Hayley Williams on Paramore split: "For all the people who believed in us, we're saying, 'You haven't gotten tattoos of our lyrics for nothing. We're going to keep going.'"
Hayley Williams and Paramore's split was a bitter public mess, and the vocalist even resigned at the possibility the band wasn't meant to last. There was a time when she considered closing doors on the music industry.
"I thought, 'Well, maybe it's like the end of Stand by Me. Not everything lasts forever. I'll find something else that I'm good at."
Instead, the band (or the members that remained) bounced back as a three piece and pulled off one of this year's most successful singles. Hayley says the success of "Ain't It Fun" made her feel "absolutely vindicated."
Hayley is optimistic about Paramore's new phase, after the fallout. In an interview with yahoo.com, she also comments on how things have changed in the band, age-wise.
"I'm starting to accept that 25 is not 16. Seven or eight years ago, we would go to Taco Bell, grab a bean burrito and run onstage. Now, getting ready for a show takes two hours - Jeremy and Taylor have to wrap their ankles, and I have to do stretches so I don't hurt my neck from headbanging. I'm loving it, but I definitely might collapse at one of these shows."
It's all water under the bridge in terms of Hayley Williams and Paramore's split, and the vocalist prefers to talk about the present, with nostalgia considered. She recalls the time when being a female "front man" made a difference when the band was playing the smaller clubs.
"I'm not faced with it directly the way I was when I was 16 and we could see every single person in the crowd and hear everything they were saying. I think some of them didn't know how to handle a girl being in a position of authority. Now, I just don't want to hear my friends in bands saying, "I got asked again if I was a merch girl."
The band is moving on after last year's Hayley Williams and Paramore split, and is set to jumpstart the year with a new show and a revamped lineup.
