Hayley Williams and company can’t seem to escape The News in Paramore’s raucous new single and music video.
Paramore have released The News, the second single to be lifted from the band’s upcoming album This Is Why. The three-minute track sees Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams lament the “exploitative, performative” 24-hour news cycle, singing of the “collective heartbreak” in being unable to fix world crises. “Shut your eyes, but it won’t go away”, Williams declares on the song’s bridge, “Turn on, turn off the news.”
Speaking of the track — which again enlists drummer Zac Farro and guitarist Taylor York — in a press statement, Williams said The News “is one of those songs that came together pretty quickly and felt exciting from the start.” The singer continued: “It feels like a happy medium between classic Paramore angst and bringing in some influences we’ve always had but never exploited.”
The single is accompanied by a just-released music video, which was directed by Mike Kluge and Matthew DeLisi. Adopting horror film aesthetics, the clip follows a white-eyed Williams as glitchy graphics pull her into a computer screen before the frontwoman contorts into bizarre shapes and confronts a bloody-toothed version of herself. The video reflects how “the 24-hour news cycle is just impossible to comprehend,” Williams said.
The News is the second song to be lifted from This Is Why, following the release of the title track in September. The album — Paramore’s sixth overall — will mark the band’s first full-length project since 2017’s After Laughter. This Is Why will be released in February of next year and will be supported by a massive US tour with opening acts Foals, The Linda Lindas, and Genesis Owusu, among others. Watch the music video for The News below:
In other Paramore news, the band — who featured among Happy Mag’s best pop punk bands to ever grace the stage — have hinted at a possible collaboration with The 1975. Williams yesterday (December 8) revealed that she’s been in contact with the band’s frontman Matty Healy, and said she “hopes that we hang out so… let’s set it up.”
