Hayley Williams Apologizes for Kicking Fans Out of Paramore Show: ‘I Don’t Feel Proud’

Hannah Dailey
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Hayley Williams has had a change of heart following a recent viral moment she says she’s “really not proud of.”

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Last week, the 34-year-old singer-songwriter was captured on video kicking a pair of rowdy concertgoers out of a Paramore show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. But even though fans in the audience and online praised Williams for her actions at the time, she’s now posted a lengthy apology for having “embarrassed the hell out of these two people, without truly knowing what the situation was.”

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“My insides were triggered from numerous personal experiences not fit for a blog post or a microphone on stage at an arena,” she recalled in a Saturday (June 3) post on Paramore’s Discord channel. “My outsides were trying to maintain control of a situation I felt that myself and my bandmates were responsible for. Without the opportunity for a proper back and forth (and with a looming, strict show-curfew in the back of my mind), I bared my teeth like a mother wolf.”

“As a group – all 25,000 of us or so – exiled these people from the show in record time,” continued the “Still Into You” singer. “It was a moment that I would not fully process for a couple of days, when a friend showed me a video from the inside of the crowd, up close to the action.”

In the viral video, a young man can be seen aggressively pushing through the crowd to get closer to a young woman while Williams and her bandmates, Taylor York and Zac Farro, perform “Figure 8,” one of their This Is Why songs. As the situation on the floor became more heated, Williams abruptly stopped the show to scold, “Yes, I will embarrass both of you … find somewhere else to take care of that sh-t.”

In hindsight, though, the Good Dye Young founder worries that she “abused my responsibility and my platform in that moment … that I hurt those two in a way that will outlast the momentary discomfort of their poor concert etiquette.”

“I feel the same tension in this moment that I wrote about all over the new album,” she continued. “I love to say we make a safe space at our shows each night … but I’m also the one who may throw someone out without really even knowing what exactly is going on.”

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“So, if you are those two people … I am sorry for whatever shame or embarrassment I may have caused you,” Williams added, revealing she “cried” for them after seeing the video. “I’m not telling you that it’s perfectly fine to act entitled or ignorant at a show. I’m just saying that I’m sorry that I handled the whole situation like the arbiter of the same type of cancel culture that doesn’t often teach or lead in any productive way.”

In the Discord post, Williams also walked back on an incendiary statement she made at another recent Paramore performance: “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re f–king dead to me.”

“I hate that the only thing I really know to say to people I deem racist or bigoted in any way is ‘you’re dead to me’ when I know that message isn’t the kind that’s going to change a hateful heart,” she wrote. “How can I feel soft and tragic about it in one moment and ragey and rigid the next? Because that’s human.”

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