{"id":6335,"date":"2025-09-05T14:54:38","date_gmt":"2025-09-05T19:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6335"},"modified":"2025-11-09T19:22:02","modified_gmt":"2025-11-10T00:22:02","slug":"hayley-williams-has-spent-her-entire-professional-life-in-the-major-label-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/?p=6335","title":{"rendered":"Hayley Williams Has Spent Her Entire Professional Life In The Major-Label System"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the frontwoman for pop-punk heroes Paramore, Hayley Williams has spent her entire professional life in the major-label system, having first signed to Atlantic Records in 2003 when she was just 15. But following the worldwide arena tour for Paramore\u2019s 2023 album, This Is Why, the contract expired, and she returned to her concurrent solo career as a fully independent artist for the first time, completely unburdened by the weight of commercial expectations\u2014and from any conventional notions of what even constitutes a proper album. In August 2025, she dropped a whopping 17 new tracks online at random, inviting fans to create their own playlist permutations. \u201cI really did want to shirk the responsibility,\u201d she told Apple Music\u2019s Zane Lowe at the time. \u201cI was kind of interested in other people\u2019s perspective, also, because there\u2019s just a point where you\u2019re in the eye of that storm, you\u2019re making things, you\u2019re going through shit, and you can\u2019t possibly have perspective.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Stream Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/span> Image Courtesy Of Apple Services<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, four weeks after that initial data dump, Williams finalized her own version of the tracklist and officially corralled those songs under the title of Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party. You can understand why sequencing these tracks was such a daunting task: Ego Death feels a lot like listening to five-disc CD changer stocked with \u201990s faves on shuffle mode, bounding between fuzzy Breeders-styled odes to anti-depressants (\u201cMirtazapine\u201d), No Doubt-like tropical-pop mash notes (\u201cLove Me Different\u201d), and pure Alanis-worthy catharsis (\u201cHard\u201d); she even works the chorus of Bloodhang Gang\u2019s \u201cThe Bad Touch\u201d into the grungy folk dirge \u201cDiscovery Channel,\u201d transforming the original\u2019s horndog hook into a raw expression of animalistic lust.<\/p>\n

But while Ego Death draws from a kaleidoscopic pop palette, Williams\u2019 punk-rock heart beats loudly throughout, as she takes side-eyed shots at the Nashville establishment on the deceptively breezy title track, while using the gothic trip-hop backdrop and deadpan Lana-esque vocal of \u201cTrue Believer\u201d to paint a damning portrait of so-called Christians who \u201cpose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all the children.\u201d As a parting gift, Williams appends Ego Death\u2019s original 17 loosies with the previously unreleased \u201cParachute,\u201d which seamlessly folds Williams\u2019 punk past and alt-pop present into a triumphant closer that sounds like Chappell Roan working up the nerve to stage-dive into the pit at Riot Fest.<\/p>\n

Every product\/service is selected by editors. Products\/Services you buy through these links may earn “SMG” a commission or revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the frontwoman for pop-punk heroes Paramore, Hayley Williams has spent her entire professional life in the major-label system, having first signed to Atlantic Records in 2003 when she was just 15. But following the worldwide arena tour for Paramore\u2019s 2023 album, This Is Why, the contract expired, and she returned to her concurrent solo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6338,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6335\/revisions\/6338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/streamapse.com\/Magazine\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}