Was beef mouth trying to clown these kids for loving a rock group beneath his awareness? Or was he simply making fun of his own pop cultural ignorance? Either way, his joke chewed on my brain for the rest of the weekend. Paramore is famous. But why not $200-“Jeopardy!”-clue-famous?
Maybe because an arena only offers a finite number of seats, and this band’s greatness still needs to be eye- and ear-witnessed to be fully understood. On Friday, singer and bandleader Hayley Williams made sure those gathered understood everything they could, though, using each major muscle group to punctuate Paramore’s most cathartic musical details. Williams spent the night punching, and twirling, and marching, and stomping, and whenever she kicked her feet toward the rafters, it was like she was aiming to bloody the nose of an NBA power forward.
Yet none of her nonstop motion came across as peacocky, or showboaty, or cheerleadery, and it certainly shouldn’t have been mistaken for impatience or restlessness. Instead, Williams appeared to be operating at the highest levels of physical concentration, allowing her body to become fully possessed by the flood of sound she was hearing, underscoring the idea that every moment of Paramore’s music is worthy of our sharpest attention. Like some otherworldly hybrid of Tina Turner and Iggy Pop, she has made herself into our century’s most thrilling and commanding front person by using the entirety of her body to demarcate the totality of her band’s sound.
Onstage, that muchness included the timekeeping of founding drummer Zac Farro, lumpy and volcanic, especially during “That’s What You Get,” a nonperishable heart-over-head emo anthem from the band’s early Warped Tour years. It also included the slash work of guitarist Taylor York, sounding more serrated than ever during “This Is Why,” the title track of the band’s new album, which often feels as jagged and sweet as a crushed lollipop. And, of course, it included Williams’s singing, which reconciled hardcore punk volatility with R&B finesse to generate all of those perfect singalong shapes. One surprise duet partner was the 26-year-old Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), who added his voice to “Misery Business” after delivering some explicit introductory remarks condemning fascism and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a GOP presidential candidate.
And despite the crowd’s massive roar of approval, that moment still qualified as a minor one at this show — a performance so expertly spring-loaded with tension and release, Paramore’s songs felt as if they were still bouncing around the arena after the last chord had sounded. As Williams made her final exit from the stage, her skippy footfalls suggested their own kind of feel-good music, delivering her out of her element and back to a world where everyone should know her name.