When Paramore played the Oxford Zodiac in 2006 it cost six pounds to get in and you were still allowed to smoke inside. I'm sure I'd have posted a Myspace bulletin about going to the show beforehand, and imperfectly applied two different colours of eyeliner to hide under my insanely parted hair. About to turn sixteen, I stood in the darkness and stared in adoration at a band who had released their debut album a year before and had no idea of the long future they had ahead of them. It was so long ago now that I barely remember it, but I’ll never forget watching Hayley Williams playing the keyboard in that white ‘All We Know Is Falling’-era wedding-style dress. It was the start of a fandom that would last for many years to come and the discovery of a role model that as a teenager I - along with many others - was in desperate need of.
After a brief stint desperate to be Brody Dalle of The Distillers, slathering on red lipstick and covering my eyes in kohl aged fourteen, and leaving Avril Lavigne behind when I realised no matter how much time I spent hanging out at the skate park I would never be a sk8er girl, I needed somebody new to look up to: Hayley Williams filled that gap.
Debut album ‘All We Know Is Falling’ gave listeners a female perspective in a music scene that was saturated by men. Navigating the world as a young teen is hard enough for anyone but in what became known as the emo scene – despite promoting itself as all inclusive – it was surprisingly hard for young women. Bands like Taking Back Sunday, The Used and Brand New would sing about how awful women were, and Paramore’s music gave an outlook on things from another point of view. This misogyny still exists today, with too many public examples brushed aside, but twelve years ago Williams was some girls’ first example of someone taking a stand.
But it wasn’t just young women Paramore helped. For everyone more interested in strength and emotion than angry, women-bashing tracks, just knowing someone else experienced similar emotions was comforting enough. People empathised with the negative feelings that came across in those lyrics– “I fear I might break / And I fear I can’t take it” (‘Pressure’) – and were empowered by the strength to be found as Williams performed them with unashamed confidence.
The release of ‘Riot!’ was a true confirmation that Paramore were game changers. An album full of self-acceptance, determination and enthusiasm, it’s the album cited by most fans as their favourite and it’s almost impossible to believe it’s already a decade old. The still-catchy ‘That’s What You Get’ from 2007’s ‘Riot!’ became a karaoke song of choice and the video, in which Williams wears a black shirt, jeans and trainers, was the first public image seen by a lot of young women – as ridiculous as it now sounds – of a woman who wasn’t going to be pressured into gender stereotypes; who could be feminine whilst wearing the same clothes as her male band mates. This was a reassurance it was okay to be who you wanted to be. ‘Born For This’, the final track on the album, made us feel like we could do it too and that there was a place for women in the “scene”- whether that was on stage or bounding around your bedroom with a hairbrush for a microphone.
Hanging a Paramore poster on my tiny pin board at University, little did I know my admiration of Williams had slowly transformed into self-criticism. I’d get frustrated I couldn’t sing. I got upset I had “a body like an hourglass” (thanks, ‘Misery Business’) and I was – stupidly, I now know – annoyed that I didn’t meet the alternative girl criteria set by boys in local venue bands. While it was great that a woman was at the forefront of the ‘alternative’ scene, women who didn’t match up to Williams in looks or talent began to feel inferior, and men began to obsess over a singer they had transformed into a fantasy figure. I furiously dyed my hair in a desperate attempt to be cool but, funnily enough, red hair doesn’t look good when you’ve got flushed skin thanks to a poor University diet, nor does wearing clothes that look good on a petite, skinny woman when you are 5’9 and curvy. One of my flatmates at the time loved Hayley Williams so much he began to compare every girl he met to her – a standard ‘real life’ women could never live up to and at one point he even turned down a girl who liked him because she “wasn’t Hayley Williams”. Thankfully, this first year obsession died down and normal levels of fandom could resume, but the lack of self-confidence still lingered.
Despite the new image ‘Brand New Eyes’ brought, I still wished to be like Williams. It wasn’t an active mission, but the hints slipped out now and then. I sang ‘The Only Exception’ whenever I got drunk and played Rock Band, convinced it was true of my then boyfriend (it was not). I constantly danced along to ‘Feeling Sorry’ and ‘Turn It Off’ – two album tracks I am still adamant are fiercely underrated – and I told myself I loved the video for ‘Brick By Boring Brick’, which really I hated. Looking back it seems so obvious that Williams was a representation of my desperate need to be accepted; of try-hard attempts to make friends and, embarrassingly now I think about it, get boys in the Rock Society to like me. I too wanted to be someone who had a career, a long-term relationship, and a whole load of friends. It wasn’t for a while after that I learned I could just be myself.
