Paramore’s Hayley Williams responds to NOFX’s Fat Mike’s past comments about her and emo nostalgia

Paramore‘s Hayley Williams has addressed suggestive comments she claimed NOFX‘s Fat Mike made about her when she was a teenager.

• READ MORE: How Paramore became a vital band for the Black rock community 

The singer-songwriter was reflecting on emo nostalgia and headlining When We Were Young festival – the nostalgic emo-fest held over two weekend in Las Vegas last October – in a recent interview with Billboard, when she revealed her mixed feelings about the return to the scene.

“Everyone’s just trying to remember better days, and I’m sitting there like, ‘They weren’t that much better’,” Williams said.

She also voiced this while on stage at the festival, telling attendees that the scene wasn’t always a safe place “if you were different, if you were a young woman, if you were a person of colour, if you were queer, and that’s really fucked up if you think about it because this was supposed to be the safe place, wasn’t it?”

The singer expressed similar thoughts in a heartfelt letter penned before headlining When We Were Young festival.

“We don’t want to be a nostalgia band,” Williams elaborated in the recent interview. “But I think what I felt was a mixture of vindication and also a lot of anger.

“I was really surprised that I had so much anger well up in me because I was like, ‘Wait a minute. They’re treating us like a prize now,’ but like, Fat Mike used to tell people that I gave good rim jobs onstage when I was 19 years old.

“I do not think that that’s punk. I don’t think that’s the essence of punk. And I feel strongly that without young women, people of colour and also the queer community, I just think we would still be where we were then.

Williams continued that it felt like “justification to be able to have the mic and to be one of the last bands that played”, adding that My Chemical Romance reportedly felt “very similar about how they were received”.

“And what it comes down to is that the fans are the ones with the power because otherwise, us and My Chem wouldn’t have been headlining that thing. And I think that’s beautiful.”

Paramore recently released ‘C’est Comme Ca’, the third single from their upcoming sixth album ‘This Is Why’, which will be released on February 10.

When We Were Young festival is due to take place again this October, with Blink-182 and Green Day among headliners.

The post Paramore’s Hayley Williams responds to NOFX’s Fat Mike’s past comments about her and emo nostalgia appeared first on NME.