‘Turn it up’: Paramore’s glorious return plagued by terrible sound
On Saturday night in Sydney, the Tennessee band Paramore played the largest headlining show of their 20-year career. What a shame nobody could hear them.
On Saturday night at The Domain in Sydney, the Tennessee band Paramore played the largest headlining show of their 20-year career.
25,000 fans — most with vibrant coloured hair in reds, blues, pinks, and the signature orange donned by singer Hayley Williams — packed into the open-air venue for the band’s This is Why tour.
Hundreds had committed to “doing the tour” and travelled to Sydney from interstate. The most devoted of the lot had turned the green area of the Art Gallery of New South Wales into a makeshift shantytown, pitching tents and braving a rainy night camping out in the sludgy grass to secure a spot close to the stage.
This was Paramore’s first performance in the city in five years, and the air was thick with that peculiar anticipation that comes with going to a concert for a band who are so much more than just a band for people.
Possibly the lone act to emerge from the noughties emo scene and successfully transition into respected, arty pop rockers, Paramore has never struggled to pull a crowd. But something about this felt different. They didn’t sell out their last Sydney Show at Qudos Bank Arena in 2018, and it’s clear that in the years since they’ve won over a legion of new, younger fans.
That they were tapped as the opening act for Taylor Swift on several dates of her monumental Eras tour, surely helped. But pop-culture over the past few years has embraced the mainstream return of emo. Major new pop stars, like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo (the latter of whom cribbed the melody of Paramore’s biggest hit ‘Misery Business’ on her song ‘Good 4 U’), wear its DNA, and have name-checked Paramore as an influence.
Everything seemed in its right place for this to be an unforgettable show. The opening act, 25-year-old Californian Remi Wolf, did a bang-up job of warming the crowd with her high-energy set of zany, exuberant pop music.
But when Paramore took the stage at 8:45, it was clear something was off. A friend, speaking at a normal volume — not the kind of throat-murdering yell usually required at concerts — observed, “I can’t hear anything.”
By the time the second song, the 2007 fan-favourite ‘That’s What You Get,’ was played, the noise from the crowd completely drowned out anything that was happening on the stage.
Veterans of concerts at The Domain — quite possibly the worst venue for live music in Sydney — know that if you want to hear anything, you need to stand right up the back behind the second tower of speakers. But who is paying $120 for a ticket to experience the luxury of stationing yourself next to the portaloos and watch a concert from the screens at a distance?
Midway through the set, the fed-up crowd erupted into a desperate, co-ordinated chant of “Turn it up! We can’t hear you! Turn it up!” Williams, unable to discern their demands, charmingly mistook it as a rallying cry for her to do a shoey. “Y’all want me to drink out of a shoe?” she said, diverting the crowd from their mission. Mercifully, she did not honour this deranged touring musician tradition.
@paramore audience was shouting “turn it up†in sydney last night cos the speakers in the middle of the domain were not on so like half the crowd could not hear Hayley at all 💔the way we had to squeeze down several hundred metres to even hear what was going on😵â€ðŸ’«
— madds🪩 (@missmoodymaddie) November 25, 2023
It must be said that this was by no means a bad performance; quite the opposite. Paramore, running on the high of this being the biggest show of their career, were as limber, intense, and charismatic as they have ever been. This was clearly a special night for them. “The longest relationship that we have been in is with you,” Williams told the crowd. “As we’ve grown up in front of you, and embarrassed ourselves, you’ve continued to show up.”
As a live performer, Williams, now 34, with six albums with Paramore and countless tabloid-baiting personnel changes (its current lineup includes Williams, and original drummer Zac Farro, and Taylor York) under her belt, is unmatched. Her arresting vocal range allows her to effortlessly switch between belting out buoyant singalong choruses and navigating labyrinthine spoken-word melodies. Pantless in black stockings and red knee-high go-go boots, with her six-man band flanked behind her, she did not stop moving. It was all manically flailing limbs, knee kicks, and ferocious head thrashing — the band sells a T-shirt featuring an X-ray scan from her chiropractor showcasing the toll years of headbanging have taken on her: military neck.
It’s a crying shame that this show was plagued by such horrendous sound, but once fans accepted the fact it wasn’t going to get any louder, they resigned themselves to enjoying it. There were plenty of big, emotive moments when Paramore pulled out the angsty tracks that made them famous as pop-punk teenagers.
For years, the band retired their biggest hit, Misery Business, uncomfortable with the song’s internalised misogyny (the spiky revenge track features the lyric “Once a whore, you’re nothing more.”) But they’ve been playing it live again — and, as is tradition, invite a fan on stage to help them finish the final bridge and the chorus.
While these crowd-please moments are irresistible, Paramore are at their very best when drawing from the latter, freakier, half of their career, such as the glimmering new-wave bops ‘Hard Times and ‘Rose-Colored Boy’ from the 2017 record, After Laughter; and the jagged, weary post-punk songs from their latest album, like ‘Thick Skull,’ and title track ‘This Is Why.’
It’s an unusual predicament for the band — few artists can claim to be producing their finest work two decades into their career. Yet, they pander to a fanbase fiercely devoted to the ersatz songs that defined their early identity. One hopes, in the future, Paramore indulge in a little selfishness.
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