This Is Why

This Is Why received critical acclaim and debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, 47,000 of which were pure album sales. A remix album, Re: This Is Why, was released October 6, 2023, featuring remixed, reworked, and rewritten versions of songs from This Is Why by different artists. The album won Best Rock Album and the album's title track won Best Alternative Music Performance at the 66th Annual Grammy Awards.^[2]

Background and recording[edit]

In May 2017, Paramore released their fifth studio album After Laughter to critical acclaim.^[3] The album saw the return of former drummer Zac Farro, who had left the band in 2010.^[4] The band toured in support of the album from June 2017 until September 2018. Following the conclusion of the After Laughter Tour, the members of Paramore took a break from writing and recording music for the band and worked on other endeavors. Hayley Williams featured on the American Football song "Uncomfortably Numb" in 2019^[5] and released two solo albums, Petals for Armor (2020)^[6] and Flowers for Vases / Descansos (2021);^[7] the former produced by Paramore guitarist Taylor York.^[8] She also pivoted her attention more towards her hair dye company Good Dye Young and hosted the weekly BBC Sounds series Everything Is Emo.^[9] Farro continued his ongoing project HalfNoise, releasing an extended play – Flowerss (2018) – and two albums – Natural Disguise (2019) and Motif (2021).^[10] Farro also recorded drums for the songs "Watch Me While I Bloom" and "Crystal Clear" from Williams' Petals for Armor^[11] and released an EP under his own name titled Zafari (2020).^[12]


Discussions about a sixth Paramore album began in 2020 while Williams was promoting Petals for Armor. Williams hinted that the band's next album would be more guitar-driven, stating, "We've found ourselves listening to a lot of older music that we grew up being inspired by."^[13] She further commented on the sound of the album in 2022, likening it to Bloc Party: “From day one, Bloc Party was the number one reference because there was such an urgency to their sound that was different to the fast punk or the pop-punk or the like, loud wall of sound emo bands that were happening in the early 2000s.”^[14] In January 2022, the band confirmed they had entered the studio to work on their sixth album.^[15]

Composition[edit]

This Is Why is the band's first album to have a title track. Logan Gourlay of Rock Sound called it a "jittery post-punk record" and noted Foals, Bloc Party and Talking Heads influences.^[16] George Griffiths of the Official Charts Company described the album as a "confidently jagged, hard post-punk soundscape."^[17] Meredith Jenks and Christine Werthman of Billboard have described the album as "a tight, post-punk juggernaut that zeroes in on pandemic-fueled anxieties".^[1] Similarly, Arielle Gordon from Pitchfork characterized the album as "jittery, crackling post-punk."^[18] Andrew Sacher at BrooklynVegan claimed the album has "twitchy" dance-punk "all over [it]."^[19] Wesley McLean of Exclaim considered the album to be "deeply rooted in post-punk and art punk traditions."^[20] According to Alexis Petridis of The Guardian, "[the album] stirs 00s alt-rock into the mix: the band have mentioned Bloc Party and Foals as influences."^[21] Ims Taylor of Clash stated that "Paramore opt for simple, striking, and forceful on ‘This Is Why’, keeping in that New Wave tradition of punchy phrases iterated and reiterated, through vivid guitar countermelodies, offbeat punctuation and pointed lyrical looping of lyrics that go beyond verse chorus verse chorus, searing each song's character into your mind indelibly."^[22] The Sydney Morning Herald noted that "the album’s last three tracks swirl around a dream-pop axis."^[23] According to Chris Thiessen of Under the Radar, "The back half of the album feels tonally different from the front, more personal and relational and coming closer to their pop-punk roots."^[24] Maximo David of Boolin Tunes states "any notion that This Is Why is Paramore 'returning to their roots,' or whatever a number of pundits may have purported over the years is almost unequivocally false."^[25]