It was a healing process, and it came together quickly with no grand vision of making a cohesive album. It was just stuff that needed to come out. “We figured we’d just throw the songs out and see if people liked them,” says Hayley, wanting to embrace her new independent era. “But I am also a music fan who cares about the message and the choices that are going into a project that I’m listening to.” First track, the scuzzy punk love letter to antidepressants ‘Mirtazapine’, was shared via local independent radio station WXNP and the whole project was given away for free to customers who ordered GoodDyeYoung’s latest shade Ego, a throwback to the early highlighter yellow shade she wore while writing ‘After Laughter’. “That was another weird time. I got engaged but went through a breakup. We lost a band member, but then Zac [Farro] came back to the band. There was so much change then, too. Instinctively, it was a familiar colour for a time in my life that felt similar.”

Hayley encouraged fans to share the music with each other before it was available to stream, communicating via semi-secret blogs and asking for help deciding on the proper tracklisting for ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’. It encouraged discussion about the project without getting in the way of the actual music. It felt like a throwback to MySpace culture, where the internet was more about community than commerce.

There has never been an official statement about the future of Paramore, and Hayley has never apologised for doing something away from the band. Fans haven’t really questioned it either, with most just excited about new Hayley Williams music. “This is where you’re at? Cool, let’s dive in together,” she says of the reaction to this chapter. She’s well aware of how dangerous it is to venture into the comments section online, but after the release of the gut-wrenching ‘Glum’ video (co-directed by Zac), she braved a few.

“That song is about feeling really alone,” she says. It’s something she’s felt since she was little, growing up as a child of divorce. “But the reaction just made me feel really understood. I don’t think many people get to experience being caught like that,” she says. “I hope the music that I’m writing makes other people feel that way, because we need it. It just opens you up.”

It’s perhaps why she ultimately decided to make ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ a journey towards joy and hope, with the record opening with the snarling ‘Ice In My OJ’ and ending (at least for a while) with the dreamy ‘I Won’t Quit On You’. But then came ‘Parachute’, ‘Ego Death’s surprise closing track. The last song created for the project was built around an idea from producer Steph Marziano that felt triumphantly sad. Hayley being Hayley tapped into the melancholy, forlorn, far away feeling “because that’s where I’m most comfortable as a writer,” and delivered one of the most brutally raw songs of her career.

“I’ve a lot of deep and ancient sadness around love, and it all came out in that song. It’s important to say the embarrassing, ridiculous shit so I can get that poison out.” It’s the part of herself that she saves for music because she doesn’t think it’s fair to share that in her day-to-day life. “It felt similar to writing ‘Brand New Eyes’ when the band was falling apart and I couldn’t say anything apart from the lyrics of ‘Ignorance’.”

For all the bleakness, the most powerful part is the line “Watch me fall, watch me fall… watch me fly”. “It feels like an incantation,” says Hayley. “It’s me trying to transcend the hurt, the things that have made me the saddest and the times that I’ve felt the loneliest.”

Eight weeks later, and a lot has changed. For a start, two more songs complete ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ – the nostalgic ‘Good Ol’ Days’ and the shimmering ‘Showbiz’.

“I romanticise things too much,” starts Hayley from a hotel room in Los Angeles, the day before her Rolling Stone gig with Bleachers. “These songs are coming at a good time for me because I really have to stop looking back at times in my life that I have said were the most beautiful and liberating and pretending like I wasn’t limping along.” The two tracks, though sonically very different, see Hayley asking herself if she really knows what’s good for her. “They’re about working out how I’m going to go forward and make better choices.”

After that, she’s drawing a line under ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’. “I’m ready for it to be done,” she grins. “There’s been a lot of shaking hands with my own personal demons this past year. It’s been real and it’s been fun, but it’s not been real fun.”

As well as the new music, ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ has been nominated for four Grammys including Best Alternative Album, a handful of tracks have been performed live (with Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers, on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon, at a fundraiser for Seth Rogan’s Alzheimer’s Hilarity For Charity) and tour of Europe and North America sold out almost instantly. Festival announcements are now rolling out, too, and it’s still one of the best-reviewed records of the year. The project has come a long way from a handful of songs created with a mate that were initially intended to be shared online without much fanfare. “It feels like I’m walking and the stepping stones are appearing as I’m putting my foot down,” says Hayley, trying to embrace every opportunity that feels like a good fit, but not planning too far in advance. “It’s hard to explain what that courage feels like because it mostly just seems like fear.”

