Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams // Album Review
Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party truly solidifies Hayley Williams as one of the most captivating songwriters and vocalists of her generation, as if the last two decades were not enough already. It also marks the first independent release of her career, her third solo project, and absolutely feels like the start of a new creative era for Hayley. This record is rooted in autonomy, experimentation, and a renewed sense of artistic freedom.
Originally surprise released as a collection of seventeen standalone singles, these songs reintroduced the world to who Hayley is as a solo artist and the life she has lived since her last project. She writes openly about her struggles with fame, ego, and the complicated feelings she carries surrounding the American South, religion, politics, and her own mental health. She also shares the emotional weight of navigating a major breakup, offering an intense yet beautifully captured perspective on that heartache and the process of rediscovering who she is outside of a band and outside of a relationship. It is all done on her own terms and it is so exciting to continue to witness the evolution of such a generational artist.
These songs were originally made available as unordered MP3 files for those that purchased a yellow hair dye from her brand Good Dye Young called "EGO" within a very short time frame. Theses songs were released individually on streaming services soon after. This unconventional release prompted fans to make their own tracklists and playlists based on how they interpreted the story of the album, which completely shifts the listening experience. To go into a body of work with no preconceived narrative, no sequencing, no intentional arc beyond what you discover for yourself and piece together by listening to each song in isolation, feels like the antithesis of the hyper-curated and meticulously engineered narratives that are pushed to guide a certain story within a lot of music.
The way this project deliberately sidesteps every single form of a traditional album rollout and every single industry expectation that is often placed on artists makes it clear that Hayley was prioritizing the art itself above any commercial metric or viral moment. It's incredibly rare to see an artist commit so fully to the integrity of the work itself in this way without bending to the pressures that are often placed on artists of this size. The collection of singles were eventually released as a full body of work, officially titled Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party about a month later. The final version of the tracklist was inspired by the fan-made playlists that were shared in the early weeks of its release, honoring the way listeners instinctively pieced together their own interpretations of the story being told throughout. In addition to that, the story of this album has continued to evolve since that time as well, with a total of three extra songs being added in the months that followed. These songs have continued to build upon many of the emotions of the original collection of tracks, as well as providing even more clarity to the time in her life it was inspired by. It was all happening in real-time, with many of the final decisions being made right down to the wire of when the rest of the world would hear the music.
"The songs, the way that they were coming out and how haphazard it all felt, it felt like: if I don't talk about this, if I don't write about this, it might fester; it might rot inside of me. So I guess I just didn't really know how to present it to people in a nice little package," Hayley told Exclaim! She added, "Everything's happening in real time. We're literally making these choices like a week before they hit the internet...We keep laughing, like, 'The rollout is rolling itself!'"
A core theme of this album is Hayley navigating a deep heartbreak surrounding the ending and unraveling of what she describes on "Love Me Different" as "the potential greatest love of all time" with her longtime partner and Paramore bandmate, Taylor York. The writing is deeply self‑referential and specific, often looping back to past lyrics, lore, and the personal history of a relationship that has shaped so much of her life. She threads in hints about what may be next for the band and acknowledges the continued shared love, yet the shifting dynamics and uncertainty are just as present. The story she tells throughout Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party is complicated and sometimes even contradictory, but that feels like the exact reason she chose to put everything out there in this music. Many of the feelings she opens up about seem to take new shape day by day, and the album ultimately becomes about Hayley facing these contradictions head‑on and confronting parts of herself she may have been avoiding for far too long.
Sonically, the mood shifts from track to track, yet a distinct alternative rock and grunge edge runs through the entire project. The writing is deeply raw and intentional in the story she tells. Hayley delves into a range of topics and captures a vivid snapshot of who she is in real time as she depicts herself as a person trying to make sense of the world as it keeps changing around her.
A striking through line in this music is that even though she is really trying her best to, she still doesn't really have it all figured out, and is very open about the fact that she probably never will. On the bridge of the second track, "Glum", Hayley sings, "On my way to thirty-seven years, I do not know if I'll ever know what in the living fuck I'm doing here, does anyone know if this is normal? I wonder, I wonder".
That kind of ego death, and surrender to uncertainty, is something many will be able to see a bit of themselves in. It speaks to a lifelong mission that we all share in trying to figure out our place in the world amidst the chaos that surrounds us day after day and year after year. It is a universal pursuit, one that reminds us that while all of our paths are uniquely personal, they are also connected by the same desire to belong in a world that is constantly changing.

