hayley williams and remembering the human
this is the first post in which i attempt to embed spotify songs. you are watching me improve as a blogger and a coder
if you know me or have been exposed to my social media presence, you might know that i recently went to the dc showing of paramore’s “this is why” arena tour of 2023.
firstly, the concert was a transcendent experience. experiencing the songs you’ve sung along to in the car and danced along to alone in your bathroom while plucking your eyebrows finally played live on stage only a few feet away from you is a surreal thing, and although this wasn’t my first concert, the feeling never gets old. same thing goes for seeing celebrities you adore in person for the first time. when paramore came on stage, a group of girls beside me in the pit started crying hysterically when the lights came on and focused on hayley williams, and although i didn’t react as dramatically, i was freaking out on the inside. when i was in middle school, i read red scarf girl by ji li jiang, a chinese woman’s memoir of the cultural revolution, and one of the chapters recounted her experiences seeing chairman mao zedong in person and how everyone began crying hysterically. the same phenomenon can be observed in more recent pictures of north korean people seeing kim jong il and kim jong un appear in public. when i read that passage and saw the pictures, i never really understood what was going on. “how can someone be so excited that they’re moved to tears just by seeing them in real life??” over time i realized that in the case of china and north korea, it’s a combination of genuine joy from brainwashing and also fear for punishment for being the person not crying in the presence of the supreme leader. something about that makes it even more special that hayley can evoke the same emotions without the fear part at all (thank god paramore isn’t kpop). this topic of seeing your idols in real life brings me to the actual reason i decided to write this post
“perfect” people make mistakes too
i think hayley is one of the first celebrities i’ve come across who constantly reminds me that famous people are humans too. this idea started to form in my head first at the concert that i went to. halfway through the setlist, paramore had just finished playing decode. hayley stopped to tell everyone to put their hands up and then put all their fingers down except for their pinkies. this is because holding pinkies in the air is the crowd participation thingy that people do when hayley sings the words “little dignity” in big man, little dignity
right as hayley asked everyone to do that, she quickly realized that the band hadn’t gotten to that song and she quickly said “now everyone put their hands down because that’s the wrong song”. the lights then went down and the band immediately went on to play the song they were supposed to play like nothing had happened at all
it was one of funniest and most memorable moments at the concert, despite being a pretty inconsequential moment. seeing a screw-up that deviated from the concert routine felt special because it was a wrench in the gears that only the people at the DC show would experience in person. it felt reassuring because it was a reminder that even famous and successful people will make mistakes. it felt impressive because hayley screwed up in an arena of tens of thousands of people, and played it off so well. when i mispronounce a word in my presentation or say the wrong thing to a girl at a party i spend the rest of the day beating myself up over it. it really isn’t that hard to realize that most of your screwups don’t affect your life in the long run, or really the universe at large. if someone in the andromeda galaxy (or even as close as the moon) pointed a telescope at earth, they wouldn’t even know about your fuckups, much less of your existence. but in the moment, the terrible feeling of messing up and the fear of rejection and loneliness still takes over all rationality and can destroy any and all confidence in the blink of an eye.
as i thought about that moment and began to write this post, i think i started to realize why those girls beside my teared up after seeing hayley. when we look on at famous people, we form this idea that they’re perfect. it ranges across many things about them, from the fact that they’re team of makeup artists and wardrobe designers have them looking stunning at all time, to how we consume their music and movies where their voices don’t crack and they don’t mess up their lines, to the simple yet very flawed logic that they must have no imperfections because if they did, they wouldn’t be famous. when we’re so used to looked to seeing pictures and videos of our idols on our screens, we begin to get used to what they look like on the screen after the distortion of the camera lens, as well as the pixels in our LCD displays. then, we see them in real life and are so awestruck as we realize they look more like the normal people we’re used to seeing in our daily lives, and we see the animation in the way they move and carry themselves that we just don’t register the same when behind a screen. this disparity in how we experience and perceive our idols in person versus in media reminds us that these famous people who we originally thought were short of gods are just normal people like us with the dreams and struggles of any other person on earth. it reminds us that, despite how rich and famous they might be, these people we worship share our experiences, which gives more meaning to our own lives. seeing them mess up, like how hayley does and owns up to, only affirms such a conjecture of shared human experience.
