For the latest edition of his “Rocket Hour” show for Apple Music, Elton John welcomed singer-songwriter Hayley Williams of Paramore.
Sir Elton asks, “What do you say to people who are listening to this album? This is you, right?”
“Yeah, yeah. Man, it’s a big question because life keeps moving,” she replies. “Even as you write you’re putting down something that you’re going through or maybe that you have hindsight for, but you’re still moving, right? So a lot of the things that I was writing about they’ve already sort of evolved and twisted, some of them twisted in on themselves, some of them could sort of twisted open.”
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Discussing the continual evolution of her music, she adds: “I guess, really at 31, I am only just now learning how to romance myself. And I think it’s really underrated. And now we’re all stuck at home a lot of us, and you’re with your thoughts and you’re with your being. So learning how to slow down and think about what makes me feel and what makes me hear music, or what makes me feel I’m in a scene in a movie. Romanticism I think is a big part of it for me. And it’s difficult to balance the bleakness of reality with romance and I’m trying to learn that every day.”
The “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” singer also shares some of the lessons he learned during the course of his journey as an artist.
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“It takes a while for you to figure things out in life,” he explains. “It took me until I was 43, until I started to figure out that I needed to change and I needed to take a new direction and think about what I’d been going through. The fact that you’re doing this at 31 years of age will stand you in really good stead. The writing on this album is so beautiful, and it’s very raw, and it’s very touching, and it’s one of my favourite albums of the year. So I really want to thank you for doing it.”