"Ice In My OJ" is such an important thesis statement to be making as the opening track of this album. Again, with Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party being her very first independent release of her entire career, the weight of that context is essential to understanding the magnitude of a song like this. Hayley is coming off of finishing a twenty-year contract with Atlantic Records, where she became the first artist in history to be singed to a 360 deal - meaning the label took a cut of everything from streaming and record sales, to merch and touring. Many have described that contract as predatory, and it placed a lot of limitations on her as a young artist. Now she is finally now able to operate outside of a system that controlled nearly every single element of her artistry since she was fifteen years old under her own independent label - aptly called Post Atlantic.
With all of that in mind, the anger and intensity that runs through this album, and especially the opening track, hit even harder. She makes it clear just how cathartic it is to finally be able to say these things and have her voice be heard this way, especially just by the way she screams "I'm in a band!" repeatedly throughout the choruses with increasing animosity to who she most wants to get the message. It's obvious how pertinent that message is for her to finally be exclaiming to the world, unfiltered.
"I got ice in my OJ, I'm a cold, hard bitch, a lot of dumb motherfuckers that I made rich," she sings in the second verse. "Might go back to Mississippi, careful I don't take you with me". The song leans into a grungy garage rock sound, with some of the sharpest lyrics of the entire album, though it is difficult to narrow that down on an album full of incredible lyrical moments. "My writing became so furious," Hayley said in an interview with Exclaim! "...it was like a compulsion, and I was just really grateful to have a friend to help catch that stuff as it was falling out," she said of her core collaborator on this project, Daniel James.
The first five songs in particular lay the groundwork for the themes and emotions that define the rest of the record. On the second track, "Glum", she opens up about the lifelong process of trying to make sense of her journey thus far, being emotionally present in her own life again and often struggling with feeling lesser in the shadow of others. It is one of the most visually striking songs on the album, filled with imagery that is quite heavy, but also beautifully depicted. "In the wake of your sunshine, I've never felt so glum," she sings in the opening lines of the song. "Think I'm made up of moonlight, don't reach quite as far, but I still show up".
She's incredibly open about her mental health on the album, as well - she even wrote a love letter to her antidepressants, or her "genie in a screwcap bottle", on track five "Mirtazapine", which fittingly enough is one of the happiest-sounding songs on the entire record. But on "Glum" she turns toward the darker feelings she struggles with, especially on the vulnerable chorus: "Do you ever feel so alone that you could implode and no one would know? And when you look around and nobody's home, don't you wanna go back to wherever we're from?"
To follow, "Kill Me" is among the most thought-provoking songs on the record, especially in the way she tackles the eldest-daughter paradox with such precision. In the first verse she sings, "Eldest daughters never miss their chances to learn the hardest lessons again and again, carrying my mother's mother's torment".
It feels reminiscent of songs like "Apple" by Charli xcx and "Favourite Daughter" by Lorde, where the depiction of distinct familial bonds become a lens for self-understanding. There is something uniquely piercing about the way it is framed on this song, though, as she captures the responsibility (often self-inflicted, but mostly unavoidable) to fix what has come before you, even if it feels impossible because it is something deeper, more inherent and literally in your blood. It is such a specific experience that can only truly be understood if you have lived it and felt the weight of it yourself. "Eldest daughter comes to stop the cycle, a job you nеver asked for is paying in dust," she sings in the second verse. "Setting down your mothеr's mother's torment, save yourself or make room for us, 'cause either way, we live in your blood".
An outlier at the beginning of the album is "Whim", which is such a sweet and radiant love song that carries some of the warmth of Paramore's This Is Why, now channeled into something even softer and more intimate. There's a distinct sense of hope running through it and a desire to believe in love and trust in the future, resisting the instinct to self-sabotage.
