All those new Hayley Williams songs are officially out now — but no, they don't constitute a new album. On Monday, the Paramore singer uploaded 17 new password-protected tracks to her website. Instead of organizing them into a tracklist or even a playlist, she made each one a clickable file, like the ones you might see scattered across your computer's desktop. Today, those songs have all seen official release.
Now that she and Paramore have wrapped up their contract with Atlantic Records, she's released these new tunes through her own new label, the cheekily named Post Atlantic. The songs are distributed via Secretly Distribution.
Williams is calling this 17 separate singles. In a tweet she reposted on her Instagram story, someone speculates that she is not putting them into an official tracklist order so that fans can assemble them into whatever sequence they please:
Williams worked on the songs with longtime Paramore touring members Brian Robert Jones (who you may also recognize from Vampire Weekend's Father Of The Bride tour) and Joey Howard, and Daniel James. There are contributions and Jim-E Stack (who worked closely with Lorde and Bon Iver on their new albums) on "True Believer," a scathing condemnation of American evangelicals that matches the tone of her recent statement on the CCM industry.
Although "Mirtazapine" was the advance single ahead of Monday's surprise drop, Williams' team is now pushing "GLUM" — in which Williams manipulates her unmistakable voice using vocal presets — as the focus track from this bunch. She first sang the chorus from "Ice In My OJ" in 2004 on "Jumping Inside" by the Mammoth City Messengers. "Discovery Channel" repurposes the chorus from comedy rock band the Bloodhound Gang's 1999 hit "The Bad Touch."
Hear all 17 new Hayley Williams songs below. (Note: Some fans have taken to calling this collection of music Ego or Ego Death, but at the moment no official title has been provided.)
Meanwhile, here's Williams talking to Stereogum's astrology correspondent at Newport Folk Festival last weekend:
