But there’s nothing milquetoast or predictable about Paramore circa 2014, and the way Williams bounced and smiled through her Idol performance suggested her heart is in this music 100 percent. The best of them, “Ain’t It Fun,” hit on the right formula to sneak them into Idol, an environment typically associated with manufactured pop stardom. Even more so than their occasionally garish labelmates Fall Out Boy before them, Williams, Jeremy Davis, and Taylor York nailed those genre experiments.
#PARAMORE SELF TITLED ALBUM FOREVER CODE#
Instead, she brought them along with her - the ones who weren’t freaked out by the notion of going all the way pop, anyhow - and explored a wide variety of sounds the mall-punk’s sonic dress code wouldn’t have allowed for. They climbed almost as far as a rock band can climb today, all while Williams dabbled in side projects that suggested she could rocket to a new level of stardom by leaving her bandmates behind. 2007’s RIOT! made them feverishly beloved cult favorites, and Brand New Eyes rendered them legitimate rock stars and (for what it’s worth) critical darlings. Even back on 2005 debut All We Know Is Falling, Paramore was cranking out the kind of anthems that could bring stadiums together. It just goes to show how much aesthetics matter. All it took to put Paramore in front of so many brand new eyeballs was an ’80s pop-rock groove, a gospel choir, vocal tics lifted from Michael Jackson, and an outfit seemingly borrowed from Miley Cyrus. were all grooving awkwardly with giddy grins, and I have to believe a large swath of Americans were doing the same thing.
Judges Jennifer Lopez, Keith Urban, and Harry Connick Jr. Back when the video debuted in January, I declared, “ This song is crack.” Earlier this month it became Paramore’s first top 10 hit on Billboard’s Hot 100, and last night it struck Idol in a flash of yellow. The lead single from last year’s Paramore, the more explicitly rock-oriented “Still Into You,” managed to match Brand New Eyes ballad “The Only Exception” at #24, but “Ain’t It Fun” will probably be the song most people remember Paramore by, and rightfully so. That record was “ Ain’t It Fun,” a song that most certainly is.
Then, after touring the world in support of 2009’s glorious Brand New Eyes, the Farro brothers quit the band, calling it “a manufactured product of a major label.” In their absence, Paramore finally made a record capable of conquering the pop charts. So they shuffled Paramore to Fueled By Ramen and we got three albums of bracingly triumphant mall-punk that managed to land Paramore on the Hot 100 eight times without really establishing a signature song.
Williams herself, it should be noted, has previously grazed the top 40 via hip-hop and EDM trojan horses she scored a #2 single in 2010 by singing the hook for B.o.B’s “ Airplanes” and went to #18 last year with the Zedd collab “ Stay The Night.” It should also be noted that Paramore proved themselves more than capable of adopting a pop-friendly sound when they vastly improved Kings Of Leon’s “ Use Somebody” with their much-circulated 2009 acoustic rendition, not to mention their own ballad “The Only Exception.” And it especially bears mentioning that Williams was originally signed to Atlantic as a solo act in 2003 the label intended to market her as a teen pop singer, but Williams wanted to rawk. But loud guitars and violent drums like the ones that helped “ Careful” blast off have a way of scaring off the Ryan Seacrests of the world, so Paramore never quite made a splash in the top 40 sphere despite Williams’ powerful voice, melodic gift, and abundant charisma. The question is not so much “How did Paramore end up on American Idol?” as “Why did it take them so long to get there?” As I explained at length last month, the Warped Tour scene that carried Hayley Williams and company to stardom was very much a pop star delivery system, and if anyone from that scene exuded star power, it was Williams.
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