"I want to be in love, to believe in us, sans sabotage" Hayley sings in the chorus. The song reads as if she is singing both to herself and to her partner, urging "baby, take it easy" as if serving as a self-aware reminder to not retreat into old patterns. Lyrically is it also so pure in sentiment, as well. "Sunshine through the curtain, music in my head, still be singing to you long after we're dead" is a stunning lyric and a promise for the everlasting nature of their love through her art, with this moment in time being immortalized forever. There's something so beautiful in the thought of this music outlasting them in that way, and can hold onto this specific feeling long after the moment has passed.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hayley talked about the self-aware reflection this song serves as for her. She said, "That song explains so much about how I view relationships, and I think my downfall in them and the tendency to sabotage. I saw the lyrics printed on something recently, and I was like, 'Those could go on my epitaph, and I'd be OK with it.'"

The mid‑point of the album dives into some of the darker, more self‑destructive thoughts she grapples with, especially in the wake of her breakup. "Disappearing Man" gives one of the clearest glimpses into what ultimately led to the end of the relationship, exploring emotional unavailability and the ways both parties contributed to its unraveling.
"My final act of love was surrender" is such a devastatingly beautiful way to articulate that moment of letting go and releasing something that no longer serves either person, even when it feels hard to do. Throughout the song, she continually circles back to the question, "Will you just surrender?" and pleads for some sense of closure and reciprocation. The songwriting on "Disappearing Man" is especially striking. She shifts tenses and perspectives in a way that mirrors the disorientation of trying to understand a relationship as it's falling apart. "You could really have anyone and you had me, why'd you let go?" she sings throughout, "You could really have anyone, except for me, I suppose". The emotional weight of the bridge is also particularly striking, especially when the realization that love is sometimes not always enough to withstand hardship. "There were no conditions to my love, yeah, it was endless 'til there was no you to hold".
"Love Me Different" then picks of the emotional thread of what happens after the surrender, when she finally let go and now has to find a way to move forward. The song gets very specific, as much of this album does, especially with the "friends to lovers trope came true" lyric. One of the most heartbreaking lines of the song comes in the opening verse, "You said that I deserved someone who knows what I am worth, now I wonder what am I worth to you?"
The song sits in the space between mourning the loss of this relationship and hope for the future bringing something, or someone, different, even while knowing nothing will ever compare to what they once had. "And I know that you're probably telling yourself that no one's gonna love me like you did, and I know that you're probably right about that, but someone's gonna love me different," Hayley sings in the chorus. This song is ultimately about trusting that something better might eventually come from the pain, even if she can't see it for herself right now. Sonically, it is among the most distinct on the album, with a beachy indie garage vibe that samples Phoenix's "Fior di Latte".
The real emotional breakthrough comes on the bridge, when she realizes, "Guess I'm the one who's gotta love me differently". That personal revelation powerfully sets up the narrative arc for the second half of the record, a moment where she finally understands that moving forward isn't necessarily about finding someone new, but about learning to love herself instead.
"Negative Self Talk" later goes even deeper into this process of self love, as Hayley acknowledges the ways she can be her own worst enemy. "I write like a volcano, projectile spewing out, quiet mind's a loaded cannon, who's it aimed at now?" Hayley sings in the second verse, capturing the volatility of her own inner monologue and the self-awareness of wanting to stop these habits. It is also beautifully written and composed, wrapping up the first half of the record in a really powerful way. It is grounded in the belief that she needs to be in pursuit of self-betterment and understand who she is outside the context of this relationship.
"Brotherly Love" touches on the decades‑deep dynamics between her and her Paramore bandmates, Taylor York and Zac Farro. "I love one like a brother, I love one like I'm dumb," she sings in the bridge, "let's get the shit together, motherfuckers, sick of missing ya". That line best captures the sometimes messy, yet unshakeable bond that only the three of them will ever fully understand. After all this time together and growing up alongside each other, the connection that they share is impossible to replicate. She references the "vow unspoken" they've taken, a symbol of that lifelong bond of shared history that will forever connect them.
The question in the chorus - "Brotherly love, brotherly hate, don't it sometimes feel like the same thing?" - feels incredibly true to the nature of their relationship, capturing the deep love and the frustration that can coexist when you've spent so much of your life with someone. The future of the band remains uncertain, but this song makes it clear that the bond Paramore shares will always remain, even if it means taking on new shapes over time.

"Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party", the album's title track, is among the biggest highlights of the entire album and really captures where she is in her life at this moment, while still taking a retrospective look back at all of the different versions of who she once was too. In this song, she is largely revaluating her place in the industry, confronting the ego she shed in the process and her personal reckoning with everything she has had to survive to get to this moment.
