The song that made Hayley Williams want to be a musician: “It changed how I thought about music”
For the true musicians, nothing can get in the way of a good song. You can have all the money in the world and spend years working off of your old hits, but musicians are always hungry for that one little song that will warp their minds or make them look at their craft in an entirely different way. While rock and roll has changed a lot since Hayley Williams started Paramore, she admitted that one of the turning points in her career was hearing Failure for the first time.
Out of all the biggest bands of the 1990s, though, Failure never seemed to get their fair shake. All the pieces were there for them to become one of the biggest names in music, and yet there was always that missing extra spark that put them on the same level as the Nirvanas and Radioheads of the world.
In fact, many of their greatest songs tend to be an amalgamation of those two bands. While Ken Andrews was never going to give Kurt Cobain a run for his money or anything, hearing belt out songs like ‘Stuck On You’ felt like you were getting pulled into another whenever you listened to it, taking post-grunge and putting a more futuristic twist on it.
Whereas a lot of post-grunge acts tended to fall by the wayside after a while, Fantastic Planet has only gotten better with age, feeling like the missing link between Nevermind and OK Computer and somehow not sacrificing what makes either of them amazing. Although Williams eventually took a more straight-ahead rock direction to many of her greatest Paramore songs, something changed in her DNA once ‘Stuck On You’ came on.
Recalling that time, Williams remembered the energy that came from the record and how it drove her to start a career, saying, “It was the same feeling that you feel as a 14-year-old. That wall hit me and I could feel it. My heart was racing…It changed how I thought about music, and it made me, more than ever, want to be in a band”.
Although the production of an album like Fantastic Planet is something that you get once every generation, there are more than a few pieces of Paramore’s catalogue that have that amount of sonic weight to it. Whereas Riot was closer to a lot of the pop-punk production style of the time, Brand New Eyes was a far more caustic experience. Instead of relying on just the hooks, it was about how the guitars were hitting you and feeling your head spin when the song reached its crescendo.
Paramore even ended up covering the tune later on as well, only with a much different approach than the original. While nothing about the melody has changed all that much, playing it in a more intimate setting not only helps you appreciate the song even more but really puts a spotlight on why Andrews’ approach to songwriting is so compelling.
Then again, sometimes the greatest artists in the world don’t always get their just due unless it’s in hindsight. Failure certainly had the potential to become one of the greatest rock bands of all time, but perhaps their sound was built more for the future than for the present when they first struck out on the scene.
