Hayley Williams
Hayley Nichole Williams is an American singer and songwriter. She is the lead vocalist and a founding member of the rock band Paramore and has released several solo albums.
Williams was born and raised in Meridian, Mississippi. Her parents divorced when she was 13. She then moved with her mother to Franklin, Tennessee, where she later formed Paramore alongside Josh Farro, Zac Farro, and Jeremy Davis. Paramore has released six studio albums: All We Know Is Falling, Riot!, Brand New Eyes, Paramore, After Laughter, and This Is Why. It has featured a continuously changing line-up with Williams being the only member to appear on all six albums. Along with York, Williams won the 2015 Grammy Award for Best Rock Song for the song "Ain't It Fun".
Williams' non-Paramore musical work includes the song "Teenagers" for the soundtrack of the film Jennifer's Body and collaborations with The Chariot, October Fall, New Found Glory, Set Your Goals, Zedd, Moses Sumney, and Turnstile. In 2010, she was featured on the single "Airplanes" by B.o.B, which peaked at No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The sequel to the song, "Airplanes, Part II", featured new verses from B.o.B. and a guest verse from Eminem with Williams' vocals remaining. This gained a nomination for the Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. In 2023, she was featured on Taylor Swift's re-recording of her 2010 album Speak Now on the track "Castles Crumbling". She has also released the solo EPs Petals for Armor I and Petals for Armor II, the subsequent full-length solo album Petals for Armor, and her second solo album Flowers for Vases / Descansos. In 2025, she released her third album Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party under her own independent label named Post Atlantic.
Williams' other ventures include the music series Kiss-Off and the hair dye company Good Dye Young.
Readers of Alternative Press voted Williams first in a poll of the "5 greatest pop-punk vocalists of all time".
Early life
Hayley Nichole Williams was born on December 27, 1988 in Meridian, Mississippi, the daughter of Cristi and Joey Williams. She has two younger half-sisters. Her childhood neighbor was NBA player Rodney Hood. After her parents' divorce in 2002, when she was 13, she moved with her mother to Franklin, Tennessee. At her new school, she met future Paramore bandmates Josh and Zac Farro. Shortly after settling in Franklin, she began taking lessons with vocal coach Brett Manning. While still at school, Williams tried out for a local funk cover band called The Factory, where she met future Paramore bandmate Jeremy Davis.Music career
2004–present: Paramore
Williams was discovered in 2003 by managers Dave Steunebrink and Richard Williams, who signed the 14-year-old to a two-year production deal. At the time she was writing pop songs with songwriters in Nashville. Williams was introduced to Atlantic Records A&R Tom Storms through Richard Williams' attorneys Jim Zumwalt and Kent Marcus, and then signed to the label by Jason Flom. The label's original plan for their new artist was to make her a solo pop artist, but Williams objected to this, saying that she wanted to be part of a band and play pop punk music.Atlantic decided to go along with her wishes, and she then formed Paramore with Josh Farro, Zac Farro, and Jeremy Davis. The music of Paramore was originally supposed to come out on Atlantic Records, but the label's marketing department decided it would be better for the image of the band to not have them attached to a huge label. They instead released their music through a "cooler" niche label, Fueled by Ramen. According to Williams, the name "Paramore" came from the maiden name of the mother of one of their first bass players. Once the group learned the meaning of the homophone "paramour", they decided to adopt the name, using the Paramore spelling. The band's debut album, All We Know Is Falling, was released in 2005 when Hayley was only 16 years old. Paramore has since released five more studio albums, Riot!, Brand New Eyes, the self-titled Paramore, After Laughter and This Is Why. In June 2009, the band welcomed Taylor York as an official member, although he had already been playing as a touring member with the band since 2007. In December 2010, Josh and Zac Farro left the band. The news was posted by Williams on Paramore's website, with Josh later posting a blog post confirming their departure, calling the group "a manufactured product of a major label, riding on the coattails of 'Hayley's dream'".In 2006, Paramore toured outside of the US for the first time, which included a headline tour of the UK and supporting post-hardcore rock band The Blackout on the Give It A Name Festival in Europe. The following year, she and the rest of Paramore made an appearance in the music video for "Kiss Me" by New Found Glory. In the 2007 Kerrang! Readers' Poll, she finished second to Evanescence's Amy Lee in the "Sexiest Female" category, going on to win the first place spot for "Sexiest Female" a year later in the 2008 poll, and again in the 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 poll. She also appears as a playable character in the video game Guitar Hero World Tour after completing "Misery Business" in the vocalist campaign.
