In 2007, Paramore released their breakthrough hit, Misery Business. It’s a song the band have a complicated relationship with. A few years ago, singer Hayley Williams began offering caveats about it – “I haven’t related to it in a very long time”, “I wrote it … because I was a dick”, “let’s celebrate that we’ve all done a lot of growing up since then” – then, for a period, declined to perform it at all. She made an exception for a guest appearance at Coachella with Billie Eilish, and Paramore returned the song to their sets last year, after four years not playing it. A song that tears vicious strips off a love rival, Misery Business has been dismissed by Williams as an example of “internalised misogyny”.
It’s definitely a potent expression of raw, unfiltered teenage bile – the kind of emotion that feels all-consuming at the time, but which makes you wince when you recall it years later – and its increasingly troubled position within Paramore’s oeuvre is a perfect example of the difficulties that can face artists who grow up in public. You might not have expected a combustible band who made their name with temper tantrums such as Misery Business to last long, but they’re still here, still filling stadiums, godparents to a younger generation of angsty singer-songwriters.
