Big news from Paramore’s Art + Friends ‘After Laughter’ blow out – the band are set to retire their audience participation mega-hit ‘Misery Business’ – for a while, at least.
One of the most iconic songs of the past just-over-a-decade, Hayley Williams made the announcement as the band closed up their triumphant ‘After Laughter’ era with their own mini-festival at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium.
“Tonight we’re playing this song for the last time for a really long time,” she explained from the stage. “This is a choice we made because we feel like we should.”
At the Paramore concert in Nashville and they just announced that they won’t be performing Misery Business again for a long time after this show. Omg. pic.twitter.com/wARvoYGz76
— Tyler Matl (@TylerMatl) September 8, 2018
The track features the line “once a whore, you’re nothing more/I’m sorry that’ll never change.” In recent years, Williams has described the song as a “backward-minded lil rascal,” and written at length that “Misery Business is not a set of lyrics that I relate to as a 26-year-old woman”.
“I haven’t related to it in a very long time. those words were written when I was 17… admittedly, from a very narrow-minded perspective,” she explained in a 2015 blog post. “It wasn’t really meant to be this big philosophical statement about anything. It was quite literally a page in my diary about a singular moment I experienced as a high schooler.”
It’s remained a staple of the band’s live set though, especially as the point the band invite a fan on stage with them. It seems like they’re now putting it to bed and moving on.