be all right. Paramore is not really a divisive topic necessarily. Maybe that'll happen down the line, but we'll keep it civil for today. My understanding is that you got into Paramore before it was cool. Is that correct?

• 1:09:36Speaker 07

  Before is cool is one way to put it. I would say before it was available enough to pirate so that I actually had to buy this CD. That early enough, certainly.

• 1:09:47Speaker 04

  Okay. Was it the first record?

• 1:09:49Speaker 07

  Yeah, first record, right out of the gate.

• 1:09:52Speaker 07

  I think it was like just accessible enough to me as a 16-year-old who basically would phase out if it wasn't... I mean, pop punk certainly, but if at least it wasn't like alt-rock sensibility, I would just stop listening to it. And so it's familiar enough, but then also Hayley comes in and like blows your swooping bangs aside. And all of a sudden, you can see like everything that this band could bring to the table potentially.

• 1:10:16Speaker 04

  Yeah, I was gonna ask like what drew you to Paramore initially and if it was anything beyond Hayley? Or is Hayley like more than enough to draw you in initially?

• 1:10:24Speaker 07

  She's certainly more than enough, but like at that stage in particular, like for that first album, it's the most generic that they've ever sounded as far as just like a band of that era. And there are many like them, many with like impressive vocalists of different kinds. I think it's honestly like that, that kind of accessibility worked for me and mattered to me as a 16-year-old who was dumb and did not know better. Versus now, if you tap into the Hayley Williams experience, it can be synth poppy. It can obviously be in this more like punk-pop tradition. It can also be like increasingly shoegazy apparently as she starts yet another band.

• 1:11:01Speaker 04

  That's right, Power Snatch. I'm sorry that I just said that to you out loud, but I do think that's actually the name of her new band. So that is unfortunate and yet accurate.

• 1:11:11Speaker 07

  I'm glad that we have you on record. I think we can just clip that audio and send it out into the universe.

• 1:11:15Speaker 04

  Just repeat it for 30 seconds. That's a social clip right there. We'll cut that out. Okay, they were on, they were released, the records, Paramore's records, on Fueled by Ramen, which is a very cool sort of pop punk label, Less Than Jake, et cetera. But they're a major label band. And like, does that matter at all in 2005? Or is that all a remnant of the 90s? The idea of like a pretend indie, a major label band? Like, do you care about that kind of thing at all, even in 2005?

• 1:11:46Speaker 07

  I actually did care about it, and some of that is like, I was so Fall Out Boy inclined that Fueled by Ramen meant something to me, whereas if they, if they had just been an Atlantic Records band all the way through. Atlantic, like, the idea of being an Atlantic Records band in 2005 meant absolutely nothing whatsoever. It's like such a big tent, especially at that point. There's no recognizable identity to anything happening there. So the idea that it's like having this cosign of other bands I'm interested in, that it feels of a wave and of a conversation with, you know, if not just Fall Out Boy, then at least some bands that are kind of following in their wake. That honestly did pull me in. Like, I honestly think the first time I ever became aware of them

• 1:12:28Speaker 07

  was like probably from some like random like purevolume.com message board. And then from there, straight to like the Fueled by Ramen web store to buy the aforementioned CD. So I have to say, like, I was caught in that particular web.

• 1:12:41Speaker 04

  Okay. I have to say, I love All We Know Is Falling 2. But you know, I agree with you that it's the most generic sounding Paramore record. And the leap between that record and Riot is just enormous. Like, the difference between like, that's what you get in anything they'd done previously. Like, when you heard Riot for the first time, did it sound like the same band? Like, did it sound like the same band like times 10 now?

• 1:13:06Speaker 07

  I think the times 10 is probably the good modifier, especially- Given where they've gone since that point, right? We've seen like radical transformations between albums for Paramore by now. But this felt like an intensification of the same concepts, of the same ideas. It felt like a natural growth album for not just a young band, but like for Hayley Williams in particular, such a young person. Like growing into like a teenage, like pop punk star is its own kind of, you know, celebrity. But I'm sure also personal hell in a lot of ways. And to see someone in a band come through the first phase of that and all of its obstructions with Riot.

• 1:13:42Speaker 04

  Right.

• 1:13:43Speaker 07

  I think it's just like an incredible accomplishment.

