Hayley Williams says Paramore are axing 'Misery Business' from their live shows
"We feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while."
Last updated 10th Sep 2018
Paramore have axed their 2007 anthem ‘Misery Business’ from future live sets.
Shortly before launching into the track at Nashville Municipal Auditorium in their native Tennessee on Friday night (7th September), Hayley Williams told fans it would be the last time they hear it live “for a very long time.”
Hayley explained: “This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should, we feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while.
“This is to every bad decision that led us here, this is to all the embarrassing things we might have said, but we owned up to it and we grew.”
Penned by Hayley was she was just 17-years-old, ‘Misery Business’ has been criticised over its line: “Once a whore, you're nothing more, I'm sorry that'll never change.”
Responding to the backlash against the track and one article which questioned her feminist credentials, Hayley said in a 2015 blog post: “I’m a 26-year-old person. And yes, a proud feminist. Just maybe not a perfect one.”
“The thing that annoyed me,” Hayley told trackseven.net last year, “was that I had already done so much soul-searching about it, years before anyone else had decided there was an issue.
“When the article began circulating, I sort of had to go and rehash everything in front of everybody. It was important, however, for me to show humility in that moment.
“I was a 17-year-old kid when I wrote the lyrics in question and if I can somehow exemplify what it means to grow up, get information, and become any shade of ‘woke’, then that’s a-okay with me.”
Paramore’s gig in Nashville was the last date of their After Laughter Tour that included five UK arena dates at the start of the year.