Hayley Williams: ‘I always had punk-rock guilt’

If anyone knows just how much emo music straddles the generations, it’s Hayley Williams. The musician has been at the forefront of angsty music since 2004, when she was 15 and playing with her band Paramore, and more recently as a solo artist. Just last weekend, she joined Gen-Z scion Billie Eilish at Coachella festival to duet an acoustic version of Paramore’s song “Misery Business”, the breakthrough hit that took them to the world. As the boundaries continue to blur between pop and rock, and with Y2K throwbacks reaching fever pitch, it makes sense then that the American star is about to launch a podcast dedicated to emo, past and present. “There’s so much frustration in the air right now,” she says, “and I think some people are wanting to go back to what felt, with hindsight, like a simpler time.”

Williams, 34, is speaking from Los Angeles, where she’s recording Paramore’s sixth album – their first in five years. There have been breakups, bust-ups and lawsuits in between, but they seem like a band refreshed, and Williams is in good spirits. It’s early for her and she wields a cup of coffee like a weapon, as though a morning of productivity depends on it. The last time she was in the press, it was for her 2020 solo album, Petals For Armor, interviews for which she delved into difficult topics such as affairs, marriage, depression and divorce. Surprisingly, she isn’t in a cautious mood today either: “I haven’t done interviews in a while so I’m excited!”

Her candour is what makes Williams not just one of the best frontwomen of the past decade, but a fantastic podcast host. Everything is Emo, which launched on BBC Sounds this week, guides listeners through first-hand anecdotes about her career and favourite bands. In the first episode, we hear her thoughts on the Twilight franchise (Paramore’s “Decode” featured on the soundtrack) and how she thinks it was emo’s biggest mainstream moment. Every generation has their take on emo, the style of emotional rock music that emerged in the US in the mid-Eighties as a reaction to the hyper-macho, violent hardcore punk movement. It was at its most ubiquitous in the mid-Noughties, when bands such as My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Paramore became global phenomena, their sound melding pop-punk and alt-rock. More recently, late rappers Lil Peep, XXXTentacion and Juice Wrld are among those to have been credited with starting the emo-rap movement.

Everything is Emo takes an impressionistic approach to the genre, and is littered with new bands such as Wet Leg and acts often associated with indie-rock, like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. “If you want to be technical,” says Williams, emo is “emotional post-hardcore stemming from bands like Rites of Spring and the mid-Eighties Washington DC scene”. But as the podcast title suggests, Williams sees emo as more of a state of mind. And you only need look at what’s in the current pop charts to see how its elements are being redrawn for a new generation: the peppy melody of Willow Smith’s 2021 single “Transparentsoul”, for example, or how Machine Gun Kelly and Yungblud dress as though they’ve been shopping at Cyberdog in Camden in the mid-Noughties. “We were able to put in so much raw energy and youth in a time capsule that younger musicians are tapping into,” says Williams.

Sometimes that “tapping into” is a tightrope, however. Last year, Paramore were thrust into a copyright debate when pop’s newest star Olivia Rodrigo released her hit “Good 4 U”. Fans quickly noticed the track’s resemblance to “Misery Business”. Paramore were later officially given writing credits for the song, to which Williams published a triumphant TikTok about her publisher being very happy indeed. But today, she offers a measured reflection on the controversy by noting her own influences: “All I ever wanted to do was write a song like ‘Dreaming’ by Blondie.” She herself had been “accused of copying concepts for the music videos I did for Petals For Armor, and I was taken aback,” she continues (a claim made by Swedish artist iamamiwhoami in 2020). “I wish I had a better answer, but I hope it doesn’t stifle people’s creativity… Obviously we’re going to hear something and be reminded of something else, but what’s interesting to me is that people keep finding original ways to say things and make sounds.”

Despite her having been in the public eye since she was a teenager, it took Williams a while to find her voice. She was born in Mississippi, then raised in Tennessee, and was originally signed as a solo artist to a major label who wanted her to be pop. She refused, and insisted they also sign her rock band, with whom she wanted to write her own songs. After four albums, and various internal line-up changes, Williams made a solo album that paid tribute to her adolescence as a punk-rock princess but catapulted her to pop’s top table. Emo and pop-punk have always been worlds where there are strict stylistic rules. But Williams never seemed to care much for them.

“I always had punk-rock guilt,” she says now. “Like if I wanted to wear something ‘nice’ instead of clothes from Goodwill and ratty sneakers.” Interestingly, in the early days, she was made to feel ashamed of her now signature vocal prowess. In one of the band’s first interviews, a reporter called her credibility into question. “They said, ‘you sing really well and that’s not really punk,’ and I was confused because… should I sing badly? I grew up in the church and on gospel music. I always loved really good singers and I wanted to emulate that.”

Thankfully, things have moved on. This generation of music fans aren’t so stuck in genre moulds: they rip it up and start again. Williams says she’s inspired by them in another way, too. “Social media largely sucks, but I do think that it’s interesting to witness how emotionally aware people are from a much younger age than the Paramore generation,” she says.

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Social media has also revealed a somewhat surprising facet of Paramore’s fanbase – the band’s legion of Black fans from all over the world. “I had no idea of it until I saw tweets and posts from all of these people, and it’s an honour,” she says. Offline, the emo scene had felt overbearingly white, which was the opposite of the environment she’d grown up in the Deep South. “Most of [the lack of diversity] didn’t register at the time, but there were some moments where I thought, ‘Yeah, the world doesn’t look like this and we’re definitely in a bubble,’” she says.

But diversity is the biggest change she’s seen within the emo and alternative scene in recent years, with much more representation on stage and in crowds, and with acts like Bartees Strange, Big Joanie, Nova Twins and Meet Me @ The Altar leading the charge. For Williams, she says there’s always been an element of their songs that appeal to minority fans, even though it might not be blatant. “Subconsciously for us, I know there is a messaging [in] our music [that] our shows are an open floor and everyone is equal and welcome.”

It’s one of the reasons that Paramore continue to be relevant, nearly 20 years on. And why Williams is the perfect elder stateswoman now, passing on her pearls of wisdom and emo bangers to the next generation. She takes her position as a role model seriously. “I think that it is amazing that anyone looks at me and says, ‘You inspired me to step into my power’,” she says. What would she tell her 18-year-old self? “I would say, ‘Sorry for making you feel like you had to be small to fit in’,” she says. Now, of course, she is bigger than ever.

‘Everything is Emo with Hayley Williams’ is available now on Back to Back Sounds: Amplified on BBC Sounds