Paramore Say 'Now' Helped Get Them 'To A New Place'

'When we wrote 'Now,' I was like 'We're there',' Hayley Williams tells MTV News.

Paramore officially kicked off their new era with the premiere of the "Now" video, which made it abundantly clear that they've put past dramas behind them and are moving forward, rather triumphantly so.

'Now' Is A Message That 'It's Gonna Be All Right'

And that's fitting, because in a lot of ways, "Now" was the song that helped them heal, and primed their engines for the next chapter of their career, as they told MTV News immediately following the video's premiere.

"The first half of this record, writing-wise, was all about getting to a new place, moving forward. And when we wrote 'Now,' by the end of the song I was like 'We're there. We got to that point and now we can really focus on what's next,'" Hayley Williams explained. "It's about believing before seeing, reaching out and blindly knowing it's going to be alright. And that's a message that's been really important for us three, but also for our fans and for young people in general; it's a message we're cool to stand behind, and it feels good."

Still, though they drew inspiration from the song, they had no plans on making it the first single off their upcoming self-titled album, until they got a good-natured push from members of their team and their label, who let it be known they'd be foolish to choose anything else to jumpstart their comeback.

"This song happened, and I felt like, in the midst of all the other songs we were writing, it was very heavy and very much like a Paramore rock song, out of the ones that we had been coming up with," Willams said. "And our A&R guy, who we're really close with — he's A&R'ed every record of us, ever, and at this point he's just like a friend and a really close part of our team — he just flipped on the song since day one. And by the time we had it mixed and we were in the studio putting the finishing touches on it, he was like ... 'I can imagine this song taking over the world!' He was so excited about it, and we love every song on the record, but his enthusiasm was so contagious."

And now, with the first single off and running, Paramore are gearing up to promote their new album, and continue to move forward. After all, these days, they're a band on a mission.

"It just feels good to be back at it. We never really went anywhere, we've been taking some time off, but we were working on music the whole time," Williams said. "[But] we weren't touring, we weren't playing shows, talking to people about our band and what we do and the songs, so it feels good to feel like we're working toward a goal, and the goal right now is the album release."

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