Paramore Will No Longer Play ‘Misery Business’ Due To Sexist Lyric
Fans are divided over the decision.
Paramore have announced they will no longer play their breakout hit ‘Misery Business’ in their sets anymore, due to the ongoing controversy surrounding a sexist lyric in its second verse.
Singer Hayley Williams made the announcement on stage at their final After Laughter tour stop in Nashville two nights ago, telling the crowd it felt right to retire the song.
“Tonight we’re playing this song for the last time, for a very long time. This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should, we feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while,” Williams told the crowd. “This is to every bad decision that led us here, this is to all the embarrassing things we might have said, but we owned up to it and we grew.”
At the Paramore concert in Nashville and they just announced that they won’t be performing Misery Business again for a long time after this show. Omg. pic.twitter.com/wARvoYGz76
— Tyler Matl (@TylerMatl) September 8, 2018
The song has come under fire over the last few years over the lyrics “Once a whore you’re nothing more/I’m sorry, that’ll never change”. They have been widely deemed to be sexist and anti-feminist.
Williams addressed the controversy in a Tumblr post in May 2015, writing that she doesn’t relate to those lyrics anymore.
“‘Misery Business’ is not a set of lyrics that I relate to as a 26-year-old woman,” she wrote. “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.
“It wasn’t really meant to be this big philosophical statement about anything. It was quite literally a page in my diary about a singular moment I experienced as a high schooler.”
She spoke about it further in an interview with Track 7 two months ago.
“For whatever reason, I believe I was supposed to have written those backwards words and I was supposed to learn something from them… years later,” Williams said. “It’s made me more compassionate toward other women, who maybe have social anxieties… and toward younger girls who are at this very moment learning to cope and to relate and to connect. We’re all just trying our damnedest.”
Fans are split on the band’s decision to retire the song.
Lmao. It makes sense that Paramore wants to stop performing Misery Business. The song is a 3 minute slut shame.
— Mars (@SouljaJo) September 9, 2018
Misery Business is now “controversial”? Ha. Please. 🔥 pic.twitter.com/v1BUGNX9JZ
— Saoirse (@Saoirseeeee) September 9, 2018
My day has been ruined knowing that the bop that is misery business is being retired pic.twitter.com/UH2hrj9u3d
— Andrea (@Andieeee__) September 8, 2018
Really hate this entitled mindset.
No you don’t. Fans don’t buy tickets that say ‘Misery Business’ on them. They buy tickets that say ‘Paramore’ on them. They’ll decide what they’re going to play. https://t.co/e1lgpkqlVo
— Robbie Fox (@RobbieBarstool) September 9, 2018
is this person aware that hayley williams is a feminist and has made a whole post about how she, herself, can not relate to this song or its lyrics anymore as a grown woman in 2015 https://t.co/6CoWJMC7Rx
— ramona (@gothforbid) September 9, 2018
misery business goes hard af but also i can definitely sympathize with re-reading an angsty poem/song you wrote when you were like 15 and cringing
imagine the embarrassment of finding your old diary but it’s a catchy song that millions of people want you to play over&over lol https://t.co/RxzL2hi4fC
— nicole (@cyberpunkisdead) September 10, 2018
Paramore’s latest album After Laughter was released last year. Read our review here.