Since emerging as Paramore’s ringleader whilst still a teenager in 2005, Hayley Williams has embarked on one of the most compelling career arcs in modern rock. It has been a journey imbued with a restless sense of adventure, one that has seen the Tennessee-raised 36-year-old go from exuberant emo-pop teen to one an alternative dynamo swaggering from genre to genre. Basically, Williams pays no heed to what anyone else thinks she should be doing. It’s all there in her best work, whether that’s in the defiant singalongs of Paramore’s early output, the synth-pop grooves underpinning their later years or the intimate contemplatives of her solo material. This is not an artist who can be, or wants to be, easily defined.
But Williams is also a generous collaborator, one who has turned up for guest spots on other artists’ work right across her career. It makes for a curious and insightful addition to her CV. If you want to map how Hayley Williams realised that she had a lot more to offer the world than hanging around with the same old bands she’d bump into on the Warped tour, then her guest vocal spots are a good place to start. Here’s seven of her best:
