Petals for Armor Tracklist
Petals for Armor is Hayley Williams‘ solo debut after working with her band Paramore for over 15 years. The project was announced on her birthday when she shared via her social media a small tease saying new music is coming in 2020. She began teasing the project in January by releasing short snippets of the tracks/music videos.
The first song, “Simmer”, was officially announced January 20, just two days before its release. The track sees Williams struggling with bottled-up anger and meditating with her past. The second single, “Leave It Alone” was released January 30 where she sings about personal loss. The third single “Cinnamon” was released with a tease-EP titled Petals for Armor I where she also released “Creepin'” and “Sudden Desire”.
Hayley followed this by releasing Petals for Armor II and it’s composing 5 songs one at a time. In it, tracks like “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” gained a lot of traction as it featured the supergroup boygenius. The song “Dead Horse” was also an immediate success as she detailed all the problems she had with her now ex-husband.
The final five songs were all released alongside a final EP titled Petals for Armor III on May 8.
“Petals for Armor” Q&A
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Translations:
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Where did the album title come from?
The inspiration for the title came from an experience she detailed in a year old interview where she said:
I went to see what some people would think of as a “coo-coo therapist,” like a craniosacral masseuse, but I fucking love her. She always just hits the nail on the head. During a session, she was doing body work on me and they say that our memories are stored in the nerves and tissues — not so much the head. It’s fascinating. So a lot of times when we do body work, we access emotions and memories we’ve tucked away or our body has done for us.
I was on the table and I had a lot of thoughts about my wedding. I remembered some stuff that I just hadn’t remembered before — just how uncomfortable I felt in that dress and things that I so quickly turned off because I wanted it so badly to work out. And then later in the session I had this vision of all of these flowers growing out of me. My cynical side immediately took it and was like, “Well, the only way that happens is if you’re dead, you’re in the ground, and somebody put some pretty flowers there.” But then this new side that I’d never had access to, swiftly flew in and batted that away and said, “No. That’s you. This is now. This is what’s happening right now and this is what you’ve been digging around in the dirt for during the last year. This beauty and femininity and new strength is going to come out of you.” And I chose to hold onto it.
I swear to god I’m there with my eyes closed and we’re at the end of the session. I haven’t spoken a word of any of this to her. She goes, “Alright, we’re done with the session.” You know, just really calm whispering. She said, “Thank you so much for seeing me today. You’re surrounded by flowers.” I was like, “What the fuck!!?”. I still didn’t say anything, and she left the room. I took the cover off my eyes and she had put rose petals all over me, like all around. They smelled amazing. I don’t even know if that was some subconscious thing I took in, and I don’t really care, because that vision has been so vivid to me over the last year or so. I’ve picked up a lot of flowers for my house since then. I just keep them around me all the time to remind me that I’m moving into femininity and strength and then femininity and aloneness — you know, that power of being self-sufficient, but being soft too, and open.
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How was the project first announced?
On her birthday, Hayley teased Petals For Armor via social media in the following post:
