Hayley Williams said she "struggled" after Paramore featured on the Twilight soundtrack
29 April 2022, 14:59
Hayley Williams reacts to viral TikTok to Paramore's 'All I Wanted'
"The resentment set in like, ‘oh my god, we’re the Twilight band’"
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Hayley Williams has said she felt like a "poser" after Paramore featured on the Twilight soundtrack.
Paramore's single 'Decode' from 2008 was the lead single from the very first Twilight film soundtrack. It was their second-highest charting song at the time, peaking at no.33 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as becoming a hit internationally, and was certified platinum in 2010 after selling a million copies. It was also nominated for a Grammy Award in 2010 for Best Song Written for a Movie (it lost out to 'Jai Ho' from Slumdog Millionaire, which is a banger tbf).
The song exposed the band to a bigger audience and became a much-loved favourite among fans. However, its association with the vampire series wasn't always a comfortable one, according to Hayley in a new interview with Rolling Stone UK.
READ MORE: Hayley Williams has quit social media
Noting the negative connotations associated with 'emo' in the early '00s when Paramore first broke through, Hayley acknowledged that Paramore didn't always welcome the 'emo' label, and on more than one occasion denied that they were an emo band. "I think we just didn’t want to be anything specific", she said.
Describing the Twilight saga as "peak camp", Hayley said she struggled with the soundtrack's success and how the band might be perceived because of their association with the film.
"I definitely struggled when we did that soundtrack," she said. "There was part of me that read the books, I loved them, they were easy reads and they were fun. It was: holy shit, we have a song in a movie – that was crazy."
"And then the resentment set in like, ‘oh my god, we’re the Twilight band’. It took a long time to get over that part of myself that wanted to be like ‘you’re a poser’. I just kind of had to be like, ‘no fuck it, Radiohead’s on that’. That’s crazy. Bon Iver’s on it."
Paramore: Decode [OFFICIAL VIDEO]
Reflecting on her feelings now, Hayley can see it for what it was: a good promo opportunity.
"Let’s not pretend like Twilight didn’t catapult our band into a different route", she said. "We were not as well known before that soundtrack came out. It opened us up to a slew of fans that probably wouldn’t have given us a chance before that or didn’t know we existed before. I look back on it now like that’s crazy. Kristen Stewart is Princess Diana now and Robert Pattinson is the Batman. And we’re still a band so everyone’s doing fine."
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