Growing Pains

Her voice is as bright as her flame-colored hair.

And so on some levels, it feels kind of counterintuitive to hear Hayley Williams speak of dark days.

Her tone softens a bit when she does so.

The 21-year-old singer for pop rockers Paramore has seen her career take off like it was fired from a cannon: She was touring the world as a teenager, selling hundreds of thousands of records and becoming the poster girl for fiery, next-gen frontwomen. She was pretty yet approachable, commanding yet more than a little precocious in a wide-eyed, carefree kind of way.

But Paramore's success brought about familiar tensions within the group: Thanks to her economy-sized personality and photogenic good looks -- and her gender as well, no doubt -- Williams became an obvious focal point, overshadowing her bandmates at times.

This kind of thing is nothing new -- see No Doubt, Evanescence, etc. -- though it quickly grew old for the young group.

"On a professional level and as the band went, everything was incredible," Williams recalls of Paramore's rising status in the immediate wake of the band's sophomore disc, 2007's "Riot!" "We had done the 'Twilight' soundtrack, 'Riot!' had gone platinum, and all these really crazy, amazing things were happening for us. But then, when it came down to it, we weren't really that happy. Because of that, I think we tried to stay as far away from each other as we could.

"Whatever we were going through individually, it didn't work for us as a band," she continues. "So many of us just weren't open to being patient with each other and actually hearing each other out. We would rather just make assumptions about each other and not be open minded to growth."

And so when the members of Paramore began the process of writing their third record, "Brand New Eyes," Williams wasn't even sure the band had a future.

"Two weeks prior to moving out to Malibu to record, I didn't even know if the album was going to happen," she says. "It wasn't that we were fighting, it's just that it was tense and awkward, and we definitely didn't feel like friends. How do you make an 11- or 12-song record with people you don't even know any more? It just sucked. Everything I was writing was seemingly negative, everything was angry-sounding and mad. And then, like three weeks into it, the songs began to change, because we were spending more time together. The songs took a turn, and you really feel that on the album."

As Williams alludes to, "Eyes" begins on a cutting note, with an opening salvo of hard-edged tunes -- "Careful," "Ignorance," "Playing God" -- with Williams practically spitting out her words at times as she speaks of betrayal and loss.

But then as the album progresses, the mood brightens, becoming more galvanized, as evidenced by the aptly-titled "Looking Up."

"God knows the world doesn't need another band," Williams sings on the tune. "But what a waste it would have been. I can't believe we almost gave up. We're just getting started."

And yet, already Williams and Co. are veterans in a way.

Williams has been living on the road since she was 16, and was singing in bands three years before that.

She's a small town girl, having grown up in a sparsely populated stretch of Mississippi until she was 11. She's grown up in the public eye, and many of her band's fans have grown up right along with her.

"A lot of our fans are our age," Williams says. "We've got a lot of those same fans who still come to shows. Now, they've already been through college, and they're still listening to us. It's those people who help me get through rough times or things that I feel insecure about. It means a lot to me. It means that we've done something right."

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.