Paramore - Riot! (2007)
It was a few weeks before the Christmas of 2007 that my brother told me "My Chemical Romance and Paramore should have a concert on top of a volcano to see who can rock out harder" or some dumb shit like that, and the fact that he was a redhead with dyed black hair was almost as equally terrifying as the fact that he was 23 when he said it! Either way, I repeated it to one of my sisters and she misunderstood me, and bought me a copy of this album on CD for that Christmas, where my reaction was admittedly kinda like "what the fuck?" because I hadn't ever heard the band and then I was just handed a CD by them. My brother, the Paramore fan as he was, was NOT gifted this album, but rather, Mutemath's self-titled 2006 debut album, and he had an equal reaction of "what the fuck?" because he had only heard a Mutemath song once. Here's the kicker: THEY WERE GIFTED BY THE SAME FUCKING SISTER!! Anyhow, the Mutemath album went into his portable CD player and I never heard a word about it from him despite us sharing a room, and I was such an insecure teenager, and I mean so fucking MASSIVELY insecure about the stupidest shit that I wouldn't be caught DEAD listening to a "girly band" but would still fanboy over bands that had largely female fanbases, like Fall Out Boy. I was a moron. I still am a complete fucking moron, but a different, much less sexually insecure moron that wears his love for Carly Rae Jepsen like a badge.
Anyhow, a female friend of mine was massively into them at the time, so I finally got around to opening the CD and popping that sucker in, and there isn't really a good story behind it: I liked it. I just liked it in a kinda "this is catchy" way and then it went on the backburner as I replaced it with another CD, possibly that Sublime album ("Robbin' the Hood" for anyone interested) that was recorded in a crackhouse, and it was whatever. I liked the singles and the entire album went on my iPod, but it wasn't at the front of my interests, y'know? Especially when I was so easily impressionable and my friends were going on about "it's no different than Avril Lavigne" even though that's fucking ignorant. Catch some songs on shuffle and think nothing of it. However, a few years later, I decided to revisit this album and I was fuckin' kicking myself for not paying more attention to it before! This album is packed to the brim with catchy guitar riffs, beautiful and powerful vocals from the neon-orange haired Hayley Williams, and lyrical content that was honestly above anything I was capable of writing about when I had received the album, and I was just a few years younger than the members of the band. As far as quality goes, I'd go as far to say that every single song on this album aside from "Fences" (although it IS catchy) had the potential to become a smash-hit to help soundtrack an entire summer of awkward teenage flings, heartbreaks, and rebounds.
When I listen to this album, aside from the sad and surprisingly mature and well-composed track "We Are Broken", I'm just happy. Even if some of the songs are sad, they carry a beautiful time-capsule of sound from that particular year that really sends me back, even if I wasn't much of a fan at the time, which oughta say something in itself. This album just sounds like.. Youth. It sounds like if your highschool band didn't break up, hit it big, and were actually talented, and even if the band were just some teenagers at this point, it doesn't sound like that. Don't get me wrong: It still sounds like "WE'RE TEENAGERS AND WE'RE INVINCIBLE!!" but that's part of the charm in it. Research (read: conversations with people on MSN Messenger back in the day, because I generally don't watch TV) reveals that MTV pushed this band like a motherfucker, with "Misery Business" being played in their commercials a lot, or even "exclusive" acoustic performances of that, "Crushcrushcrush" or whatever else, which lead to people saying "fuck this band" due to them oversaturating the channel and radio in general, which is ironic given that the lyrics (in reference to Refused's "Liberation Frequency") "We want the airwaves back" in the final track "Born For This" almost stands as a statement for the band itself in their quest for fame, but hey, if all of the albums that MTV pushed were even half as charming and excellent as this album is, maybe I'd pick up the remote to turn on the TV, because when Hayley Williams sings out with full confidence "We were born for this" in reference to the band's formation and potential, I can't help but agree with her.
9/10
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Feel free to check out the song previews/buy this album using my Amazon Associate link!
