Paramore: There's a RIOT! Going On

Talking to Hayley Williams and Josh Farro from Paramore, it’s sometimes hard to remember that they’re only 18 and 19, respectively, and it’s even harder to imagine that they’ve been together in some form since they were 13 and 14 (and since drummer Zac Farro was just 11).

Dig a little deeper, though, and you notice they possess an appealing combination of youthful enthusiasm and burgeoning professionalism. It’s one of the reasons, I think, that so many people get so excited about this band and start doing things like comparing Williams to Gwen Stefani (of course, there’s always the hair, which probably has something to do with it, too).

One telling moment that didn’t make it into my recent profile of the band for USA Today came when I asked Hayley and Josh about their defining moment as a band. Josh talked about being in Times Square for an MTV appearance and seeing two-story likenesses of the band covering the MTV windows, then seeing the band’s “Misery Business” video start to play on a giant screen across the street.

“You sort of want to jump up around like a kid, but you can’t,” he said.

Hayley’s defining moment, however, came when she was trying to write the song that became “For a Pessimist I’m Pretty Optimistic,” the lead track from the band’s second album, RIOT! Josh had written the music for the song moths before, but Hayley just couldn’t seem to find lyrics that fit.

“I was seriously on my hands and knees, like, ‘This sucks; I cannot write anymore,’” she recalls. Finally, just before the band went into the studio to start tracking songs, she determined to basically lock herself in a room and not leave until she had something. She came out with “For a Pessimist” and a good chunk of “Born for This.”

“So we go back to the studio the next day and show [producer David] Bendeth,” she says. “He’s, like, freaking out and stuff. Two weeks later we started tracking everything, and that was one of the first songs that I sang. To hear that song mixed for the first time and loud in the speakers at the studio, I was, like, ‘This took so much work, and it’s one of my favorite songs.’ It’s my favorite song to play live. And to think it almost never happened.

“That was a big moment for me.”