Hayley Williams

Profile

Hayley is a devout Christian, however the band have opted to not preach or label themselves as a Christian band as, according to Zac Farro, 'we're not out here to preach to kids, we're out here because we love music'. She's also known for her appearance which deviates from a majority of other bands in the pop-punk/emo genre by taking a far more colourful approach to her dress sense. Besides her trademark bright orange hair, Hayley regularly wears other items of clothing that feature neon oranges and red. According to several sources including the Alternative Press, the combination of this unique fashon sense with her vibrant and energetic stage performances, Hayley has given the band the edge over plenty of others in their genre. Her personal influences include Robert Smith and Etta James as well as more mainstream figures such as U2, No Doubt and Jimmy Eat World.

On May 27th, 2010, Hayley released a topless picture of herself on Twitter. Minutes later, she removed the picture and claimed that she was hacked, stating , "Well...my night just changed drastically, got hacked." The event caused much controversy, and fans of Hayley jumped to her defense.

Paramore

Hayley first met Paramore band mates Josh and Zac Farro at a private school in Franklin, TN age 13, after recently moving there with her parents. Taking lessons from famed vocal coach, Brett Manning, Hayley's first real foray into performing came when she sang for a band known as The Factory doing covers of Chaka Khan and other funk legend with Paramore's bassist, Jeremy Davis. Soon after, they got together with the Farro brothers and decided to form a band together. While they were originally cautious of having Hayley as the vocalist, they were close enough friends to try it anyway and after enlisting Hayley's neighbour, Jason Bynum, on rhythm guitar, they were complete. Taking the name Paramore from the maiden name of a friend's mother and learning of its origins as a term for 'secret lover', they kept it and started performing together on a regular basis.

After several years of travelling, performing and making connection in the music business, Paramore finally got their big break when the CEO of the Fueled by Ramen record company heard their demos and saw a private performance at the Taste of Chaos tour. Liking what he heard, he signed the band up in April 2005. Now ready to record their first album, the band were rocked by the departure of founding member Jeremy Davis. Carrying on as a quartet, the band wrote and recorded their debut album, All We Know is Falling, named after the title track, All We Know, which was written about the departure of Davis from the group. The album was a relative success, reaching the top 30 on the Billboard Top Heartseekers chart and number 13 on the Bullboard Top Pop Catalogue in America and reaching number 8 in the UK Rock charts.

Paramore spent the majority of 2006 touring and building a following across both America. It was also around this time when the band began getting true recognition across the pond in the UK where they were cited as one of the top ten upcoming bands in the NME's 'New Noise 2007' article as well as recieving a controversial cover story from KERRANG! magazine which portrayed Hayley as the main force of the band rather than treating them as a group leading her to release this statement on her LiveJournal page 'we could’ve done without a cover piece. sorry, if it offends anyone at Kerrang! but i don’t think there was one bit of truth in that article.'

Spending early 2007 both touring and recording their follow up album, Riot! as well as Hayley featuing on Then Came to Kill by The Chariot, the band were always busy. However, all the work paid off when the album entered the Billboard 200 at 20 as well as entering the UK charts at 24. The title of Riot! was chosen as it represented an outburst of emotion and this outburst can easily be mirrored in their outburst into popular culture. Now having magazines such as Roling Stone and TV networks such as Fuse singing their praises and hyping them as the next big thing, Paramore had made the big time. At the end of 2007, Hayley featured again on guest vocals for another band, this time for Say Anything on their album In Defense of the Genre.

At the start of 2008, Paramore were nominated for the Best Newcomer award at the Grammys, just losing out to Amy Winehouse. This was soon followed by a tour of the UK and Europe in order to promote Riot!, however on February 21st, the tour was cut short with Williams saying they needed the break to give the band 'a chance to get away and work out our personal issues'. This led to mass media speculation that Paramore was finished and these rumours were fuelled even further by Josh Farro's accusations that more attention was being focused on Hayley saying: 'We are a team. We are a band. It's not just Hayley— it's not her band. Just because she's the lead singer doesn't mean she's the only one involved.' However, a month later, everything seemed to be fine with the release of their single That's What You Get. Following this the band had tour appearances at Give it a Name, Radio 1's Big Weekend, the world famous Vans Warped Tour and their own The Final RIOT! tour. During thie time, Hayley announced on TRL that the band were recording their third studio album to be released next Summer with Zac Farro claiming it sounds similar to Mew, Thrice and Arcade Fire.

Towards the end of 2008, Paramore supplied two songs to the Twilight movie adaptation soundtrack: Decode and I Caught Myself with Decode being the title song of the movie and released as a single. Following that in 2009, the band have continued to write and record material for their as of yet unnamed third album with a predicted summer release.

Video Games

Besides the PS2 version of The Sims 2 which featured a Simlish version of their first single, Pressure, Paramore's video game contributions have only been related to the rhythm genre with Crushcrushcrush being released as DLC for Rock Band on March 11 2008, That's What You Get appearing in Rock Band 2 and Misery Business being released as an on-disc song on Rock Band 3. In Guitar Hero World Tour, Misery Business is featured on the main song list as well as Hayley herself appearing as an actual vocalist in the game.