"I'll be the biggest star at this racist country singers bar" is truly one of the greatest opening lines of any song ever. From there, the imagery of downtown Nashville makes it mark, walking the listener through a vivid night out; taking us from the racist country singer's bar, to the bachelorette party bar, and finally to the (fucking) karaoke bar. It is sharply written and deeply self aware, with even a bit of humor in her delivery at times. She also looks back on her brief marriage, a topic she opens up about a few more times across the album, still trying to process what that time meant for her and how it had left a lasting imprint years later.
The repeated line "can only go up from here" shifts meaning with each new verse, as the night spirals. On the bridge, she sings "Got too big for my britches, too big for my fishes, the sea got shallower every day, I danced, I said my prayers, it never rained". By the end, she declares, "I'm the biggest star at this fucking karaoke bar, no use shootin' for the moon, no use chasing waterfalls", which is such a cool statement to be making. It also serves as the perfect encapsulation of the album title, diving into the reinvention and sort of ego death that she has gone through to get to this point in her life to be able to say that she is who she says she is and having the courage to really start over in the way she has, in more ways than one.
Throughout so much of this album, Hayley writes from the perspective of someone who has spent most of her life heavily guarded emotionally and is now trying to unlearn those habits. The acknowledgement of this self-protection is at the heart of "Hard", which is among the most vulnerable and revealing tracks on the album. She opens up about the walls she built around herself and the rare moments in her life that she let them fall. "The way you held my face, I swear I softened for the very first time in my life, fist unclenched and my guard started dropping, we kissed quick before you pulled me inside," she sings in the first verse. "The next morning, I looked in the mirror, saw a woman I had never met, she looked hopeful, even sort of pitiful, like she forgot nothing is a given".
Another particularly striking lyrical moment comes in the second verse when she confronts a part of her past in such a direct and open way. "I got married once in combat boots and only listened to testosterone music, I had to kill my feminine just to do it," she sings. "To get to you, I had to go through it". That lyric feels so confessional and really heartbreaking for the way she felt she had to change herself just to fit into someone else's world. But now she's able to look back on that experience with the clarity that she had to move through it in order to eventually come out on the other side and reach something far better. The weight of trying to contort, or even hide, parts of herself to avoid any more emotional damage is highlighted in the lyric, "Always ready to be left out in the cold, armor's heavy, never suited me at all".
Ultimately, her desire to heal and allow herself to be more open in different parts of her life is a thread that runs throughout all of Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party. These feelings aren't linear either, as they so often aren't. On the subdued and aching "Discovery Channel", she admits, "I can't heal you keep ripping me open", which captures the painful truth of trying to mend yourself while still feeling so entangled in the remnants of a relationship that shaped her so profoundly.

Hayley vividly paints a picture of a place stripped of its soul and swallowed by profit in the opening lines of the song, "All our best memories were bought and then turned into apartments, the club with all the hardcore shows, now just a greyscale Domino's," she sings.
She also boldly confronts the commercialization and commodification of religion and the hypocrisy embedded in so many of its teachings. "True Believer" is an incredibly important song to soundtrack these horrific times in the country, truly serving as a lifeline to listeners who may find themselves stuck in those spaces themselves. It proves that there are like-minded people out there who will fight to reclaim what has been lost. "The churches overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning, gift shop in the lobby, act like God ain't watching, kill the soul, turn a profit," she sings in the first verse and chorus. "What lives on? Southern Gotham".
Even still, she chooses to believe in God on her own terms despite what organized religion has turned into. Again, it is a really heavy song, but incredibly important for the political state so much of America is in and a direct confrontation to so much of the hate that continues to spread.
"They put up chain-link fences underneath the biggest bridges, they pose in Christmas cards with guns as big as all their children, they say that Jesus is the way, but then they gave him a white face so they don't have to pray to someone they deem lesser than them," is such a chilling and powerful line and truly brave to write into a song. Ultimately, her love for the South still persists in the hope that the people who aren't like this will be able to resurrect it.
"I'm never not ready to scream at the top of my lungs about racial issues. I don't know why that became the thing that gets me the most angry. I think because it's so intersectional that it overlaps with everything from climate change to like LGBTQIA+ issues," Hayley said in an interview with Popcast. "But Nashville, the reason I was writing about Nashville a lot is that we came home from tour and I thought, 'Well, I'm going to go to LA, this will be my third move to LA, but this one's going to stick. Get me out of here.' It's like Trump just got elected again and I don't want to be in a red state."
