I’m listening to All We Know Is Falling again after almost two years, maybe. I used to listen to it almost everyday. It’s amazing how different it sounds now. It’s a lot simpler, without the rich and interesting complexity that I’ve come to expect of Paramore now. I can literally hear the difference in the quality of writing and production- I used to be nostalgic and thought that the older stuff was best because it was closest to my heart, but an objective listen now tells me the band has grown in depth.

I’m a huge Paramore fan. I made special effort to make sure this picture included Taylor York in it, because he’s a part of the band now. I was bummed out when Josh Farro wasn’t going to be able to make it for the segment of the tour that was going to include Singapore.

I always knew that I would have to go catch them live when they came to Singapore, ever since I listened to All We Know Is Falling after catching it when it was thrown into the air at a gig at *scape. I added the band on LiveJournal and followed their stories and exploits for years, I watched all their videos on YouTube- especially all the little silly things that revealed so much about their character. I got excited with them as their passion for music and their fans brought them to places they had only dreamed of before that. I love that they’re small town kids. I love that they treat opening bands like fellow musicians. I love how friendly and humble they are on and off stage. I love how they make the effort to make every nameless pulsing crowd feel like the live experience is unique and special because of them. Paramore gives me hope.

It bummed me out a little bit when I caught them live right here in Singapore. The music was perfect, but the Paramore that played in the Indoor Stadium wasn’t exactly the same Paramore that I had fallen in love with all those years ago. I was hoping for the Paramore that played live at the House of Blues in Anaheim- the band that was on the verge of making its big break, that deeply hungered for the connection with the crowd just as much as everybody in the crowd, if not more.

I was secretly longing for the awkward gratitude and uncertainty that just wasn’t there anymore- the kids had grown up into polished performers with perfect grace and flair, hardened from hundreds of shows.

Truth be told, the band doesn’t really need us anymore- they’ve reached the stage where anything they do or say will have very little influence over their success. It’s a somewhat depressing thought.

I still love them, though. They’re still an amazing band, and even though they’ve started to get used to doing what they do, they handle it with grace and humility- and they don’t have to. I will still buy their albums and I will still catch them if and when they come again, and I will still follow and support them through all their trials and tribulations. They still give me hope.

PS: Maybe in 10 years time, they’ll be old and relatively forgotten by the mainstream madness, and if/when they’re still around or do a reunion tour or something, it’ll just be the Real Deal fans and the kids from Franklin, Tennessee. Connecting. As musicians and audiences should. (2025jun: it’s been 15 years and the band has been through ups and downs and lineup changes but they’re still really popular! opened for taylor swift!)

✱

2024aug14 love letters (paramore)

one of the things I’m always wanting to do is write love letters to the things I love. and I’m always also putting it off because nothing ever feels like it does justice to the thing. Shall I compare thee to a summers day? Thou art more temperate…

One of my great loves of my life has been Paramore, the band fronted by Ms Hayley Williams, who I still typically point at as possibly my biggest influence… in life. Not to be too dramatic or anything. But witnessing the way she conducted and continues to conduct herself has always been a refreshing tonic for me. I recently rewatched a documentary about Quincy Jones and I noticed some parallels. I’m reminded of some parallels with a bit from a George Carlin interview, too. All my favourite people turn out to have been really lonely. a common trait in all of my favorite people is that they understood very deeply what it meant to be truly lonely, to be isolated and disenfranchised and dismissed and misunderstood. in a general sense this is a universal human experience, but what seems to set my people apart is that they’re determined to do something about it from a place of love

“tell me where our time went / and if it was time well spent”

I first encountered Paramore on MySpace, where I encountered the song Pressure on the profile of someone I don’t remember. Whoever they were, they had great taste. Sometime later I was at a local live music gig in Singapore, where at some point the promoters were literally throwing out CDs into the crowd, and I caught a copy of All We Know Is Falling. This CD would end up on heavy rotation on my discman. I’d basically listen to AWKIF and OK Computer and almost nothing else for a couple of years. My favorite songs on that album are Brighter, Here We Go Again and My Heart. And Emergency. I do have my criticisms of that album- I feel like tracks 6 and 7 are kinda weak, and while 9 and 10 are strong finishes, the whole second half of the album is a bit of a downer- which to some degree is thematically appropriate for an album titled “All We Know Is Falling”. In hindsight a couple of tweaks could’ve made it a better album, but hindsight is always 20/20, and to me AWKIF is perfect for what it was. There’s a great live show they did in Anaheim, California in 2006… fueled by Ramen, that I’ve returned to over the years to get my fix of the aching earnestness

There’s a live-only version of Here We Go Again with a modified ending

Hayley would post to Livejournal around this time, which I found so intimate and relatable

The second album Riot! dropped when I was in junior college, and it was when the band got a taste of more mainstream success with Misery Business being the song that most people probably know. This is when Hayley got into her orange hair fireball

Final Riot talks about the livejournal community asking for My Heart. Sex trafficking hoodie love146.org – songs for children who we believe deserve a chance, we are broken

We grew up online together

> Pitchfork‘s Jenn Pelly in her conclusion summarized the album as “biting songs of brokenness and strength reproduced the feeling eternally: of not being alone in your pain or fury, of being out of step together—the most enduring definition of emo [Williams’] generation would offer

Then came Brand New Eyes, which Hayley has since described as the band’s Some Kind of Monster

I caught the band live twice, and I still feel a little upset that I had to miss one of the shows because of military obligations

Band member departures. Josh Farro left the band, and his brother Zac left with him.

✱

Somewhere in watching final riot I’m just thinking about the feelings. The dark and sad parts of being a kid, and being a teenager

✱

Brand new eyes, Hayley wearing a new found glory tshirt… how sad that her ex-husband was chad