This Is Why? - Paramore: Review

Paramore

is one of the definitive pop punk bands of the 2000s collecting mainstream hits, critical acclaim, and beloved deep cuts. After a shift from the youthful pop-punkiness into a more colorful and dancy instrumental style on the band's 2017 album After Laughter they've been quiet for years while frontwoman Hayley Williams recorded two solo albums. This Is Why was preceded by three singles which were met with mixed feelings from many fans.

Review by Lav:

My name is Lavender and I'm a Paramore hater. Wait, that's not what I meant, hold on let me start over. I've never been a big Paramore fan. When they were at their peak of popularity during my youth I wasn't sure why I didn't like them but in retrospect, I know exactly why. They've always felt like a band propelled by the unconquerable personality of their iconic frontwoman Hayley Williams but without many actual good songs to back it up. This came to a head on their awful 2013 self-titled album which offered less personality than ever and even worse instrumentation. So imagine my surprise four years later when they dropped easily the best album of their career, a drastically improved effort on After Laughter.

So here we are, another 7 years having passed where I reviewed two Hayley Williams albums that I can best describe as, bad. And now Paramore is back, yay. I actually did go into this record optimistically  hoping that they might build on the momentum of their previous album and while the biggest compliment I can give this record is that the instrumentals are just as vibrant and danceable, it has an awful case of bad songwriting. 

That problem became apparent with the lead single This Is Why which I had a very negative reaction to at first mostly because the hook is a complete miss that just dips out before ever doing any actual hooking. I like it a little more now mainly because of how much spite Hayley manages to convey in the opening whispered verse and really throughout the song. A song I'm much more confident in my opinion on is The News, which sucks. Not only is the sentiment of "shutting off the news" extremely shallow and under-explored throughout the song but Hayley's wanna-be riot grrrl singing is actively painful to listen to. It also begins a problem that lasts throughout the entire record, terrible bridges that add absolutely nothing to the song. 

I'm pretty mixed on most of the album from there, at least until we get to the end where it concludes with a pair of sour notes. The worst part of Crave is the clunky chorus though I'm not crazy about the dreamier instrumentation either. Everything about the song feels so flat that when Hayley tries to soar her vocals over everything on the hook and it sounds so badly out of place. Closing track Thick Skull continues that dreamier sound with a sauntering watery instrumental which I think is meant to highlight Hayley's vocals but it's just so awkward. It aims for an emotional finale but I think it fails to pull it off. 

Back to the beginning of the record we hit on a series of tracks that I have a lot of conflicting feelings about. Running Out Of Time is another instrumental highlight with infectious bouncy guitars and slick stylistic jumps. I'm less crazy about the actual way the song unfolds though it's far from the worst here. I think it suffers from the bad bridge problem again which certainly could have helped it in the long run. 

Ce'st Comme Ca was the most controversial of the singles so it won't surprise you to hear that it's easily my favorite. It's one of the first times I've ever heard Hayley Williams actually pull off a punky snarl vocally and I love the way the slick guitar lines bounce between churning riffs and sweet licks throughout. That track is preceded by the album's two most anonymous tracks. Firstly there's Big Man, Little Dignity which has a totally flat first half but gets better as Hayley starts to take it over with her vocalizations and the great backing vocal harmonies. After that is You First which is literally what a Paramore song written by Chat GPT would sound like. 

Thankfully, there are at least a few songs on the record that I unequivocally like a lot. Figure 8 is a highlight delivering easily the most compelling set of lyrics on the album backed by an exciting and constantly evolving set of sounds. It's dancy but still quite rough around the edges and the rush into the hook is one of my favorite moments on the album. The standout moment on the record for me is Liar a pretty earnest and apologetic ballad. You can really feel some of the regret in both Hayley's performance and lyricism but by the end it's clear that things worked out for the better. I read in an interview that this song was about falling in love with one of her band members and I can totally see it, just knowing that highlighted the song even further for me. 

This Is Why makes me contradict myself. It's not a great album, but taking in Paramore's entire history it's actually probably better than I was expecting. Though simultaneously coming off their best project this does still read to me as a bit of a letdown. It seems like critics and fans are liking this album just as they have all the band's records, so perhaps I was never meant to enjoy it all that much in the first place. I'm certainly not ready to declare my enjoyment of Paramore as being permanently over, but it wouldn't surprise me if they put another decade of being a band under their belt and After Laughter starts to feel like more of an outlier than a starting point. 5/10

For more indie pop check out my review of The 1975's Being Funny In A Foreign Language here