Andy spoke to Josh Farro from Paramore on the phone as they prepared to head home from their jaunt over here in the UK.
PT: Hey guys how are you all doing today?
JF: Good, how are you?
PT: Very well, where are you and what have you been up to?
JF: We’ve been at Kerrang! Radio, we did an acoustic performance and it went great – the kids were awesome.
PT: You guys have been doing an endless amount of press recently to support your new album, Riot!, it seems we literally cannot get away from Paramore in the UK at the moment! Do you think the hard work has paid off?
JF: I hope so!
PT: Tell me about the new album. Where did the title ‘Riot’ come from?
JF: Well, I was looking through the dictionary, looking for a title that was a one-word title to sum up the whole record. Hayley’s lyrics on this record are really honest. In songs like the single ‘Misery Business’, they’re pretty bold. It works because it’s just an uncontrolled outburst of emotion, and it sort of sums up everything about it.
PT: How did the Riot! Artwork come about? It’s quite a focal point in the video for ‘Misery Business’.
JF: Yeah it was designed by us. We were at a photoshoot for the album, and there was like a huge white piece of paper behind us, and we just took some really big markers. Each of us wrote one letter, and it worked out looking pretty raw which is just what we wanted.
PT: How have crowds been reacting to the new songs live?
JF: They’ve been great. They’re all singing along. I think that now the album’s released people are learning the words properly. Even before, the kids would take videos at the shows and post them on youtube so that people could get to know the songs before the album came out that way.
PT: Ok, the download festival has just wrapped up. How was that for you?
JF: It was probably the best show of this whole tour over here, it was amazing. All the kids were like in Megadeath shirts!
PT: You played the Dimebag Darrell Stage alongside the likes of Korn, Enter Shikari and Turbo Negro, all bands with very dedicated fanbases. Were you worried the metal fans wouldn’t take a liking to your sound?
JF: Totally, but then we got up there and it was just a really good show. We didn’t get a chance to see many bands over the weekend ourselves because we were doing a lot of press, but we did catch the end of My Chemical Romance which was fun.
PT: How about your London show at the underworld. It sold out super-quickly. Do you think you underestimated your popularity when that was being booked? It seems that you could have played a much larger venue instead and still managed to sell it out.
JF: I think that because we were playing download, with the contract we have with them we had to play a limited capacity venue, so it was restricted. Last time we came to London, we played the Mean Fiddler which was like a thousand, so we probably could have gone bigger, but it was still a great, intimate show.
PT: For the closing track on ‘Riot!’, ‘Born for this’, you ran a competition for Paramore fans to be featured as gang vocals in the bridge. Who came up with that idea, and how happy are you with the way it turned out?
JF: Yeah we were just brainstorming with our producer, David Bendeth, and we all came up with the idea. We really wanted the fans to be a part of the album. It was crazy because everyone we picked actually ended up having a really good voice. It took them like no time at all to record. We were expecting it to be a lot of work, but it seriously took maybe half an hour at most!
PT: When you first released ‘All we know is falling’, you were really the only band in your genre to feature a female singer. Since then, there seems to have been a real upsurge in female-fronted pop-punk and pop-rock bands. DO you guys feel like you’ve opened a window for a lot of bands to get recognised?
JF: I really hope so; I think it’d be a great thing to have inspired other bands to get out there. When we started we had criticisms with the whole situation [Hayley being the focus of attention]. It’s just how it goes sometimes, but I think we’ve definitely made a name for ourselves now as a band.