“perfect” people make a lot of mistakes, actually
after i went home, the tiktok algorithm started suggested a lot more paramore content in my feed (which, although concerning, is no longer surprising). over the course of the next weeks, i started finding a lot more videos of hayley screwing up and completely owning all of her mistakes like a champ.
the first video i remember seeing was just a video of paramore playing that's what you get. for context, these are the first few lines to the first verse:
no sir, no i don’t want to be the blame, not anymore
it’s your turn, so take a seat
we’re settling the final score
at concerts, paramore plays the intro and then the band members go silent as they let the audience sing the first line that begins with “no sir”. then they resume playing and hayley begins singing the next line. back to the tiktok i saw, the video begins with hayley saying “if you know the words, then sing along, if you don’t, just enjoy it”. then the band goes on to play while the lights and smoke machines are going off in time to the intense instrument, and the band goes silent. hayley then starts singing the second verse and immediately starts laughing at herself for her screwup.
that’s not the only screwup of hers floating around on the internet, either.
in told you so, there’s a little guitar lick between the first chorus and the second verse. in the video, hayley lets go of the microphone and does a little dance, causing the mic stand to fall over off the stage. as the audience sings on, hayley lays down to reach for the mic and then rolls over on her back laughing hysterically and out of breath and starts singing again, more busy laughing than being concerned with putting on a perfect show.
i use tiktok a lot and i have seen a lot of similar videos, but you get the point. hayley screws up a lot and she really doesn’t let it affect her. to be honest, you should really need to see her screwups at concerts to realize this. a lot of paramore’s songs are about making mistakes, self-criticism, and other themes of pessimism, espcially in the newer albums, after laughter and this is why. it really is a lesson to all of us that, one, every person makes mistakes and no one is without faults or sin, and two, we shouldn’t let our screwups holds us back or define who we are. i think hayley herself explained it best at the dc show when she talked about how long paramore has been on the scene:
to those of you who have been fans for the past two decades and grown up with us, thank you. you’ve watched us mess up time and time again and pick ourselves back up so we can try again. and that’s what’s important. at least we’re trying. that’s already a lot more than what most people can show for.
of course, i’m paraphrasing because the band started playing almost immediately after hayley spit the deepest quote of the century and i didn’t get time to whip out my phone to write it down.
remembering the human
sonder, n.
the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.
— the dictionary of obsure sorrows
i hope i’m not alone when i admit that i frequently feel sonder as i walk down the street at UVA and see other students and realize some of those people who a majority of will never play a part in the play that is my life - people whose names won’t even appear on the playbill and receive no applause at curtain call.
it’s easy to pay strangers no mind, easily lose your temper at fast food workers, or just be a dick to people who you might never see again. despite this, i think my recent experiences with seeing paramore live and seeing hayley williams dominating my tiktok feed have been a great reminder that everyone is still a human being, no better or worse than you or anyone else.
first of all, it’s never safe to assume you’ll never have to deal with someone again. i’ve made that mistake several times at college, and unwelcome reunions with people you’ve had a sour history with are not enjoyable at all. karma’s gonna come for all of us. it might be my bad luck, but it really seems like all of my burnt bridges have somehow come back to bite me, so i’ve realized that the simple way to deal is to just not burn bridges - it might actually be better to not view people as bridges to be burnt in the first place.
second, everyone is a main character in their own story. while it may be true that you’re going to be the bad guy in someone’s story whether intentional or not, your words and actions can hurt the same to someone who’s your best friend, someone who’s your worst enemy, or someone who’s a side character. even saying something disparaging to someone in a tiktok comments section (something i see way too much) can ruin that person’s day. there is a reason why social media sites like reddit always remind you to remember the human when you post online. it’s the reason why people will say the nastiest things online but never in front of another person’s face, because anonymity allows us to hide behind our username (and in some cases like reddit and 4chan, no profile picture), and it becomes easy to not remember the human in our online interactions. it’s the reason why valve corporation has found that dota 2 has seen less player toxicity in game after they added voice chat, because players are less likely to antagonize each other when they can hear each other’s voices, because when the veil of anonymity is lifted, they remember the human.