• 1:13:46Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. And I Misery Business was such a huge hit immediately. And you said to me something like, you know, it was so huge, there was almost an impulse within the scene to sort of push it away a little bit. Like it had broken containment into sort of a pop universe, a pure pop universe. And it sort of threatened to overshadow the band. Like it was a hit so big, you know, that they were going to be carrying it around, you know, like Radiohead and Creep or something like that. Like what was your evolution with Misery Business as a song in real time?

• 1:14:16Speaker 07

  Yeah, first listen, oh my God, this rips. Uh, second listen, is this the greatest chorus of all time? But then by eighth listen, ninth listen, 10th listen, I think this is where there's like a differentiation between, you know, a song like The Middle or a song like Thanks For The Memories, like those truly escape into like the pop atmosphere, right? They become the song you hear everywhere. You step into a department store and you hear that song. Misery Business, I don't think ever really crossed that threshold, but it did be, it did for me become the song you hear on every friend's live journal. And so that is its own kind of like bubble amplification happening that.

• 1:14:55Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 1:14:55Speaker 07

  Yeah, like at a certain point, you want to be the person who loves the deeper cut off of the Paramore album, even while acknowledging, yeah, Misery Business is great, but also have you heard X, Y, or Z?

• 1:15:09Speaker 04

  You keep talking about like pure volume, you know, and a live journal and like MySpace. And I think it's always an underrated part of this process for me. Like you have to remember exactly what the internet was like when Misery Business first blew up. Like is your memory of this song, like even now, when you hear this song, are you transported back to like the angel fire era? Like, how much does the internet matter to the way you remember this song?

• 1:15:34Speaker 07

  Oh, I think it's baked in completely. I think it's, it's a very internet of its time song. I think it's a very like, I have like a sense memory of like people attempting to sing this on like rock band for the Xbox. Like, again, just like a very, a relic that because it was so singular and so powerful at that time, has gone on to have an incredible afterlife and has become, you know, has informed all kinds of music to come, has become one of their singular hits, has, you know, fallen in and out of their setlist, as I'm sure we could talk about. But like, it is an inescapable song because it is so hooky and so powerful and so charismatic. And that starts with locating it in that very like, I dug this up in the back corner of an internet

• 1:16:16Speaker 07

  and it was not served to me kind of satisfaction that I think is so critical to early Paramore's success in a lot of different ways.

• 1:16:24Speaker 04

  The pre-algorithm internet in general is a good way maybe to think about it, which seems like a better internet now, certainly. The guitar, the rock band is very important. Guitar Hero and That's What You Get is very important to me personally. That's like my all time favorite Guitar Hero song, Is That What You Get? I was very good at it, I don't mind telling you, I got 100% on expert.

• 1:16:46Speaker 07

  Why do we not have that on video somewhere?

• 1:16:48Speaker 04

  I, I should dig it up. I would have to like hook it up and like get it working again, but you're absolutely right. Another great social opportunity here, and I'm always on the, I will get big on TikTok by playing old songs on Guitar Hero. That sounds like perfect 2026 social media content. Thank you very much. You mentioned to me that Misery Business may be the all time greatest Hayley vocal, which is very high praise indeed, like just the songs to come, the records to come, even the solo stuff to come. What is it about Misery Business that still might make this, you know, her best performance on a purely singing level?

• 1:17:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think there are a lot of vocals she has, as you said, solo and otherwise, where you could identify. The way that like All I Wanted has this incredible range, or Decode. Decode has this like evanescing quality that I think is like very powerful in its own way. Still into you, I think deserves a place in this conversation too. For me, it's like, it's two things with Misery Business. One, it tricks you into thinking that it's something much simpler than it actually is. And it's one of those vocals where if you just listen to the gymnastics that Hayley Williams is doing on the bridge, or the like stair stepping precision as she goes through the like, it was never my intention to brag over and over.

• 1:18:07Speaker 07

  Like, that is Bravura's stuff that isn't as obvious necessarily as some of those other vocal arrangements, but I think is incredibly powerful and as you will find if you try to sing the song yourself, very difficult to do. But the other part is like, it's all personality. And some of her other, some of her other great vocal songs, yeah, they have a truth to them. You can feel them like in your chest in a certain kind of way. This has like a snarl and an edge that has always been kind of part of her performance style, but it's just like really tapping into her charisma as a performer. It's like, it's one thing to write that stuff in a teenage diary, burn book kind of way as these lyrics are. It's another thing to really, really believe them as you're performing them.

