Paramore frontwoman Hayley Williams has shared a statement addressing an incident from the band’s show at New York City’s Madison Square Garden last week, during which she kicked out a pair of fans causing a disruption in the audience.
In a lengthy note posted to Paramore’s Discord channel, Williams describes her interpretation of what happened in the moment, which to her “looked like a bigger guy and a smaller girl, standing there in the middle of the action.”
“Without the opportunity for a proper back and forth … I bared my teeth like a mother wolf,” Williams writes. “I embarrassed the hell out of these two people, without truly knowing what the situation was. Then, as a group – all 25,000 of us or so – exiled these people from the show in record time.”
Upon later looking at video of the incident, Williams says what she saw “didn’t look like the fight I thought I was stopping.”
“It didn’t look particularly kind either,” Williams writes. “But I have not been able to shake the feeling that I 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.”
“If you are those two people … I am sorry for whatever shame or embarrassment I may have caused you,” she continues.
That doesn’t mean, though, that you now have an excuse to act extra unruly at a Paramore show.
“I don’t want us to have to stop a show for physical aggression ever again,” Williams writes. “Rest assured, I will still have a person removed if necessary. I’ll just try with all my heart not to make it seem like some biblical era public execution next time.”
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