Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Taylor York confirm they are officially dating in interview with The Guardian

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Paramore’s Hayley Williams and Taylor York are officially dating. 

Being in the band from such a young age meant they had to grow up fast, says York: “Then you realise it was at the expense of other parts of yourself.” (Read More Here).

During their time away, Williams made two solo albums (her bandmates worked on the first), got deep into therapy and in interviews revealed the toll the band’s past had taken on her. Farro, who admits he was rejuvenated by his years away from the band, continued making music with his project HalfNoise and explored photography and directing. York quit drinking. “I wanted to explore some deeper parts of myself and figure out why we do this, how it happened,” he says. “I’m a very introverted person and I have a passion and career that’s at odds with that. When it came back to doing [Paramore] again, I was able to say confidently, let’s do it. Zac and Hayley both needed to know that I wanted to do this.”

Much of the new album draws from the trio’s conversations from that period to look back at the environments they came from. They discussed growing up in the Bible belt. Williams moved from Mississippi to Tennessee when her mum fled her second husband. She met Farro through a homeschool programme, and he knew York. Early on, Paramore talked openly about being a Christian band, but now they are all at different stages of unravelling their relationship to faith, says Williams. “You’re brought up being told something is ultimate, you unpack that and then find out that it’s tangled up with some other random shit over here.” She sighs: “Zac and Taylor are the most gentle and kind about it, whereas I feel like my teeth are knives and I’m spewing fire, trying to throw all of it over the side of a cliff. It’s good to be challenged – like Taylor reminds me all the time, you can’t generalise. I can be very dualistic when it comes to good people and bad people, and a lot of the record talks about what it means that people aren’t just that.”

Paramore admit they had to go on that journey, too. “My parents were never like: ‘Hey, abortion is bad!’” says Williams. “It was more in the air we grew up in.”

“Zac and I are still learning a lot about this,” says York. “Growing up where we grew up, and being guys, we were very uneducated. When you’re a little kid you’re not really questioning. You hear: ‘Hey, do you think it’s OK to kill babies?’ And that feels simple. We didn’t understand the nuance. You get to a certain age, especially when the former president was in office, and everyone started to ask more questions.”

“That’s why our home base, our band, is so nice,” says Farro, “because we have the freedom to process stuff together.”

Having these “crazy complicated conversations that needed to happen”, says Williams, made them grow together. That wasn’t what they saw when they looked beyond their arty enclave to the rest of Nashville. “We all went through this crazy shit and people are still not kind out there in the world,” she laments.

“I’m a very introverted person and I have a passion and career that’s at odds with that,” he added. “When it came back to doing [Paramore] again, I was able to say confidently, let’s do it. Zac [Farro] and Hayley both needed to know that I wanted to do this.”

Paramore officially entered their new era on Wednesday (September 28) with the announcement of their new album This Is Why and release of its title track. The project is a long time coming and their first in five years, following 2017’s After Laughter. In a new interview with The Guardian, the band opened up about the years-long hiatus and the self-reflection each member needed to experience in order to continue as a band.

Singer Hayley Williams noted that the openness she and her bandmates shared following the After Laughter campaign “more than ever [became] a support system to each other that we desperately needed.”

For guitarist Taylor York, finding out a family friend passed away during a video shoot was a turning point. “I just started bawling,” he recalled. “I didn’t know I had this capacity until that moment. We realised nothing is worth risking our health.”

The trio decided to limit tour plans in support of the album and agreed to “see what it’s like to not hang our identities on Paramore all the time.” For Williams, that meant releasing two solo albums. For York, it was giving up alcohol in order to “explore some deeper parts of myself and figure out why we do this, how it happened.”