brand new eyes is ten years old. Ten entire years. I can’t believe that I was even alive ten years ago, and I was only a small child just learning how to fit the world together and what places there were to go. For Paramore, a group of young adults whose world was falling apart at the seams, it seemed like they were going nowhere.





The way the brand new eyes era ”looks” is intentionally antiquated. It’s rustic and polished - perhaps the first “cleaned up” Paramore effort - with the elegant butterfly on the album cover and the pristine road in their hometown of Franklin, Tennessee. I’ve visited the small suburb and its charming little road, getting to admire the clean pavement, neat bushes, and the curved way it trailed off into the dense trees. The end of the road seemed far away, as did the beginning - the middle felt completely remote. Once I was dropped off by my driver in obscurity and absolute quiet, I felt stranded. Despite the charm in its beauty, standing on that road left an unsettling undertone - much like the album it illustrates.





brand new eyes was, at that point, the most tumultuous time in the band’s career. Five distinct individuals all forced to reconcile over personal drama, an invasive public, and simple homesickness. For several months, they couldn’t; tour dates were canceled, false statements released, and both the band and fans alike were uncertain of Paramore’s future. Like the Franklin road, the outcome of their path was shrouded in leaves and mystery.





A group therapist would’ve perhaps advised our young band to take a break from everything, to sit back and find themselves in the midst of all the madness. but there was a problem: RIOT! had gone platinum, their name was on festival headlines, and “Misery Business” was the anthem of every Warped Tour patron with angst in their heart and lyrics on their wrist. The madness was inescapable. They couldn’t shut down the rocket because it was already in launch. Hell, it was already in the stratosphere.





To the public, Paramore’s third album needed to happen because they needed to keep their band a hit. To Paramore, it needed to happen because they wanted to keep their band alive. One would assume that their undeniable talent and willpower would naturally prevail over the personal strife to produce a stellar album, but for months they were stuck succumbing to it. They found that they were unable to feign success and happiness in their efforts.





So they didn’t. And it actually worked out.

They wrote Brand New Eyes for ignition, inspiration, and catharsis. Instead of running from the fire, they danced in the flames. They sculpted their collective rage into something beautiful. Internal anguish manifests itself in crunching guitars, beating drums, heavy bass lines, acidic lyrics, and menacing vocals. It’s stunning...





...and uncomfortable. As a listener, getting lost in the rhythm and emotion isn’t hard - it’s easy to hollowly scream the words. but eventually, I found myself putting pictures to those words. there’s the same image repeated throughout my listens of Hayley sharing her scathing lyrics to the very people they’re about. I can’t imagine the awkwardness with songs like “Ignorance” or “Feeling Sorry”.





It gets even worse with the more specific cuts. If Paramore at the time were a trainwreck, then Hayley Williams and former guitarist Josh Farro were the two failed conductors. They were at the center of both the drama and the album’s creation as main writers. With “Playing God”, imagining Hayley writing accusations of Josh being a self-righteous prick while Josh writes melodies to compliment them is intimately cringeworthy. Being that honest with someone leaves them so exposed and vulnerable. While waiting for the piercing comments and blunt harm to come their way, they sit there waiting powerlessly. Like laying in the middle of a road.





God, what a mess.





Giving context to Brand New Eyes’s creation and the aftermath is essential to understanding its meaning, but it also kind of ruins it. You must know it as a time capsule of turmoil; the “during” is what makes us appreciate the emotion and growth within the recordings. But then the “before” and “after” kill it. The causes that inspired the drama are disappointing to learn while the outcome is heartbreaking to internalize.





The explosively vengeful “Careful” and “All I Wanted” are still exhilarating and cathartic, but the delicately optimistic “Looking Up” and “The Only Exception” feel ominous and haunting. Over the years, when it came to giving status updates on the band's collective aptitude, Paramore has often opted to save face until things have already collapsed. They said this album saved the band, but we know it didn’t. We know about the bitter departure of two band members only a year later. We also know about the falling through of that first glimmer of love down the line. We know those five band member’s path to true healing seemed false.





While the unfortunate epilogues stifle any hope for the album projecting positivity, that album was never meant to be positive. It’s an angry, spiteful, and hurtful piece of music - and that’s what it’s best for. If After Laughter is for days where I’m down but desperately need to get through the day, then brand new eyes is for when I need to sit down and immerse myself in my misery. Context ruins the uplifting songs, but it only strengthens the aggressive ones.





Better yet for the listener, the meta only applies to the convoluted narrative of Paramore - but not to any of us. Their gossip might be distracting, but the stories told by musicians become part of our stories as well once we accept their art. brand new eyes is much more to me than documented drama between people I don’t know, it was a catalyst that exposed my youthful self to emotions I had never known I felt and to sounds I had never known I loved. Hayley's words, sometimes I barely understood what they meant, I just knew the voice was mad at someone so I aimed it to whomever I felt deserved it. Sometimes on those teenage days where I was angry for no reason, I had absolutely nothing to make of the song other than to just feel it.





Being the shameless Paramore fan that I am, I went to that Franklin Road because it’s a tradition among those of us given the opportunity. But that visit to that road was only a chapter of my day, a page of my trip, and a mere sentence my own story. Much of the band’s themes and emotions align with the narrative I've formed out of my life, but we all listen to albums because we relate to what they emanate. Their projections are really just our own reflections.





Today, on the 10th Anniversary of Paramore's captivating implosion put to great riffs, give the album a listen. Allow yourself some nostalgia, but don't just imagine some rock band infighting a decade ago. Imagine yourself. Think of who you were in 2009. Think about the choices you made and where they led you; of where you are now and where you want to go. Some of our paths are some are straight-forward, some are deceitful, some are surprising. Paramore’s road as an entity may have not led them to be a rock quintet forever, but given their future platinum new wave records and Grammy award, the road was clearly not a dead-end. Our paths, whether it'd be a scenic road or a busy highway, are all still taking us somewhere.





(image by Ryan Russell)