“Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party” Hayley Williams
Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party was an album I first listened to thirty thousand feet in the air. I was running away from my problems on a plane to Canada. This was an album that helped me work through those problems, even if I didn’t notice that at the time.
When I first heard it I was in a frazzled state of mind, this was the music that metaphorically brought me back down to Earth. It gave me the space to better understand and collect the thoughts that were racing through my brain, and it helped me feel a lot less alone about the place I was in in my life. Her music has always had the strange ability to do that.
Hayley Williams has been an artist in my rotation for as long as I can remember, whether that be listening to Paramore during my rebellious teenage years, listening to her solo music as I moved into college, or today, as I do both. Ego is her latest project, an album that seems to have been in the works for quite a while, now, as it deals with the story of a breakup between two longtime lovers. It’s a little comical how I manage to find myself relating to every song on this project. A couple years ago I never would have expected that, nor do I think that would’ve even been a possibility, but take it from Hayely herself, anything is possible within a couple years.
Upon first release, Williams decided to release the songs as 17 singles, allowing fans to create their own “Ego tracklists” and create their own stories for how the album should play out. I spent weeks shuffling the songs together, trying to find the perfect run of tracks — the perfect storyline — but the truth is that nothing about this story is perfect. It's influenced by nothing but her and her own emotions, it's more of an evolution of music through the years, and the emotions that she's felt since her last release.
There were songs that took me by surprise at first, namely “True Believer,” “Love Me Different,” and “I Won’t Quit On You,” with lyrics that I still can’t stop thinking about. Even today I find the bridge of “Discovery Channel” ringing in the back of my head from time to time: “I can’t heal you, keep ripping me open!”
Her lyricism has always been something that strikes close to home for me, but this album has brought depths out of her that have never been discovered before. With the release of the full album (with Hayley’s choice of tracklist) she also released the song “Parachute,” possibly the most heartbreaking part of this project, and the last song on the album. The vocals are so heavy with pain, you can make out her emotions so clearly, it’s as if you’re right there with her. Growing up with her music, it hurts to hear her sing about so much sadness and pain, but the way it’s packaged is like stained glass or kintsugi: broken and repaired to make new art.
There's always been something about Hayley Williams’ music that I've seemed to gravitate to. Especially as I've gotten older, I've found myself resonating with songs and lyrics that I never would have expected to. By this point in the year, I never thought that there would even be a new Hayley Williams album, despite the rumors, yet here we are. She really does have so much to say this feels like an album where she's getting a lot off of her chest, and I truly do think this is some of the greatest work she’s ever produced.
They say pain brings growth, and there is so much growth in Hayley, musically, with this album. It was an album that helped me through my own pain, it found me at the perfect time, and I hope that anyone else who is dealing with emotions like in Ego will find an outlet for it, to grow into something as beautiful as this. There is a song here for everyone, no matter what stage of a relationship’s grief you're in. There are songs about love, lust, heartache, heartbreak, and everything in between. This is an album that is so raw and personal, and it's time that it finds the audience it deserves.
