Ishita Jayadev ’26
Editor-In-Chief
I, like everyone else, was not expecting 17 Hayley Williams songs to miraculously spawn on a 2000s-looking website you could only get into with a code that came with a specific shade of Williams’ hair dye brand, Good Dye Young “Optimist,” on a random Monday morning in July. Sure, I had briefly listened to “Mirtazapine,” a shoegaze-y single Williams released through her local Nashville radio, but I definitely was not expecting 16 more songs to follow. And especially not as little button modules I had to press on to listen to each song individually (after finding the code to the website on Reddit).
I was at work when I found out about the news, and immediately started exploring hayleywilliams.net, clicking through a couple different songs as well as the extra images and the video that was included. However, after clicking on “Dream Girl in Shibuya,” and hearing the disarmingly slow synth-y instrumentals, I decided the only way this album could be listened to was by myself in my room, in tears. My prediction was correct; I had a bit of a mental breakdown clicking on the 17 songs in different orders on repeat.
“Love Me Different” was an immediate standout. The lyrics made me feel physically ill, while the pop instrumentals made me want to dance around my room in classic Paramore fashion. The airy synths in it also immediately reminded me of “Dead Horse,” a song from Williams’ solo debut album about her toxic relationship with her ex-husband while the guitar and bass felt like a deliberate grounding amid the sobering lyrics, “You said that I deserved someone who knows what I am worth/Now I wonder, what am I worth to you?” Needless to say, I crashed out.
The next day, the entire project was deleted from her website — to everyone’s utmost confusion and desperate attempts to share around downloaded versions of the songs. Three days later, the 17 singles were released on Spotify. On Aug. 28, the album was officially released, titled Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party (EDATBP) after the song with the same name.
Since then, Williams has released another song, “Parachute,” as well as three music videos, merch, and the promise of two more songs to come on the physical version of the album to be released on Nov. 7.
Williams’ unusual album rollout was the result of her releasing her first project after her exploitative 360 deal with Atlantic Records she signed when she was 14, which allowed the label to take a share of all of her sales, including albums, touring, and merchandise. For the first time since she signed the deal, Williams has full control over her releases, something she has taken full advantage of — paying artists who created her merch with royalties as well as a flat fee, releasing a $6.98 CD version of EDATBP titled “Hayley’s Mix,” and asking fans to send her their own EDATBP playlists when the singles were first released on Spotify (which she took into consideration when creating the official album tracklist).
As a longtime Paramore/Hayley Williams fan going through emotionally turbulent times, for me, this album cycle felt like the perfect distraction and way to vent my frustrations. The genre expansive album dips less into the art pop of Williams’ debut, Petals for Armor, and instead plays with heavily edited vocals on tracks like “Glum” and “Brotherly Hate,” while also having more a guitar-filled pop-rock sound that calls back to the 2000s on tracks like “Disappearing Man” and “Whim,” moodier, bass-filled romps about trauma displayed on “Kill Me,” and “Hard,” as well as softer acoustic moments on “Blood Bros” and “I Won’t Quit on You.”
Behind many of the songs, there is a visceral, raw anger in the way Williams sings. The repeated background screams of “I’m in a band” on “Ice in my OJ” as well as a sample of the first song she ever recorded vocals for at age 13 display her rage at her 20-year contract and yearning to be taken seriously as part of a band rather than as a solo artist. Tandemly, her heartbreaking vocals (and damning lyrics) on “Parachute” caused fans to speculate (and catastrophize about) whether she and bandmate Taylor York had broken up and what that meant for Paramore going forward.
The lyrics of “Parachute” specifically include her speculating about her and her lover’s future unborn child and imagining a future together that feels abruptly taken away. “I thought you were gonna catch me/I never stopped falling for you/Now I know better, never let me/Leave home without a parachute” she scream-sings in heartbroken rage, evoking angry earlier Paramore songs like “All I Wanted.”
The (for now) 18-track album is a devastating but powerful reclamation of Williams’ artistic integrity, and I’m excited for what the next two songs will hold.
Photo Courtesy of The New Yorker