• 1:18:49Speaker 07

  And I think that's to me what sells the vocal as being ultimately her best is like where it comes from.

• 1:18:54Speaker 04

  Right. I agree with you. Like the personality is important. Like I always think of Still into you, like just yo' mother. Like there's some quality of her vocals on that, that the edge and the attitude is present there for me. And the way it is with Misery Business, like Misery Business has a lot of words. I imagine like if you're trying to sing in karaoke, at karaoke or in a car or whatever, just it's a ton of words in the verses to that song. And then these swooping high notes in the chorus. Like it's a harder song to sing than you think, which is always a very dangerous proposition, you know, in a car or at karaoke.

• 1:19:30Speaker 07

  Oh, absolutely true. I mean, I, I think it's one of those things where, and, and this to me is why it's better for one than the other. If you try to sing Misery Business at karaoke, uh, you're subjecting people to, I think, just like a violation of the social contract. Like, when you step into that room and you pick up the mic, there's an understanding, like, you can, like, reasonably fake your way through this, and this is not a song you can fake your way through. Maybe you can talk, sing your way through the verse, but like, when belting time comes, you're fucking cooked. I'm sorry. Like, I don't care how powerful a singer you are, that's not the moment where you can, like, shrink into your falsetto, because like, that's not what the song is.

• 1:20:07Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. So you just said, you said something like, this is the ultimate car sing-along song. And I agreed with that, but I was wondering what the difference is. I agree with you on karaoke. Like, there's just a skill issue that is offensive to your fellow karaokeers, that you're just not gonna reach that point. But what makes this song ideal for like, a group sing-along in a moving vehicle?

• 1:20:30Speaker 07

  I mean, for one, the propulsion. Obviously, just tempo-wise, it tracks with hurdling down the highway or through your suburban neighborhood, or kind of whatever your setting is. But also, like, I feel like for a car sing-along, unlike karaoke, there is that mutual understanding that we don't need to be able to pull this off, right? Like, you're not isolated on an instrumental track where it is just you. Like, you have Hayley holding your hand the whole way, and she's gonna be belting louder than you're belting. And so there's like, a lot of cover in that situation where we can all scream it together, but there's no judgment in that space, which, you know, I think Paramore would approve of.

• 1:21:05Speaker 04

  Strength in numbers. That totally makes sense to me. So as you alluded, this is, there's a long, you know, arduous history behind this song right now. They, they very publicly announced, you know, onstage, Hayley announced, "We're gonna stop playing this now," and they've sort of equally publicly started playing it again. You know, over, you know, there was a span of a couple of years, at least, where it was out of the setlist. And like, I don't ever want to describe something as canceled or even self-canceled, but there's this really weird, arduous discourse about this song, you know, in the 15, 20 years that it's been a very popular song. Like, what do you make of the arc of Misery Business?

• 1:21:46Speaker 07

  Uh, I'm glad we've arced back to this being a song that is part of their setlist for a bunch of different reasons, including it's just a great song and incredibly powerful one to hear live. I also-

• 1:21:59Speaker 07

  The way it was phased out, that they chose to phase this song out based on basically one line in the song. It struck me as like a very well-meaning overreaction to some people, a couple people in a very small corner of the internet being very big mad about, you know, a representation and a performance of, I guess like a kind of anti-feminism is ultimately the critique that Hayley and the band tried to push away from of like, specifically this idea of if you want to take the narrator of the song calling this other girl or woman a whore, look, no one's gonna, no one's gonna defend it, right? Like, that's not a great thing to do out in the world. I also think this song, while it does have that edge to it, is like 10% meaner than Avril Lavigne's "Skater Boy," and I have not heard a single

• 1:22:44Speaker 07

  word about Avril Lavigne's "Skater Boy."

• 1:22:47Speaker 04

  That's true.

• 1:22:48Speaker 07

  It's just not that serious. And so, the fact that it is phased back into their playlist, they don't, Hayley doesn't sing that line anymore, totally fair game. And even sometimes when the audience does sing that line, she will like playfully finger wag at them almost, like it's become a bit more than it has an actual controversy, I think is the right place for this to land.

