Hayley Williams says she quit Paramore in 2015 while battling depression
She speaks openly about her mental health
Paramore’s Hayley Williams has spoken openly about her mental health battles in a fresh interview.
The singer says she briefly quit Paramore in 2015 while suffering from the “dangerous hopelessness” of depression and sought help from a therapist.
“For the first time in my life, there wasn’t a pinhole of light at the end of the tunnel,” Hayley told The Fader.
“I thought, ‘I just wish everything would stop.’ It wasn’t in the sense of, ‘I’m going to take my life.’ It was just hopelessness. Like, ‘What’s the point?’ I don’t think I understood how dangerous hopelessness is. Everything hurts.”
Feeling exhausted and emotionally drained, Hayley said of quitting Paramore: “I just was done. I thought, There’s gotta be something else that I’m good at in my life. Maybe it’s time for me to go find that.”
Having made up her mind to quit Paramore, Taylor York, who has also battled depression in the past, started sending her some demos and ideas for a new record.
“We both had doubts, and we had unity in that,” Taylor told The Fader. “I told her she didn’t have to do stuff. But I just kept writing, and then there was this time that she got it again.”
The first song they penned together was the fourth track on ‘After Laughter’, ‘Forgiveness’, that deals with themes and redemption between the Paramore bandmates.
Starkly juxtaposing the upbeat new wave tune, lead single ‘Hard Times’ is about personal struggles in life.
Having played a ridiculously intimate UK tour earlier this month, Paramore are playing a handful of European festivals next month before embarking on an extensive North American jaunt. Fingers crossed there are some sizeable UK shows soon.