“I don’t know what my expectations were exactly, but I always expect people not to take the things that I do seriously,” she continues, with that self-doubt calcified from the early days of Paramore. “But with this project, I’ve felt supported in a way I’ve never felt before. It’s been an embarrassment of riches.”

From being one of the few women in the male-dominated pop-punk scene and singing openly about struggles with faith, mental health and loss, to unfairly taking the brunt of the blame for Paramore’s various line-up changes, Hayley has constantly been told how strong and fierce she is. “I don’t think that’s inauthentic, but being onstage with Paramore is one of those fake it until you make it things. It protected me in a lot of ways from having to deal with, or talk about, the things that are really going on with me.”

There was no escaping it on ‘Ego Death’, an explosive purge of fears, hurts and uncomfortable truths. “I didn’t ever really want to go and have a solo career, but I did this because I felt like I needed to,” she says. “I am really proud of myself for trying new things. I can feel myself being brave.”

With the record done and out in the world, Hayley’s finally had a tiny bit of distance from the project. “I can often feel very embarrassed by my own choices, by my own words, by the things that I think and feel. But I’m really trying to share that part of myself, even if it’s humbling. I hope that people listen to the music and understand that it’s okay to make mistakes. It’s not shameful to be intensely passionate or believe in something. That’s just called being alive.”

The entire project has bounced between fresh and familiar, but the thing that makes ‘Ego Death’ feel so different from anything Hayley has released before is just how funny the whole thing is. Opening a solo record with the repeated scream of “I’m in a band” before calling out the “dumb motherfuckers” she made rich, the melodrama of ‘Kill Me’, ‘Good Ol’ Days’ “you can call me miss paramour”, and the knowing nod to “hard times”, the whole thing is full of dark, winking humour. “It just helps me, even if I feel like people don’t always get that side of me… some fans are only just figuring out that I’m not being sincere on ‘Ain’t It Fun’,” she grins, blaming how serious she comes across in interviews for any confusion. “When I can crack a joke about something, that’s when I know I’m okay.” She wants the upcoming tour to have some of that humour as well, with discussions currently taking place about how to make it a “little bit satirical” and “subvert expectations”.

Hayley has described writing ‘Ego Death’ as finally giving the 15-year-old kid who signed a major label contract with Atlantic Records by herself a voice. “It was a really dehumanising thing to learn about capitalism as a kid who was a fan of punk music,” she reflects. “There was a part of me that froze there, but with this record, I’ve thawed her out and let her run free. I’m really grateful for that. And I get quite emotional thinking about her, because she had to make a lot of adult decisions. She had to grow up too fast.” It might be why so much of this chapter feels like a return to idealistic, youthful fearlessness.

As a teenager, Hayley was already listening to emo bands like Failure and Hum but it was Refused’s 1998 record ‘The Shape Of Punk To Come’ that really provided a gateway, even if she heard it years after they broke up. “It just blew my mind,” she says. “It introduced me to punk music that gave you permission to feel, to lash out, to be honest about the discomfort of being alive and being in tension with all the shitty truth of the world.” You can feel the same defiant, joyful energy throughout ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ and the strict anti-tour measures her team fought for in preparation for the upcoming tour.

Another influential moment for Hayley was seeing The Chariot live. “The show was so intense and violent, I remember thinking, ‘My mom can never know I was here’. But I also remember the way it made me feel, and the way people took care of each other. It really showed me a new world where aggression didn’t have to mean negativity or violence. It can be an exorcism. It can be done with other people.” It shaped who she became as a performer, a writer and a singer, with Paramore comfortably straddling the worlds of alternative music and pop with a community-first approach.

“I needed that sense of belonging really bad when I was a teenager. And I think people really need to know there are places for them to go now, at a time that feels like it’s set up for billionaires.”

To mark the proper release of ‘Ego Death’, Hayley hosted a surprise signing at London’s Rough Trade East as well as a restaurant pop-up event. The physical release was supported by over 400 listening parties in independent record stores worldwide. “I mean, look at the world,” she says when asked why those communal gatherings were so important. “It feels like it’s closing in on us all the time. Being around those fans in the UK and realising I’ve grown up with many of them was just so rewarding. It really does feel like we’ve all built something together.”

It’s why she’s now so excited to tour the record after two solo albums without that communal exchange, but it took some time to come around to the idea. “When we started writing ‘Ego Death’, I was very adamant I was never going to tour it. I wanted to expel this shit out of my system and then maybe find other work,” says Hayley, who took meetings about voice acting in TV and film. “I thought maybe there were other creative outlets for me.”