• 1:23:09Speaker 04

  Nah, that's, that's a lovely thing. I, I don't remember the exact timeline, but it's twin in my mind with Taylor Swift with "Better Than Revenge," which is first of all, a very paramour sounding Taylor Swift song. And when Taylor was doing her re-recording, it's Taylor's version, it's like she changes the line, you know, about the stuff you do on the mattress, right? Like, they always ran in parallel for me. And like, do you personally, do you want a band to evolve and to go back to their old stuff and to reconsider it and to contend with their past, you know, and maybe change lyrics or excise songs entirely that they don't stand by anymore? Or do you prefer a band that like owns its past, you

• 1:23:50Speaker 04

  know, even the possibly uglier, more confrontational parts of its past?

• 1:23:55Speaker 07

  I think changing bits and pieces feels like a fair compromise that we can all come to, where every artist is cringing in some way or another about the thing that they wrote 20 years ago, if they're lucky enough to have that long a career. And so the idea that, yeah, I want to tweak this line because it doesn't represent me anymore, or just because I've evolved and I would prefer to say this other thing instead, that tracks for me. I think where I have problems is when bands start excising, as you said, like entire portions of their history, where it's like, we don't even acknowledge that this era of us ever happened. That feels, I mean, just like a level of revisionism that is a disservice to listeners, to fans of those artists and bands, that just feels like it's rewriting history in kind

• 1:24:39Speaker 07

  of a way that makes my skin crawl. Like, it's okay to be messy. Like, it's okay for art especially to be messy. And I think there's a lot of gray area to work with and a lot of room for, you know, eating crow here and there, or apologizing for this and that. But like, the idea that you need to just completely distance yourself from a past version of you doesn't feel like it really services anybody to me.

• 1:25:03Speaker 04

  No, I agree completely. You know, Paramore as a band, there's always, there's all these parallel discourses, right? We've had a lot of lineup changes. We've had very public, you know, comings and goings. You know, we've had intra-band romances. Like, do you, does that stuff enhance the music for you or distract from the music? When you were getting a new Paramore album, like "Brand New Eyes", for example, you know, were you listening to that album specifically to sort of read the tea leaves of what these songs are saying, what Hayley's trying to say, like, encode about what's going on in her personal life or within the band? Like, is that helpful to you? Or does that sort of crowd out the music for you, all the drama that people are trying to decode behind the scenes?

• 1:25:46Speaker 07

  Honestly, for me, it's neither. I still enjoy the music just as much. That stuff is not particularly for me, but I'm not above it. And I think, you know, to go back to kind of this idea of Paramore being of a particular era of the internet, I think this ties into that conversation really acutely, where I'm all for bands having all sorts of entry points. And for different people, it might be just like, I heard "Misery Business", and that song rips, and I want to hear more. For other people, it might be Paramore's of this particular scene or like, subculture, and I want to tap into that. Maybe it's a fashion thing, maybe it is an iconography, maybe it is just simply like, these sorts of best-kept-secret ideas that you are always like, "I am one Tumblr post away from understanding what is

• 1:26:31Speaker 07

  happening here", that, yeah, has contributed to-

• 1:26:35Speaker 07

  You know, the larger Taylor Swift-ification of a lot of pop music and just like these buried Easter eggs. It's like, that concept that if I can just be enough of a fan in this particular way, there is like untold depth to these songs is a really appealing and attractive idea. That for me, like, I'm not going that deep, but if that's what it takes, if that's what you get from enjoying Paramore, then I support you.

• 1:26:59Speaker 04

  I love that for you is, I think, the right way to approach the vast majority of what people are doing on the internet. That's a very healthy approach that you've taken.

• 1:27:07Speaker 07

  We try.

• 1:27:09Speaker 04

  Rob, what is the best Paramore album? And how cool is it that nobody can agree on what the best Paramore album is?

• 1:27:15Speaker 07

  It's honestly one of my favorite things about them.