Williams was honored with the "Trailblazer Award" in the 2014 Billboard Women in Music Awards for making a unique mark in music and paving the way for other artists. In 2015, Williams starred as the 'Crimson Curse' in Taylor Swift's music video for her single, "Bad Blood", alongside sixteen other celebrities. Along with band member and co-writer Taylor York, Williams was nominated for and won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Song at the 2015 ceremony for the song "Ain't It Fun". In July 2015, Williams won the APMA for Best Vocalist.
In a 2019 interview with l'Odet, Williams was asked if she would "stay in Paramore for a long time" and answered, "In moving forward, if the three of us are happy, then we will just do whatever we want to do. If that means collaborating with each other, bringing other friends in to collaboratethere are seven band members when we tour. We're all friends and we all make music in different parts, together. So I feel like, yes, I want to be in Paramore... I've been in a band with them since I was 12. I don't think the band is going anywhere. As long as we're friends, the band just is. It's just in us."
2009–2019: Early collaborations
Williams wrote and recorded the song "Teenagers", which was featured in the soundtrack for the feature film Jennifer's Body. After the release of "Teenagers", Williams stated that she had no plans to establish herself as a solo artist. In 2010, she appeared on the tracks "Airplanes" and "Airplanes, Part II" from alternative rapper B.o.B's debut album, B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray. When it was released as a single, "Airplanes" peaked within the top ten in nineteen countries, including the number one position in the United Kingdom and New Zealand. EDM producer Zedd and Williams collaborated on the track "Stay the Night", from his debut studio album, Clarity, which was released in 2013. In 2019, she collaborated with American Football on the song "Uncomfortably Numb", which appeared on the band's third self-titled studio album.2020–2021: ''Petals for Armor'' and ''Flowers for Vases''
In December 2019, on her 31st birthday, Williams announced she would be releasing solo music in 2020, with a "taste" of it to come in January. Flyers consisting of a picture of Williams under the title Petals for Armor began appearing in several US cities and abroad. Her debut solo single "Simmer" was released on January 22, 2020, with its accompanying music video. That same day Williams announced that her debut studio album, Petals for Armor, would be released on May 8, 2020. It was later revealed that she would release an EP, Petals for Armor I, on February 6, 2020, in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music. On March 19, she announced that she was postponing the release of the second half of the EP, and instead released the song "Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris" featuring Boygenius. A solo tour in promotion of the album was postponed from May 2020 then canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In December 2024, on her 36th birthday, Williams announced plans to play the cancelled shows in 2025.In January 2021, Williams started teasing a project titled Flowers for Vases / Descansos. She unofficially released the single "My Limb" by giving a CD with the track on it to a dedicated fan. Williams released the album on February 5, 2021.
2023–present: Further collaborations and ''Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party''
On June 5, 2023, it was announced that Williams would be featured on Taylor Swift's re-recorded album, Speak Now , on the song "Castles Crumbling". In February 2025, she helped her 78-year-old grandfather, Rusty Williams, release his long-lost debut album, Grand Man, on her Paramore bandmate Zac Farro's Congrats Records, telling Garden & Gun magazine writer Jim Beaugez that his songs were an early inspiration for her own musical ambitions. Along with Blood Orange, Williams provided vocals on the Turnstile track "Seein' Stars", which released on April 30, 2025, ahead of their new album Never Enough. On June 5, 2025, in a Brooklyn show celebrating said album's release, she joined Turnstile onstage for a live performance of the song. Williams collaborated with Moses Sumney on his song "I Like It I Like It", which released on May 8, 2025. She was featured on David Byrne's album Who Is the Sky? and Jay Som's album Belong, released on September 5 and October 10, 2025, respectively.On July 23, 2025, Williams shared a single entitled "Mirtazapine", about the antidepressant of the same name, exclusively on Nashville radio station WNXP, and subsequently performed the song live at the Newport Folk Festival with Bleachers during their set two days later. On July 28, she made the song and 16 additional new tracks available to stream on her website. Access to the website was restricted, requiring a passcode distributed through her hair product company, Good Dye Young. The release of these songs led to a report by NME that they were part of Williams' third studio album, which they believed was titled Ego. On August 1, Williams released all 17 songs on streaming services as stand-alone singles via her own label, Post Atlantic, with their digital distribution being handled by Secretly Distribution. The album was released as Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party on August 28, containing an additional eighteenth song. Also in August, it was reported that she and David Byrne would collaborate on the song "Open the Door" for Netflix's animated film The Twits, based on Roald Dahl's novel of the same name. The song was released on October 12, and the film was released on October 17, 2025.
On November 10, 2025, Williams officially announced a tour in support of Ego Death, entitled Hayley Williams at a Bachelorette Party, and set it for the following year.