Paramore Discuss Taylor Swift’s Inspiration In New Apple Music Interview
This week, Paramore joined Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss their highly anticipated return and new album This Is Why. During the interview, they told Apple Music about number of issues, including the “genuine” need to take much-needed break, doing the work and navigating difficult relationships, while Hayley Williams also expressed feeling insatiable while making the album and explains how her friendship with Taylor Swift inspired the group’s new song Running Out of Time.
You can check out the Paramore Apple Music interview in full below, but if you scroll down first, you can sample a little of the interview in advance.
Taylor York Tells Apple Music why Paramore decided to take a break…
“I think that it started mostly because I think the machine that is any band or musical actor, creative entity, it’s like you just keep going and stopping kind of means that you lose traction, you lose your fan base or you lose people’s attention… You feel responsible for people’s livelihoods. And we’re so grateful that we get to partner with people that we really love and do this together. But it really feels hard to make the decision to step away. And I think I just personally was kind of starting to fall apart, I think after so many years of just going and going and going and then you take a couple months off and then you start writing and you do the whole thing over again.
So I pretty much went to Zac and Hayley and was like, I need some time. And it was so amazing because they were both so gracious and empathetic towards me. So we were like, “All right, this is the last thing that we have booked.” And I was like, “Anything that we need to do, I’m down to do, but I just need to know that we’re going to have time after this.” We picked the last thing that we were going to do, which ended up being Art + Friends in Nashville. And we told our manager, we’re like, “Hey, this is not like… We’re obviously not breaking up, but we really need you to honor us and just don’t bring things to us. We really need you to protect us right now and let us go away for as long as we need to.” And somehow he did.”
Hayley Williams Tells Apple Music about the surprise of feeling “Insatiable” and “Inwardly Greedy” while making This Is Why…
The surprise to me was, I kept watching American Psycho as we were writing this album because I was just experiencing the cog in the wheel feeling and feeling like you get so easily swept up. We went from having four years off in this kind of bizarre piece that happened when we were all a bit left alone. And then obviously the pandemic added another layer to that. But as soon as we started working again, I just felt like I was insatiable, I was greedy inwardly, I was… And in such a sad… Sometimes I think that’s such a good propeller. But there were a lot of things that I just found really icky that I was feeling.
Hayley Williams Tells Apple Music How Paramore’s new song Running Out of Time was inspired by her friendship with Taylor Swift…
“Running Out of Time, for me, it’s the feeling of, I remember when we were 19 and I was closer with Taylor Swift at that point because we both lived in Nashville and we’re both experiencing our own versions of real success for the first time. And I went over to hang out. She’s a really good cook, by the way. She’s a really good cook. She has taught me how to make stuff that I did not retain at all but. But the first time that I went over and we were looking around her place and she was like, “Oh, and this is my little closet where I keep gifts and things that if I randomly am just like, I’m going to send them something, or I did something and they hosted me and I want to thank them.” And I was like, “Oh my God, my life is so not together.” I was like, “I can barely remember to send someone a card or flowers.”
There are still Christmas gifts at my house that I have not sent to my friends just sitting there in the back of my closet. Got out here and two of the people I was supposed to give a gift to, I was like, “Sorry, I forgot to put in my suitcase so you still don’t get a gift.” But that, I wish that I was the person that just had, felt like I had all my shit together and I was like, “Oh, I had some extra time, so I’m just popping by with some flowers.” That kind of a thing, that is my idealized self.”