Hayley Williams responds to Elon Musk hitting out at her anti-Trump iHeartRadio speech: “What I had to say was important”

24 September, 2024

Hayley Williams and Elon Musk (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for iHeartRadio; Jared Siskin/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)

Hayley Williams has responded to Elon Musk hitting out at her anti-Donald Trump iHeartRadio speech.

The Paramore frontwoman recently performed at the festival, which took place on September 20-21 this year. There, the singer lashed out at current US presidential candidate Trump in a passionate speech: “It is time for all Americans to band together and to finally defeat the Trump agenda,” she said. “And the only way to do that is by confronting him at the polls. Do you want to live in a dictatorship? Well, show up and vote.”

Following her speech, Elon Musk replied to a clip of William reading her speech aloud, in which the original tweeter alleged that “these people are ALL paid actors for hire”.

“So disappointing”, Musk commented, calling her “just another puppet of the machine” in a separate comment.

Now, on her Instagram Stories, Williams has addressed the response to her speech. She began: “Whoever you are, I typed out my speech and had a crew member hold it near the camera for me in case I got nervous bc what I had to say was important and I didn’t want to trip up in the moment, didn’t end up looking at it though … that’s because I prepared.”

Recently, Williams has revealed Paramore are working on new music, with the singer telling Dork that the band had recorded music in Clouds Hill studio in Hamburg.

She went on to say they had been playing with an idea that “felt like it was on the other side of the tracks to what we’d been working on at home,” according to Williams. “But that excites me.”

The band last released their 2023 album ‘This Is Why’, given four stars by NME: “Paramore are reaching to where, finally, their music has wanted to get to for the best part of the past decade. Rather than try to top their peerless anthems, the band have instead uncovered a new warmth on ‘This Is Why’, and the effect is triumphant indeed.”

We spoke to the band about the release of the record in February last year, with Josh Farro saying of its title track: “We threw caution to the wind.

“It was all of us being together, trying a different verse, maybe stripping it down to drums and bass, [then] Hayley came in and Taylor added his parts. It became these cool building blocks and that was refreshing. With the other songs, we knew what we wanted, but with this one, we were following the song.”

In other news, Paramore and Bug Girl have announced a merch collaboration with all proceeds donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians.

The post Hayley Williams responds to Elon Musk hitting out at her anti-Trump iHeartRadio speech: “What I had to say was important” appeared first on NME.