Maya Mazor-Hoofien/The Mossy Log
Hayley Williams’ third solo album, “Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party,” was first released as a surprise set of MP3 audio files on the Paramore frontwoman’s retro-style website on July 29. The 17 initial songs were added to streaming services on Aug. 1 and were gradually joined by three bonus tracks in the subsequent months, with the final song released on Nov. 7.
“Ego Death” is the first wholly independent project of her career, released under her newly founded label Post Atlantic. Her 20-year contract with Atlantic Records, which she signed at age 14, ended at the end of 2023.
Throughout the album, Williams reckons with her two decades of tumultuous stardom with Paramore. The album’s title track approaches this with a story that is both cinematic and sequential, its repeating verse differing slightly in each iteration. First, Williams sings, “I’ll be the biggest star at this racist country singer’s bar,” which she told The New York Times’ Popcast is “about Morgan Wallen. I don’t give a shit.”
In the second verse, the setting is fleshed out further as “this bachelorette party bar,” her ego continuing to run rampant as the chorus returns, repeating, “Can only go up from here” for eight bars.
Finally, the crash. The flick of a lighter ushers in the bridge, which in the music video shows Williams stepping outside for a cigarette. Her stardom, the subject of the previous verses, is now in question. She feels conflicted about the future of her career, singing, “They sent me right back from where I came / My tail between my legs on Broadway.”
She heads back into “this fucking karaoke bar” for the final verse with the added depth of her reflections on her homecoming.
Williams was born in Mississippi and moved to a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, at age 13. Reflections on her Southern upbringing and adult relationship to her hometown are another theme present throughout the album.
“True Believer” is one such track, in which Williams simultaneously describes the commercialization of the Nashville music scene and condemns the historical and ever-present racism of the South. The studio recording is an excellent listen, but this song truly came to life when Williams performed it live on “The Tonight Show” on Oct. 8.
The performance begins with Williams at a piano, spotlighted in the center of a dark stage. The lyrics are immediately blunt and critical of the gentrification she has seen in Nashville:
“All our best memories / Were bought and then turned into apartments / The club with all the hardcore shows / Now just a greyscale Domino’s.”
The verse continues, shifting its critique to the hypocrisy so often found in religious communities that consider themselves “true believers.”
“The churches overflow each Sunday, greedy Sunday morning / Gift shop in the lobby / Act like God ain’t watching / Kill the soul, turn a profit.”
The lights come up with the pre-chorus, revealing Williams sitting behind a predominantly Black orchestra whose haunting string accompaniment drives the rest of the performance. Now visible is a white T-shirt draped over her piano which reads “Mississippi G-d Damn,” referencing Nina Simon’s 1964 civil rights protest song “Mississippi Goddam.”
The second verse is explicit in its condemnation of Southern right-wing politics, about which Williams has been very vocal. She has never been one to mince words when it comes to the wrongdoings of her home state and country and has repeatedly voiced her opposition to President Donald Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-LGBTQ+ agenda and the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“The South will not rise again / ’Til it’s paid for every sin,” she sings.
The horrors of Southern history are brought to the forefront with the outro of the performance which diverges from the recorded track.
A string instrumental of Billie Holiday’s 1939 song “Strange Fruit,” a dark and haunting euphemism for Jim Crow-era lynchings, ends the performance with a chilling reminder of the atrocities she demands the South answer for. This condemnation, however, is not for lack of faith in a different future, as is made clear by the chorus:
“I’m the one who still loves your ghost / I reanimate your bones / ’Cause I’m a true believer.”
“Ego Death” is full of stand-out moments that explore everything from femininity to mental health and healing from heartbreak. In “Mirtazapine,” Williams sings an ode to the antidepressant she calls a “genie in a screw cap bottle.” Her song “Kill Me” describes generational trauma with the line, “Carrying my mother’s mother’s torment / I think I’m where the bloodline ends.”
“Ego Death” is another in a series of triumphs for Williams’ solo discography. It is at once familiar and wholly unexpected, nostalgic but unflinchingly current with its mix of ’90s punk, ’00s alternative, and modern indie and dream pop sounds. The album is mature, introspective and unyielding, demonstrating Williams’ power and longevity as a poignant lyricist and powerhouse vocalist. At last she is, as she puts it in the album’s first song, finally untethered to the “dumb motherfuckers that I made rich.”
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