• 1:27:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 07

  For me, it is After Laughter, which I know some people might not have in their top three albums, depending on what your sensibilities are. I think there are a lot of people who love Brand New Eyes, and that album does very little for me. And so the idea that there's a Paramore for everybody, I find to be one of the most attractive things about the band. But I love After Laughter as a reunion album of sorts, as a departure album. It's clearly like, again, their most synth-poppy, especially at that point, effort to that date. But I think that it's just like full of things I didn't know Paramore could do. And some of that is being full of adult anxiety in a way that maybe this is just me right now, but certainly speaks to where I'm at.

• 1:27:59Speaker 04

  Yeah. Does The Only Exception do anything for you? Just speaking of Brand New Eyes, it's sort of the anomaly on that record. But like, I love that song so much, but I'm sort of conscious that maybe, where is the hardcore Paramore fan, do you think, on The Only Exception? And where are you?

• 1:28:15Speaker 07

  This is a very thorny question.

• 1:28:17Speaker 04

  It is, it is.

• 1:28:18Speaker 07

  I find, my understanding, at least again, based off my cursory dips into Paramore internet, is that Hayley herself is not the biggest fan of this song.

• 1:28:28Speaker 04

  I can imagine that's true.

• 1:28:29Speaker 07

  As, you know, not just as a hit of a certain kind, but maybe a certain performance style or, you know, the history of that song in particular. It's not one I return to a lot. It's one I'm impressed by and will glance through, but I can't say it's like a load-bearing Paramore hit for me.

• 1:28:48Speaker 04

  Again, a healthy approach, I think. It's weird to listen to Riot and listen to Misery Business and think of this as a fairly young band, right? Like, they're not superstars yet. They're a Warped Tour band, you know? And they get huge on the Warped Tour, but the Warped Tour, Haley, has talked a lot very recently about how traumatic it was and how ugly it was and how she was treated and how she was talked about. What were your personal Warped Tour memories? And did you think of Paramore in real time, even up to Riot, as primarily a Warped Tour band?

• 1:29:22Speaker 07

  I mean, certainly of that ilk. I think, look, I mean, everything that Haley has talked about in terms of the bands that were performing and promoted, and just like the larger boys' club feeling of, if we're gonna be honest, like basically every rock movement in history, but certainly pop, punk and emo at this time, unquestionable, undeniable, pretty fucked up in the grand scheme of things. It's a miracle that she and the band made it through that point and a bigger one that they have sustained in the way that they have and kind of reinvented themselves so many times. But at that, like, at that snapshot, they did feel like a Warped Tour band to me. And they felt like exactly this, like, again, this is a very particular time where it's like, and maybe the only point in, no, not maybe, definitely the only point in human

• 1:30:05Speaker 07

  history, you could show up on a day and see Thursday, Paramore and Real Big Fish, all in rapid succession. And that's simply a thing that had to be captured in time and will never happen again.

• 1:30:20Speaker 07

  I mean, it's a very strange place. I will always remember Warped Tour as fundamentally, it's such a younger crowd, that it's a lot of, like, random injuries happening as a result of, like, baby's first mosh pit.

• 1:30:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:34Speaker 07

  Inescapable.

• 1:30:35Speaker 04

  A lot of rookies.

• 1:30:36Speaker 07

  I mean, legitimately.

• 1:30:37Speaker 04

  Rookie mistakes.

• 1:30:38Speaker 07

  So a lot of rookie mistakes being made. My other lasting memory is people going to see the band The Used and their lead singer, Burt, wait, Burt McCracken, I always want to call him Burt Macklin. Burt McCracken, who would sing so hard he would vomit onstage, and people rushing to the front to get vomited on. So like, that is the place in time that we are coming from.

• 1:31:01Speaker 04

  Sure. I don't want that. I don't think I wanted that from anybody, from any band, at any point in my life. And now I'm wondering if I'm just, I'm not... Locked in enough on rock and roll that I've never actively wanted to be vomited on.

• 1:31:16Speaker 07

  Maybe not.

• 1:31:16Speaker 04

  By Burton McCracken or anybody. That's, that's really unpleasant to think about.

• 1:31:22Speaker 07

  I'm sorry to bring it to the table, but.

• 1:31:23Speaker 04

  It's alright. No, I appreciate you talking about it. I don't want to talk about it, but you can talk. Okay. That's, that's gross, man.

• 1:31:29Speaker 07

  Absolutely.