Nashville is such an integral setting for this album and thematically shapes so much of her music and her identity as an artist. This song is perhaps the most powerful depiction of the reality she's writing from. It's a portrait of disillusionment with the South and the politics of the country as a whole, but also a testament to her belief in its ability to be good again. "I'm the one who still loves your ghost, I reanimate your bones with my belief," she sings in the chorus. "I'm the one who still loves your ghost, I reanimate your bones 'cause I'm a true believer".
"I think being willing to talk about the inequity is just an important thing to do," Hayley told Exlaim! "I don't feel educated enough, but I think it's an important thing to try."

The latter half of the record takes a more intimate and subdued approach, taking some of the angst from the start and softening it with beautifully sincere love songs. They capture hyper-specific feelings and fleeting moments in time with so much depth. Her storytelling is so vivid and cinematic, as she captures scenes of hotel rooms in Tokyo, dreams of escaping to other planets, and the magic of being in love in unfamiliar places. "Zissou" stands out for those reasons. The recurring water imagery that runs through the album is especially pertinent here, and the line "in my mind you're always mine" is among the most striking on the entire record for it's simplicity and pure honesty.
"Dream Girl In Shibuya" is another highlight - it's drenched in hazy, dreamy nostalgia, transporting the listener straight to the same hotel room in Japan. In the first verse Hayley sings, "I know you know me now like the back of your hand, but can I still get your heart reeling?" The song captures the fragile intimacy of two people finally acting on their feelings after years of shared history. It's one of the record's sweetest love songs, rooted in all of the details and fleeting moments in time that she captures with such delicacy and purity. "Should've stayed a mystery, sipping on Japanese whiskey in the lobby bar," she sings with a softness that feels as if she is trying to hold onto the moment forever, preserving the exact scenes of the night.
The chorus brings a deeper longing, "I wait for you in the hotel room, I can still be your dream-girl come true". Later Hayley sings, "Hate that you've already seen every bad side of me," in the pre-chorus. "We can pretend it's our first time".
From there, Hayley moves from the beginning of this love story to its end, exploring the aftermath and what now remains. On "Blood Bros", she reaches for a desperate hope that the connection isn't fully gone, while still acknowledging the forever, unshakable bond they will always share even when everything else falls apart. A core line of the entire album is, "Now we're just blood brothers covered in paper cuts, with a bond like no other, was it ever enough?"
Later she sings, "Whenever you want, whenever you need, I could move in closer or I can leave, if anything helps you or if anything hurts, I will love you forever if that won't make it worse." It's a stunning and intimate depiction of this relationship and the connection they will always share.
The final song of the original 17 she released, prior to any of the subsequent bonus tracks, is the gorgeous and intimate closer, "I Won't Quit On You". "Stranded here on Mars, what's the odds you'd get stuck here too?" Hayley sings in the opening lines. "It might be a lost cause, who'd have thought there'd be so much left to lose?" Once again it is a declaration of the unconditional nature of their relationship and the unbreakable bond they will always share because of all that they have been through together. "Come hell or heaven, angels or dеvils, I won't move and I don't care what happens aftеr, I won't quit on you," she sings in the chorus.
"Chaos-ridden inner space, turns out home is not a place, when I think home, I see your face," she sings in the stunning bridge. "Up there so long, everything changed, chaos reaches outer space, turns out nowhere is a place, look down on a brilliant blaze, phone home, baby, everything changed".
It is such a beautiful way to end the album, or at least the standard track listing of it. The cosmic longing that is woven throughout the song, along with the unwavering loyalty that resides at its core, that makes it so special. It's a memory and a promise to never fully let go of the other no matter how much distance may come between them, both physically and metaphorically. The way she captures the love they share as something enduring is really moving and grounds the album's narrative arc of devotion and resilience in a really powerful way.

The tracklisting of Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party has continued to grow as the months have gone on. With the album shifting and evolving in the way that it has, it allowed listeners to absorb the music in all of its different forms, making it a very unique listening experience. All three bonus tracks dive into so much of the personal lore of Paramore with a level of specificity and brutal transparency that is really striking.
