
Should I be embarrassed for liking this band? Am I bleeding street cred even as I write this post? I honestly don't know. And I really shouldn't care.
(I do, a little bit.)
I'm a little late to this whole Paramore thing, and for all I know, it could be all downhill for them from here. Pop punk bands have a way of not sticking around very long, especially when they get big so young only to flame out just as quickly. Paramore also seems to have signed a pretty ridiculous deal with their record label - any time the record industry hails a deal as being good for business, you know they mean their business... not the artist's.
But they only just started playing them on my local K-Rock, which is what I listen to on the way to the train station in the morning. It's about the only regular outside source of new music I have these days.
Paramore's fans seem to be made up of mostly 12 year old girls. I have a habit lately of getting into bands like this, and it's starting to make me wonder. What kind of music are thirtysomething guys supposed to listen to? I mean I like Nirvana, I like the Foo Fighters, I like the Ramones, I like all those testosterone-driven bands from the 70's through the 90's, when I was growing up. I used to care about stuff like how "real" a band was too. I was pretty militant. Nowadays, I don't even know what "real" means or why it should matter, if the music's good.
And sometimes, I confess I feel like Jerry Seinfeld when he said, "I can't listen to a man sing a song..." In rock music, at least, the male voice is imprecise and brusk. When was the last time you listened to a male-fronted band and said, "I just love his voice"? To paraphrase another quote from Seinfeld, the male voice is utilitarian, it's for gettin' around, it's like a Jeep. Not to say various male vocalists don't fit their bands' style perfectly - Dave Grohl is still my idol - but I can listen to women sing just to hear them sing. I can't do that with a guy.
Paramore's got a re-release of their second album RIOT! that just recently came out, with a DVD and a CD together that contain a butt-ton of bonus material. I just ordered one myself; Amazon's got it for $14.99.
Everybody under the age of 15 has probably seen this a million times, but it was new to me a couple days ago (no, I don't watch much MTV anymore), and I love it:
Paramore - Misery Business
Uploaded by migite
Whatever happens to Paramore in the future, Hayley Williams is a fucking rock star.
UPDATE: MVI DVD received! And I'm honestly happy to hear that "Misery Business" is actually one of the weaker songs on the album. They really rock, and they're no lightweights. This is not straight-ahead pop music, for the most part - there's some real depth in both the performance and the songwriting. I mean they're no Pink Floyd or anything, but there's definitely more here than I would have expected. Most of their songs are not nearly as radio friendly as a lot of modern "emo" bands, though they still have some ridiculously catchy hooks to them. But when Hayley's singing stuff like "This is how we'll stand when they burn our houses down... this is what will be, oh glory", it's pretty obvious this is not just a cheesy pop band singing about bitchy teenage girls.
I've read a lot about them in the past week or two - seems like they take a lot of flak for pretty bullshit reasons. One article I read gave them a back-handed compliment for being "non-threatening", as in "parents don't mind their kids listening to Paramore because they are" - like that's a bad thing. Ignoring the vaguely misogynistic implication of that critique, what is wrong with this country that we think everything needs to be "threatening" to be taken seriously? I think if we figure that out, we'll get to the root of a lot of this country's problems. There's nothing wrong with bands that just want to be fun.
Paramore are definitely young, and they sound it. Even the title of their latest album, "Riot!", is a little trite. Their music and lyrics will mature even further as they get older, assuming they stay together. But I haven't heard this much raw talent in years, throughout the entire band. They're starting out from a point way beyond where most bands end up. I can't wait to hear what they've got in store through the next decade.