Paramore Reflect On Five-Year Hiatus: 'Nothing Is Worth Risking Our Health'

Photo: Zachary Gray

Paramore officially entered their new era on Wednesday (September 28) with the announcement of their new album This Is Why and release of its title track. The project is a long time coming and their first in five years, following 2017's After Laughter. In a new interview with The Guardian, the band opened up about the years-long hiatus and the self-reflection each member needed to experience in order to continue as a band.

Singer Hayley Williams noted that the openness she and her bandmates shared following the After Laughter campaign “more than ever [became] a support system to each other that we desperately needed.”

For guitarist Taylor York, finding out a family friend passed away during a video shoot was a turning point. “I just started bawling," he recalled. "I didn’t know I had this capacity until that moment. We realised nothing is worth risking our health.”

The trio decided to limit tour plans in support of the album and agreed to “see what it’s like to not hang our identities on Paramore all the time." For Williams, that meant releasing two solo albums. For York, it was giving up alcohol in order to “explore some deeper parts of myself and figure out why we do this, how it happened.”

“I’m a very introverted person and I have a passion and career that’s at odds with that,” he added. “When it came back to doing [Paramore] again, I was able to say confidently, let’s do it. Zac [Farro] and Hayley both needed to know that I wanted to do this.”

This Is Why is slated for a February 10, 2023 release. Paramore plan to hit the road for their comeback tour next month.


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