"Parachute", the first of the three bonus tracks she released, is a prime example of that. She added it as the final song alongside the official streaming release of the album as a collective project. "Parachute" is among the most emotionally devastating songs on the entire record, as well as one of the very best, which is always such an interesting dichotomy. This song finds Hayley fully leaving behind the life she and her ex shared together and mourning the future they could have had together. It very much plays out like a scene from a movie of their relationship. "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," Hayley sings in the chorus.
It has a heavier, rock‑leaning sound that carries some of the grit found in songs like "Mirtazapine" and "Disappearing Man", yet still feels entirely its own within the album. There's a distinct passion and urgency in her performance, driven by the intensity of the lyrics and the moment of her life she's singing from.
The second verse of "Parachute" is absolutely one of the most incredible moments on the entirety of the album, it truly shook me the first time I heard it. "You told mе you waited for me, you said that you won, asked me on a plane from Rio, do I ever think of us? And you were at my wedding, I was broken, you were drunk, you could've told me not to do it, I would've run, I would've run," she sings. "Tell me, what was the moment you decided to give up? You could've told me what you wanted, I would've done, I would've done anything".
The song ends with a powerful shift in perspective, as she repeatedly sings "Watch me fall through the sky," as the instrumental distorts. In the strongest revelation, she then declares, "Watch me fly".
"Good Ol' Days" follows with a totally different vibe, leaning into a more tongue-in-cheek, lighthearted tone and approach to the breakup than the rest of Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party. It is so self-referential lyrically with the way she ties in so much of her band's history in a way that is as playful as it is revealing.
The flashes of humor with lines like "I'm not Stevie, I won't hex ya, but my voice may surely vex ya, for that, I'm sorry" and a lighthearted voicemail interlude from her grandpa about how tacky she is lighten the song, even when it's paired with the emotional weight of lyrics like, "Have to get it out of my system, don't like songs about you, don't listen, if I'm being honest, I'm almost done, not easy letting go of the one".
The track is filled with specific callbacks and references to Paramore's history, with "Who knew the hard times were the good ol' days?" being the most obvious, which is a direct nod to "Hard Times" and a bittersweet reflection on the era she's closing the door on. It feels like her final goodbye to the After Laughter version of herself and the life she lived during that chapter, acknowledging both the pain and the bittersweet sense of nostalgia that comes with looking back.
"We could sneak around like we're on tour, even if that's all you want me for," she sings in the first pre‑chorus. "You could call me Miss Paramour", a clever callback to the origin of the Paramore band name, which fittingly enough means "secret love". Later, she repeatedly sings "secret love" after asking the question "what's in a name?", doubling down on the wordplay and the layers of meaning behind it. Fate really does have a funny way!
"Showbiz" is the very final song of Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party brings the entire project and narrative to a close in a perfectly succinct way. It was revealed as the third and final bonus track on the physical editions of the album, months after its initial digital release.
The song finds Hayley questioning the reality of her life and relationship underneath all of the glitz, glamour and strobe lights of their careers. "Guess that's curtains, was it just showbiz?" she asks, pulling back the metaphorical stage lights of their lives to reveal what was real and what was just performance. Hayley sings, "Tell me, is it in you like it's in me? The showbiz".
"May never happen again, stings like sweat on broken skin and it's never enough," she sings in the final verse. "Exit stage left, what might be the end, showbiz." That line feels like a curtain call not just for their relationship, but also possibly for the band and the version of herself that existed within that era.
The album ends with her subtly singing in the background, "I'll be waiting, if you wanna find me, still here baby, flailing in the fog light," which offer a direct call back to the final song of After Laughter "Tell Me How", when she sings, "I know you see me dancing, wildly, in the fog of your memory, you don't have to tell me, I can still believe". It is such an emotional full-circle moment that ties everything together with such brilliance.
Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party marks the beginning of a new chapter of life for Hayley, one rooted in independence and self-discovery; personally, professionally and creatively. She focuses on the difficult work of redefining herself outside of the structures she has known for most of her life in those ways. So much of the record is spent looking back through the most defining moments of her past in order to approach the next stage of her life with clarity and closure in a deeply powerful way.
Thanks for reading! Check out more of my favorite songs and albums of 2025 here, plus more of my reviews of Hayley Williams' and Paramore's music linked below!
Photo Credit: Post Atlantic, Hayley Williams, Zachary Gray
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