Hayley Williams On ‘Petals For Armor,’ Paramore And Pandemic Music

Hayley Williams was 15 when she founded Paramore with her classmates Josh and Zac Farro.

For most of the mid-2000s, Paramore made trendy emo and pop-punk music. Their sound topped the charts, eventually earning them a Grammy for Best Rock Song in 2015. The band went through cycled through members a lot in those early years, but Williams never left.

Now, she’s 31 and her first solo album,  Petals for Armor, is coming out next month.

As she told reporter Brittany Spanos in Rolling Stone:

“This is the first time that I am seeing my name everywhere, and it kind of gives me heebie-jeebies a little bit,” she says, mentioning a Times Square billboard she saw before our interview. “My name doesn’t look like a name, to me, that you would see on a marquee. I also feel like Paramore is half, if not more, of who I am.”

We talk to her about finding her voice, making art in a pandemic and what we can expect from the album.

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