Paramore are at #13 in The DIY List 2014, a look back at the year’s best albums, one-off shows, festival performances and achievements outside of the norm.
Safe to say, it’s been another massive year for Paramore. While 2013 may have seen the release of their self-titled fourth record, and countless huge performances across the world, the past twelve months have gone even further to solidify their position as one of the biggest bands in the world right now.
From heading out their very own cruise, to playing some of the biggest headline shows of their career so far alongside Fall Out Boy, breaking the Top 40 in America to finally getting to headline Reading and Leeds, their list of 2014 highlights is phenomenal. But 2014 was a great year for the Paramore community too, as the band offered up to DIY earlier this year.
“It was so cool,” offered up bassist Jeremy Davis on the subject of their recent Monumentour, when we spoke to the band during their last visit to the UK, “having our fans and Fall Out Boy’s fans - a lot of them are fans of both bands already - but there was such an energy. It kinda felt like a throwback tour! There was such cool energy in the crowd and you could feel it; it felt like a special day for everyone, listening to all our old records on the way in. We had a fan-gating - which is like tail-gating - which is like a party out in the parking lot before the show, and I think a lot of our fans and their fans were able to meet and form a community together, which was cool.”
Even looking back on their Parahoy! cruise - a four-day event that saw fans join the band on a cruise ship for a series of performances from themselves and special guests - was another big moment for them. “I don’t think we understood what it was gonna mean for our fan base,” frontwoman Hayley Williams revealed. “It just seemed like this thing that we put out there, like ‘Hey, we’re gonna try this and see how it goes’ and I personally didn’t expect that many people to even sign up. We’ve honestly never done anything at that price point. We try to keep our tickets prices as low as possible, so this was something that was very special and very limited and I just didn’t think it would be received that well. Then we did it, and not only was it received well, but it sold out!
“Then, the feeling that we had on the boat has made everyone just so much closer. When we were doing the Monumentour shows, people were coming up to us saying, ‘Oh, we’ve seen so many of our friends who we met on Parahoy!’ or ‘I met this girl on Parahoy! and we’re going to six shows together on Monumentour’. That’s really what shows are meant to be about, that community.”
With things now somewhat winding down for the group, they’re now looking ahead to the future, but aren’t necessarily sure what it’ll hold. “It’s kinda like, where do we go now? We could just do whatever we want; that’s what we did with this album. It’s been liberating and obviously exhausting and exciting. All the feelings!”
‘Self-Titled Deluxe’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen. Follow all DIY’s end of year coverage here.
No comments:
Post a Comment