After sharing the first single from their upcoming album This Is Why and finishing up a fall North American tour, Paramore has dropped the second single from their latest project. It's called "The News" and comes with a brand new music video that sees Hayley Williams being hypnotized by her TV.
The song deals with the mental health implications of consuming too much news, as well as the empathy viewers feel for those they don't know. "Every second, our collective hearts breaks / All together, every single head shakes / Shut your eyes, but it won't go away / Turn on, turn off the news," Williams belts during the song's chorus.
Furthermore, the eerie visual for "The News" has Williams interacting with another version of herself in a dark void of a space with only a door, an orange couch (as fans point out, reminiscent of Paramore's album cover for All We Know Is Falling), a laptop, camera, and TV set.
Before the song and video were dropped, Paramore shared several cool teasers for "The News" – including two TikTok previews, BTS photos of the video on Instagram, and the band mailing out an advance CD copy of the track to a fan, according to Kerrang.
Speaking with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Hayley Williams said of the inspiration and meaning behind "The News": “Personally, I was like, ‘Okay. We’re not typically a political band,’ and it’s not a solely political song or a solely political album. I understand that where we live, where we’re positioned is not always reality. And we got four years at home to be members of our own community, be face to face with our families again, and kind of plug into our local community, be citizens, vote in person, all those things, right?"
She continued, "But that was our first real experience of that as adults. So who wants to hear a bunch of people whine about how difficult it is to live in 2022 or 2020 when maybe our lives don’t reflect the harshest of realities? But I think the other flip side to that is really wanting to do good and wanting to reflect the times as artists and wanting to be with it enough that we can use our platform. How can you ignore it? How can you not say anything?"
She also shared the catalyst that prompted the creation of the song, "It started with just the pandemic. Well, for us it started with the tornado in Nashville, but there was the tornado and then there was the global pandemic. There was George Floyd, there were all these uprisings, there were marches and protests that we went to. There was a bombing by a conspiracy theorist on Christmas Day in Nashville. It’s like we’re experiencing it from whatever vantage point we're at, and there's something to say about it. And I’m praying and hoping that the perspective and the lyrics that we’re presenting is personal enough and as much with respect to everyone’s specific or potential vantage point that maybe other people can relate to it in some way that we haven’t even intended. And that’s the hopeful part of it.”
This Is Why is set for release February 10, 2023. You can pre-save and pre-order here. After that, Paramore will be doing another North American tour, as well as shows in Europe and in South America. Tickets can be found on Ticketmaster and other resale sites.
Watch "The News" music video below.
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Article Image: The thumbnail of Paramore's video for "The News," which shows Hayley Williams on the floor with white eyes, staring at a laptop screen. (Paramore via YouTube.)
