Paramore Rock Out in the Dark For "Ignorance" Video

If you suffer from claustrophobia, you may want to avoid watching the new video for Paramore's "Ignorance" below. Instead, maybe you should perhaps pay respect to Les Paul or go listen to that new Radiohead song. "Ignorance" finds frontwoman Hayley Williams and her cohorts stuffed into a space that makes a panic room look like a mansion, performing in near-darkness save for one dangling light bulb that Hayley grasps like a microphone.

As Rock Daily wrote when the single first emerged, "Ignorance" steers the bouncy power-pop of Paramore's Riot! into the darker territory also occupied by the group's Twilight contribution "Decode." The shift in tone echoes Williams' own feelings while going through the writing process for the band's new album Brand New Eyes, which will be released on September 29th. "There's a lot of things I thought I knew that I was absolutely wrong about," Williams told Rolling Stone of the album's content, which finds Williams writing about her friendships as the group wrestled with increased fame.

Describing the songs on Brand New Eyes, Williams wrote on her Live Journal page that "there's fast, there's slow, and in-between… happy, angry, desperate and over it." That emotional ambivalence lends to the "Ignorance" video. One minute, Williams is in her claustrophobic room with her bandmates, and then when the catchy chorus kicks in, she is suddenly seen in full Gwen Stefani-like regalia while singing a bright-blue glass chamber.

Brand New Eyes was produced by Rob Cavallo, who has practice mixing the power-pop songs with the more contemplative numbers on albums like Green Day's American Idiot. As Rock Daily reported yesterday, Paramore will embark on a headlining tour in support of their new album on September 29th — the day the album's released — in Pomona, California.

Related Stories:
• Paramore Debut "Ignorance" From Next Album "Brand New Eyes"
Hayley Williams on Next Paramore Album: "I Have a Lot to Say"
• Paramore Tackle Friendships on September LP: "There's Fast, There's Slow and In Between"

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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