Hayley Williams has spent the last two decades as the powerhouse of Paramore, the Tennessee-founded rock band at the heart of Tumblr accounts across America. Last year, the band opened for Taylor Swift on the European leg of The Eras Tour. Between the band’s hiatuses, Williams has released solo projects, “Petal for Armor” (2020) and “Flowers For Vases (Descansos)” (2021). The first of these projects started as segmented EPs that later joined into the record fans know today. Like “Petals For Armor,” the initial presentation of Williams’ ego is intentional. She spontaneously posted on Instagram in late July promoting “Ego,” a new highlighter yellow hair dye from her company Good Dye Young. Unreleased MP3s simultaneously appeared on her website and reached streaming services on August 1st as 17 separate singles. Williams also released a music video for “Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party” featuring Tennessee State Representative Justin Jones. Nearly a month later, the singles found their home in the Ego album with a tracklist curated in part by fan input. The record is as sprawling as it is marshaled, and that’s likely due to its untraditional rollout. “Ice In My OJ” opens the record bombastically with a declarative yet confusing reminder that Williams is still in a band. Whether it’s Paramore or her own battalion is up for debate. For the first time, she roams freely from those “she made rich.” This record is the first independent release of Williams’ career. She was signed to Atlantic Records in 2003 under the first 360 deal in American music history. This allowed her former label to profit from all of her business endeavors outside of music. However, the established sense of independence follows through as isolation on “Glum” and “Kill Me” as Williams struggles to bear the weight of being an emotional eldest daughter. She pleads on the latter track: “Can’t get much stronger, find another soldier,” and pairs her grovels with distorted vocals. For all her mentions of unstable relationships (“Love Me Different”, “Hard”, Brotherly Hate”), her most stable connection might be a knight in shining armor, or as she defines it, “a genie in a screw cap bottle.”
The whirring guitars in “Mirtazapine” and the components of the medication quite literally bring Williams to life. Some struggles of life are internal, as discussed in “Negative Self Talk” and “Hard,” but others are beyond the individual’s control. “True Believer” sticks out as one of the most pointed parts of the record, criticizing the gentrified “Southern Gotham” she believes Nashville has morphed into. On the track, Williams struggles to watch Nashville’s metropolitan growth at the expense of those who have lived there and built it, especially communities of color. Born in Mississippi, Williams moved to Franklin at the age of 13 to step into the Nashville music scene. She holds out hope for her adopted hometown at the end of its hook but trades that sincerity for crassness on the title track. Williams holds no doubt she’s the “biggest star” in any Broadway bar. In its music video, she glides down this drinking district, completely dissociating from the place that finished raising her. A spare drum kit and light piano chords plainly lock in her attitude. Considering she “could only go up from here,” there had to be time to come down. She claims to hold down her patience and fort on the closing track “I Won’t Quit on You,” but double-backs on herself in the bonus track “Parachute.” Williams screams over broken dishes as the song plummets to its end, frustrated that no one tried to catch her. Fans have drawn inconclusive thoughts on where this leaves Paramore, considering how the track allegedly discusses Williams’ romance with lead guitarist Taylor York. Regardless of her band’s fate, Williams’ label independence leaves her handling her music in contrast to the industry. She may not reap chart-topping success for releasing on a Thursday (the end of the weekly record cycle), but she won over and reunited fans from all eras with the transparency of her release cycle and lyrics. Throwing away the logical forms of music marketing and emotional release brought her ego to life. It’s up to fans to keep it living.
- Ria Skyer