• 1:31:30Speaker 04

  That's really, and that, but that was the, that was, it was the style at the time, I guess.

• 1:31:35Speaker 07

  It certainly was.

• 1:31:37Speaker 04

  All right, just a couple of questions to wrap up. Like, one of the big questions dogging Paramore the whole time is like, when will Hayley go solo? Will she go solo? Like, obviously, it comes out eventually that only she's signed to the label, but she really wants it to be a band, and it's still a band. But she does eventually start putting out solo records, but they're very different. They're very quiet. They're very modest. But like, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, her, her solo record from last year, from 2025, like, I love that record.

• 1:32:05Speaker 07

  Unbelievable.

• 1:32:06Speaker 04

  I love that record as much as any Paramore album, if that's weird to say.

• 1:32:10Speaker 07

  I think that's fair.

• 1:32:11Speaker 04

  And I wonder what you make of her solo and what you get from her solo that you don't necessarily get from Paramore.

• 1:32:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, I think part of it is, those albums, to me, really establish solo Hayley as one of like the great vocal shapeshifters of her generation. And you, you see this somewhat Paramore, we talked about the way that the band has kind of like changed their sound over time. But Paramore, to me, as a band, mostly treats Hayley's vocal as like its own special effect, right? There is, there's some touching up, there's some formatting, they're doing some things with it. But it's front and center in like a very clear and mostly undistilled way. On these solo albums, and I would say on Ego Death in particular, which is, I think by far my favorite of her solo efforts so far. I mean, there is layering and modifying and just like a presentation of a totally different style that.

• 1:33:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:33:02Speaker 07

  I mean, it, it just explodes into something else. And so you hear that record and you're like, I hear a little Fiona Apple in here. I hear a little Lana Del Rey in here. I hear like some Caroline Polachek in here. And the idea of, as you're saying, like the culmination of all this, I mean, I guess to the extent that it's always spiraling. Like, she's a solo artist and in Paramore and in this other band and in this other band.

• 1:33:23Speaker 07

  But I, I love that she wanted to be in a band from the outset. And I love that even after being in one for so many years, she would still have so many different musical things to say in all of these different capacities.

• 1:33:33Speaker 04

  It's super telling to me that Paramore opens for part of the Eras Tour. You know, they're directly connected to Taylor Swift. I hear so much of Paramore in like Olivia Rodrigo, even someone like Chapel Rohn. Like, I hear so much Paramore in our biggest pop stars now. Like, is Hayley Williams to you the platonic ideal of both a rock star and a pop star?

• 1:33:56Speaker 07

  I mean, I'm biased, uh, but I do think so. I think it would be insane to use her as a template. Like, to look at Hayley Williams and say, "I'm just gonna try to do everything she did." That would be a little wild, including just like how she performs. But if you wanna boil it all down as like a performer who has been able to manifest what she has wanted for her career through a lot of shit, who is in that like 100th percentile in terms of charisma, not just in a room, but on a stage. Uh, the fact that she's become an icon in her own way, on her own terms, and that she's like dealt with all this stuff and hasn't always been perfect, but owned up to things in just the right way. Like, I just think there's a lot there that any pop star, any wannabe rock star could take away.

• 1:34:39Speaker 07

  And frankly, I mean, this is also like legally decided, but if you just listen to Misery Business, you can basically see Olivia Rodrigo like sprouting out of the side of Hayley's head.

• 1:34:49Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:34:49Speaker 07

  Uh, so it's kind of inarguable at a certain point.

• 1:34:52Speaker 04

  Sure. That's, that's a very rich image on which to close, I think, Rob.

• 1:34:56Speaker 07

  You're welcome.

• 1:34:57Speaker 04

  Thank you so much for talking, man. This has been awesome. I really appreciate it.

• 1:35:00Speaker 07

  Oh, a real treat for me. Thanks, Rob.

• 1:35:04Speaker 04

  Thanks very much to our guest this week, Rob Mahoney. Thanks to our producers, Olivia Creary, Justin Sayles, and Chris Sutton. Additional production by Kevin Poole. Animations and graphics by Chris Calliton. Additional art by Matt James. Uh, special thanks to Cole Kushner. Uh, and special thanks to you, of course, for listening slash watching. And now, let's all go listen to Misery Business by Paramore. We'll see you next week.

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