Paramore

“Every time we do a record, I get so married to who we are in that moment that I’m scared for us to go be something else,” Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams admitted to Apple Music in 2017. “Because what if we’re not as good at that?” Decades into the band’s career, her fear is unfounded. After forming in the Nashville suburbs in 2004, Paramore pushed pop-punk out of the mosh pit and into stadiums precisely because the group were so successful at reinvention. Early albums like 2007’s Riot! embraced hard alt-rock sounds, pairing pop-punk-driven angst with the urgent, emo-schooled dynamics of Jimmy Eat World, most successfully on the pogoing “That’s What You Get” and the band’s first Top 40 hit, the 2007 love-triangle rager “Misery Business”. Williams herself became the Warped Tour generation’s foremost feminist voice, unafraid to call out injustices, inequality and sexism; in fact, she even later publicly spoke out against “Misery Business” lyrics that painted the song’s other woman in a nasty light. In subsequent years, Paramore crossed over via acoustic ballads (the 2010 hit “The Only Exception”), breezy, gospel-infused funk (the Grammy-winning 2013 single “Ain’t It Fun”) and upbeat pop (2013’s “Still Into You”). Along the way, recurring personnel changes would reshape the band’s sound and chemistry, but Paramore persevered, dabbling in tropical disco (2017’s “Hard Times”), stirring post-punk (2023’s “This Is Why”) and ’80s rock via a jubilant 2024 cover of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House”.