The silence has been broken.
Paramore are slowly starting to rise from their hibernation and I am here to tell you all about it. Or, well, as much as I can with the information that they have teased us all with. I am a self-proclaimed hardcore Paramore fan, and I have been since 2005. Back when I had to search every JB-Hi Fi and Sanity store to find a physical copy of All We Know Is Falling to go with my Riot! album because I needed the whole collection. Now I have two tattoos related to them, I have attended all three Parahoy! cruises, and I’m fairly actively involved in the community from the days of PFC (yes I still have my card in a wallet in my house) to the current times of social media, I have sniffed out like a bloodhound every last detail of what they’re up to.
For those who aren’t aware of what I’m on about, let me break it down for you quickly before I get into the guts of it all. Five long years ago, Paramore released After Laughter and once all the tours stopped, so did their musical venture together — but not in a way that they had broken up — it was in a way that they needed, really. They’d been going nonstop for years and just needed a solid rest, but none of us thought that the solid rest was going to be five years long. This included not making music as a band, and also their social media went extremely quiet except for the odd post here and there but really, it started to become drier than the Sahara — no more posts.
Now typically, when Paramore are up to something, they’re a band that absolutely LOVE to play cat and mouse with their fans, and I’ve been around long enough to be chasing the mouse every time. When they announced Parahoy! that would be sailing in 2018, for about a month beforehand they posted photos of those (slightly hideous) cars, the PT Cruiser, any time it was spotted in a car park and immediately fans went into a frenzy wondering what was going on and every Paramore fan I knew, we all banded together and tried to decipher what this all meant and still to this day, I don’t think anyone ever got it right. The photos of the cars have since been deleted, however after a deep dive through the internet, and even calling on a friend, I have managed to find these images, while the official Instagram account for Parahoy still remains here.
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Then when After Laughter was being teased, for a short period of time a pink and purple gradient square was all we had to go by. Sat there, just luring us all in and yet again, sending the fans wild about what was coming next, however all traces of this have also since been deleted. Once again, I have managed to search the internet and I have found one final image on Instagram from April 2017 of the image that was posted before the band dropped Hard Times and kicked off their After Laughter journey.
So when I tell you that this is absolutely no different to every other time they’re about to announce something big, I really mean it — except this time, they’ve left little cookie crumbs for us all to follow to the sweet treat at the end of it all.
This all started just a few days ago when Paramore changed their personal profile photos on Instagram, which is the first time since the After Laughter era that they’ve done so. Immediately I put my detective hat on and got to work because I knew this meant something was coming and I had to know what was up. The first thing I did was take myself to the official website and saw nothing, it was still fit out for the last era and there was nothing new — how sad. Maybe I was wrong? Nope. It was just a matter of time.
The next day I was on my lunch break and saw several of my friends posting a clip of Zac Farro at a computer on their Instagram stories and I was so confused, Paramore hadn’t posted anything at all… Where did this come from? So later that night I went back to trusty ol’ paramore.net and it had changed. No more pink and purple, but black and white and just some numbers and words and this is where the real detective work comes into play.
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Screenshot from paramore.net[/caption]
Everything is in September, so prepare yourselves.
First up is Discord. Now this one puzzles me slightly because I can’t tell you if this is when the account was made or not, but I can tell you that if you click the word discord on the Paramore website, it will direct you to their account and you can be invited to join the chat and view what Team Paramore upload. You can also follow this link here. There is currently only one video, the one I mentioned having seen previously which includes what sounds like a snippet of a new song, possibly the one that they’re going to release first — but you’ll need your volume up quite loud to hear it.
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiRRGHWouMG/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link
Next up is blank — and I would have usually said that this is when they deleted everything from their social media, officially killing off the After Laughter era. However there was already nothing there besides a tour poster for their fall tour which starts on October 2nd — but then I remembered, that was the date they changed their photos on their social media accounts which was the final remnants of the last record. This is their most recent photo, yes, that is actually the whole image — which contains the three squishy faces that have become the new icons of Hayley, Zac and Taylor.
The next thing is “wr0ng” and it’s written out like it’s meant to be a song title, and you’d think it is, right? Well, this is what really got my brain going at a million miles an hour because I realized that this wasn’t right. People have speculated for so long that 9/9 is when Paramore would release new music as Hayley had a podcast recently and the final episode aired on 9/9, and people thought that it would be the time that she played their new song, officially releasing it. No, no. This then became one of the biggest rumour dates as I saw it everywhere and every fan knew this date was coming and already started their own rumours about what was coming. A single, an album, what was it? Then I saw “wr0ng” written and I knew they were quite literally spelling it out to us that everyone was WRONG. They even posted in their Instagram story, reading the discord comments of people going absolutely insane and thousands of comments a second, wondering what was about to happen, saying “wr0ng” written over the top of it.
But hear me out, there’s still other dates that are more notable ones.
The 12th. L A.
This one sticks out the most to me for three reasons.
Number one, it’s so specifically written with a space in between both letters that it could be hinting at the two letters that will be the starting letters of a new song title, what it may end up spelling out, I don’t know, but it seems very intentional that it is displayed that way.
My next idea is because they’re in America, there is the possibility of something happening in LA. Whether it be one of those scavenger hunts or a secret pop-up intimate show, but that is another high chance. Theory number three which is probably a bit of a wildcard but I’ll throw it in anyway — is that they could be hinting at once again, the end of After Laughter, because L A is A L flipped and if you’re familiar with their previous record, then you know that the AL era was dancing about depression with some incredibly sad lyrics and some of the happiest sounds I have ever heard. Maybe this record is going to be back to a little more of a darker undertone with darker sounds.
UPDATE: The band announced additional LA shows for their upcoming tour!
https://www.instagram.com/p/Ciag1dVrKTS/?hl=en
The 16th.
There is nothing written next to the 16th. This is a Friday. Every day except two dates have something written next to it. I’ll come back to this in a moment.
The 19th. Start spreading the news.
Hayley loves old music, this is the start of a Frank Sinatra song that everyone knows and loves “New York, New York” so maybe — this is hinting at again, another pop-up event in New York, or potentially it is just as simple as they want people to start spreading the news of what’s coming next, just get the fans hyped up and ready to bust out of their slumber before…
The 28th.
Again, nothing written next to this date but it is the middle of the week and quite soon after the 16th. Weird right?
So, with all of this being said, we can see a trend here, that every single date on this calendar has an event, or a notable significance related to it where the band have done something whether it be minor and sneaky like changing their website overnight, or something as obvious as changing their profile pictures. However two of these dates, both Friday the 16th and Wednesday the 28th have absolutely nothing written next to it and I’m going to put my hand on my heart and say with full confidence, these are the two dates that are the MOST important.
With my experience in music journalism, I can tell you that New Music Friday is one of the biggest trends and almost every artist will aim to drop a song on a Friday, and what day do we have no word next to? Friday the 16th of September. Yes, I really think we will have a single released on Friday. (Or, technically Saturday for us Aussies, we’re talking in American time here). Then another trend that has been happening a lot is mid-week releases, and what is the other date that has nothing next to it? Wednesday the 28th of September. I strongly think this is either going to be a music video release and/or an album announcement.
Now all of these things that I have written about here is purely just my opinion and coming from both a long time working with music journalism and an even longer time being a fan of the band, so feel free to come for me* if I get any of this wrong, but I am willing to bet you anything that by the end of this month, we are going to have so much brand new Paramore content and all will be right in the world.
Written by Heather McNab
UPDATE: The band officially reveal that their brand new single 'This is Why' is being released on September 28th. Pre-save here!
