As some of you may know, Paramore was my first concert, and I’ve since grown from a little emo girl to a grown emo woman. To this day, Hayley Williams is one of my biggest inspirations.
So you can imagine how excited I was to learn that Paramore was finally releasing a new album after a six-year-long hiatus.
I was beyond excited to find out that This Is Why would be a return to the iconic sound that Paramore became most known for in their first decade of creating music, and upon listening to the album, it met these expectations and more.
Paramore managed to deliver a perfectly modern album with topical lyrics perfectly blended with the sound that millions of fans – me included – grew to love them for.
In many ways, This Is Why is exactly what the emo community needed, especially amidst the drama and confusion centering some of the 2010s emo powerhouses.
Enough contextualization though, folks. You want to know why I love this album, right?
I love this album for the stories it tells. It scratched an itch for a pop-punk album that sums up the pandemic-era experience as best as possible without being overt.
Pop punk, like many genres, is not immune to the constant overuse of tropes that is incredibly prevalent in the songwriting side of the music industry. How can we really blame them when it makes them millions, after all?
However, This Is Why tells today’s stories through a pop-punk lens. Paramore’s lyrics are refreshing, honest, and deeply touching.
Just take the album’s title song, for instance.
“This is why I don’t leave the house / You say the coast is clear, but you won’t catch me out”
As someone who still wears a mask out in public, it’s not hard to see why this might be relatable to people like me in today’s climate.
But this is far from the only example. Another comes from the second single from the album, “The News”.
“Every second our collective heart breaks / All together, every single head shakes / Shut your eyes, but it won’t go away / Turn off, turn off the news”
Paramore managed to perfectly sum up that feeling of fatigue and anxiety that comes from watching the news in the past few years, especially as an American.
Finally, my favorite song on the whole album; “Thick Skull”.
I’m hard-pressed to pick just one excerpt from this song to highlight because everything about it tugs at my heartstrings in a way that I hadn’t felt in a long time before hearing it.
“What’s the body count up to, now captain?”
This line never fails to give me chills, especially when I connect it to things like the genocide of trans people, police brutality, and mass shootings. This may not have even been the band’s intended meaning for the song, but that doesn’t take away from its effect.
Punk is a deeply political genre, so I’m always looking for the ways that modern punk artists are choosing to rage against our current machine – pun intended.
Beyond just the lyrical choices, this album has a fantastic sound. After the less-than-stellar response to their more pop-forward album After Laughter in 2014, it seems that This Is Why is more of a return to form for Paramore.
I was certainly among the fans that were mildly disappointed by the band’s direction with After Laughter, but I’ve grown to have a deep love and appreciation for it.
Still, This Is Why is the Paramore album I, and many other fans, have been wanting from the band.
The soaring vocals that Hayley Williams is so famous for mixed with forward guitar and bass lines, and of course, some fantastic drum work from Zac Farro.
I think the beauty of this album lies in the way it walks the line between classic and modern. It pays homage to the band’s pop-punk roots with songs like “The News” and its fantastic guitar riffs, while adding modern sounds and tones, which is especially evident in songs like “Crave” that have a more indie influence.
While someone like me would be hard-pressed to be disappointed by a Paramore release, this album was a complete home run, in my opinion. I consider it a no-skip album, and I know I’m not alone in that opinion.
So if you haven’t listened to it yet, go do it now! If you’re reading this just as it’s coming out, you can click the Spotify link in our sidebar to listen to it right now.
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