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Paramore’s frontwoman Hayley Williams isn’t holding back on her latest solo album, Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, on which she speaks openly about the South’s deep-seated racial tensions and her religious upbringing. She also unabashedly calls out a “racist country singer” on one of the tracks.
What is Hayley Williams’ song ‘True Believer’ about?
On Wednesday, Williams, 36, sat down with The New York Times’ Popcast to candidly discuss her 18-song project, which she self-released in August. It’s her third solo album in five years, and she plans to release a physical album on Nov. 7. After spending more than 20 years with Paramore, Williams’ solo music has allowed her to continue to explore her creativity unapologetically.
On tracks like “True Believer,” Williams explores Southern Christian culture and the ways racism has been intertwined with Christianity. According to Forbes, the Tennessee native scored her first No. 1 single on Billboard’s Alternative Digital Song Sales chart in August. The song was on the list of the bestselling alternative tracks in the United States.
“They put up chain-link fences underneath the biggest bridges/ They pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children/ They say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face/ So they don’t have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them,” Williams sings in the nearly four-minute song.
‘I don’t know why that became the thing that gets me the most angry’
For Williams, “True Believer” is one of the songs that motivates her the most to speak on social issues and marginalized groups: “I’m never not ready to scream at the top of my lungs about racial issues. I don’t know why that became the thing that gets me the most angry. I think because it’s so intersectional that it overlaps with everything from climate change to L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+ issues,” she said on Popcast.
The song also references “Strange Fruit,” a song recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939 and a powerful protest track about the lynching of Black people in America: “The South will not rise again/ ‘Til it’s paid for every sin/ Strange fruit, hard bargain/ Till the roots, Southern Gotham.”
Williams also reflected on her Southern Christian upbringing in a small town in Tennessee, where racism existed: “I reference this neighborhood in Franklin, really close to where I grew up called Hard Bargain that this formerly enslaved man bought from his former enslaver. It’s still there, predominantly Black families, and it’s protected now. But of course, Franklin and Nashville are being gentrified all the time,” she said.
Williams got candid about her relationship with religion
Another song, “Discovery Channel,” also shows Williams speaking on her relationship with religion and how she shed those parts of herself.
“While I was deconstructing my faith and my religious upbringing from around age 19, I really didn’t realize how much of Paramore for me was a religious experience, a God pillar in my life,” the “Misery Business” singer said.
“Paramore is the backdrop to every conversation. So songs like ‘Discovery Channel’ are really me kind of like roaming the halls of whatever that structure is and just trying to take it apart more,” Williams added.
Did Williams call out Morgan Wallen?
When host Joe Coscarelli mentioned the “racist country singer” that Williams talks about on the self-titled track “Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party,” she did not shy away from dropping the name of the popular Tennessee-based musician.
“It could be a couple but I’m always talking about Morgan Wallen, I don’t give a s**t,” she said during the show. She then dared Wallen to “meet me at Whole Foods, b***h — I don’t care.”
Paramore’s Black fanbase explained
Coscarelli also brought up how Williams and her Paramore bandmates have garnered a large Black fanbase over the years. With songs like “Ain’t It Fun,” “Still Into You,” “Misery Business,” and more, their fans have become more diverse. Williams said the band has evolved over the years, branching out and trying new things.
“I feel that, too, now more than I did growing up. It definitely shifted around the self-titled record. We started saying yes to a lot more. We were playing The Voice. I think a lot more people got introduced to our band during that time — people that maybe weren’t welcome in the scene that we grew up in,” she said.
She continued, “Songs like ‘Ain’t It Fun,’ when Taylor and I were writing that, we were playing these synth parts and going, ‘It’s like Stevie Wonder, you know?’ I’ll never forget watching Stop Making Sense while we were recording ‘After Laughter’ and the camera panning across the crowd, seeing how diverse it was. I just got really teary. And obviously there’s some of the best Black musicians onstage with them and they’re all working together. It just felt like this celebration of humanity. And I was like, “That’s what I want to feel like.”
In 2023, a Black TikToker had the surprise of his life when Williams surprised him with a stitch of his own video shouting out one of the rock band’s hits as one of his favorite “white songs” when he turns up, Blavity reported.
Watch the full podcast episode below:
