Paramore No Longer Playing ‘Misery Business’ at Live Shows
Hayley Williams announced at Paramore's Nashville show last night (Sept. 7) that the band will be removing "Misery Business" from their live shows "for a really long time." Before playing the hit track, she said, "This is a choice we made because we feel like we should. We feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while."
Williams has come out against the song's lyrics in recent years - specifically the lines, "Once a whore, you’re nothing more/I’m sorry that’ll never change.” In 2015 the frontwoman penned a blog post in which she first publicly distanced herself from it. "Misery Business is not a set of lyrics that I relate to as a 26-year-old woman. I haven’t related to it in a very long time. those words were written when I was 17… admittedly, from a very narrow-minded perspective."
Before performing the song last night, Williams added, "This is to every bad decision that led us here. This is to all the embarrassing things that we might've said but we owned up to [them] and we grew."
Perhaps what is most interesting about that situation is that the backlash Williams has faced for using the word "whore" with a derogatory sentiment has not extended to the various other 2000s emo bands who also used the term. For example, Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie has not faced any opposition for the use of the word in their 2005 hit single "I Write Sins Not Tragedies," and continues to perform it live in 2018.
Below you can watch videos of Williams speech and the song's final performance. Do you think the band should retire the song from their setlist? Should Panic! retire "I Write Sins" from theirs? Leave us a comment with your thoughts.
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