However, as releasing music as an independent artist started feeling more liberating, and as Daniel, Brian O’Connor (makeup artist and GDY co-founder), and her other collaborators began to receive more opportunities, it felt like there was more to explore. It also became apparent that she needed to be around like-minded people as Trump’s second term took a chokehold on America. “That’s what really made me want to tour, because what else are we going to do but get together and hopefully make each other feel safer?”

“Live music is a spiritual thing for me,” she continues. “Going to any kind of show right now feels like strength in numbers. It’s so devastating to realise how small we are in the truth of it all, but there’s a deep soul comfort that there are still spaces that we can gather and rise above that hopeless, powerless feeling together. We need spaces that are about more than survival,” she says. “Maybe that’s the key to thriving in this fucked, heavy time we’re experiencing together.”

Paramore broke through in 2007 with their snotty second album ‘Riot!’ and the band have remained one of the most beloved rock groups around, pushing boundaries, venturing into new territory and never chasing trends. They’ve inspired generations of new bands and, despite not releasing music since the swinging defiance of 2023’s ‘This Is Why’, have never been bigger or more influential.

More than twenty years into her career, when many of her peers are dealing in warmed-up nostalgia, ‘Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party’ sees Hayley Williams continuing to evolve. The album is refreshingly playful and daringly honest, while everything about its release has been a celebration of fandom. Now, Hayley finds being called an icon a bit awkward (“Good or bad, it’s weird to hear how other people perceive you”), but her continued success may be due to just how willing she is to embrace the present. If you ever want a new band recommendation, her Instagram Stories are a great place to start. “I really wish I could embody a bit more confidence about how long I’ve been doing this and what I have learned, but being able to spotlight other people’s work makes me feel like I’m doing something meaningful.”

“I’m okay with growing up, but I don’t want to grow old,” she continues. “I want to stay curious. I want to be a part of the world because that is the opposite of isolating myself and letting my depression rule me. Discovering new music is an exercise in staying alive.”

And right now, there’s plenty of great stuff out there. “I assume because we’re all living in a pressure cooker,” says Hayley, before rattling off a list of her favourites. She loves KIRBY, an artist from Mississippi who released the incredible ‘Miss Black America’ earlier this year. “It’s a beautiful protest album that’s just funky and amazing.” Mark William Lewis, Wednesday, Snuggle, Smerz and Cameron Winter are also among her most listened to. “I still can’t get over Amyl And The Sniffers’ ‘Cartoon Darkness’ and I love how Amy uses her voice onstage. I adore Scowl, Kat’s voice is incredible, and it’s great to see her express herself through fashion because I know I felt I had to be really small about that stuff early on.”

She hopes this wave of exciting, daring new bands inspires the next generation to start their own and seek out spaces where people are free to express themselves. “By doing that, they can own the narrative and make so much social change which we desperately need.”

Before 2025, Hayley Williams only had a few collabs to her name, and most of them came with the credit “from Paramore”. This year, though, she’s released tracks with Jay Som, Moses, David Byrne and Turnstile as well as jumping onstage with everyone from The Linda Lindas and Rico Nasty to punk veterans H20. “I just got sick of knowing people that I really respected but feeling closed off,” she says. “When Paramore started, we were really young and different from a lot of people in our scene, so it didn’t make sense to collaborate. Now I’m in a different place in my career, and it’s starting to feel more normal.”

She’s also been spotted in the studio with Beabadoobee, even though she doesn’t typically do co-writes. “I either write for myself or go and sing with my friends. I was really nervous about doing a session with her, especially because we’d never met before. It was a great time, though, and ended up being very chill. We shared stories and similar experiences. I hope it’s the new norm for me,” she says. “I want to learn from younger artists, and I want to collaborate with people where it feels a little scary because I’m stepping out of my comfort zone.”

‘Ego Death’ feels like the start of a new chapter, but it might be the final Hayley Williams record we get. “I would be happy if this was the last thing that I do as a solo artist,” says Hayley, who would rather be in a “zillion” different bands. “Shit that’s under my name activates the part of my brain that’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve got to be the frontwoman’. I would love for it to be a trilogy of sorts, and then let it go to do other projects. But you just never know…”

What we do know for certain is that there will always be music from Hayley Williams. “No matter how many times in my life I’ve tried to give it up or tried to convince myself I don’t need that part of myself, it’s the thing I’m made of,” she says. “The same number of people don’t have to be paying attention, but I’m going to be here making stuff.” ■