Paramore has officially dropped off their first studio album in six years, This Is Why.
Clocking in at just under 40 minutes, the 10-track record was recorded in Los Angeles with the group’s longtime collaborator Carlos de la Garza and is their first full-length release since 2017’s After Laughter. This Is Why is slightly reminiscent of the trio’s pop-punk roots, but takes more influences from alternative rock and post-punk sounds. In a vein similar to its predecessor, Hayley Williams, Zac Farro and Taylor York touch on worries and anxieties quite specific to millennials — the generation that grew up with them — that have now been magnified by the onset of the pandemic.
This Is Why is the first album since Paramore’s hiatus, with Williams telling Apple Music 1 that it was “natural” for the band to take a break and return to “real life” after years of making music, touring and internal struggles with former band members. “I think the fact that it might have felt or seemed natural is because it was just what we needed and it’s just where we were at, in a very genuine way. I think I’ve said this before, you can’t strategize those things, you really can’t,” she explained. “Being in a band and doing all the things we do, you have to plan out years in advance and that’s not how life works. So when you finally decide to tune more into your real life or who’s happening in you behind the scenes, I think you just can’t strategize it. So it was just naturally a very insular place for a little while. The pandemic obviously kind of contributed to that, but it was just where we were at.”
Stream Paramore’s This Is Why on Spotify and Apple Music.
In other music news, Lizzo and SZA teamed up for the “Special” remix.
