the album itself is a whole process through healing i think um listening to it lyrically you've left nothing off the table and i commend you for that um because as a as a writer and a performer and an artist you know you captivate your audience a lot of people perform for their audience you definitely have an audience that is drawn into you as a human being and
and i can imagine at times that's meant that you felt like you needed to protect yourself even from the people who love you the most but you've really dropped the guard on this one and you've let yourself completely wide open in a vulnerable way i feel we have to just touch on some of the subject matter and lyrics on this album but i sort of want you to pick it up i don't want to ask a
question i want to follow you oh okay okay well um the album is is obviously um as good of a picture of heartbreak as i could do and i as you can yeah and um and also i realized as i was kind of untangling a lot of knots in myself um that i there are just so many ways that i learned how to love that were not right and unlearning something that you're 31 years in on is really tough and so
some of the stuff that i talk about on pedals for armor it's like i'm still in those processes and honestly if we had toured petals farmer i probably wouldn't have gotten to get to the underbelly like i probably thought i was there and i wasn't even close you were ready for more distraction right you were ready for more like applause and more lights and more like cool this is really great
yeah yeah yeah yeah because because being out there and being so busy all the time and having people you know even though there are times it feels you feel naked because there's a lot of eyes on you it's the most insulated that i ever feel is being on tour insulation of touring and the desire to go out potentially and distract yourself without even realizing that's what you're doing but you can't so you have
to stay still again yes and and also very quiet because you know even going to the grocery store felt like an offense and also like terrifying for a while yeah um yeah i think so one of my favorite songs on the record is called an ordinary and the reason that i have such a reaction to it is that i i think i started talking about something small and and like an incident in my life
and then it kind of blooms into you know it goes from like wanting to belong to someone and then belonging to a lot of people and then belonging with somebody and then realizing oh man i i can barely remember what it feels like to just belong to myself and i got to kind of experience a long period of time in this however many minutes this song is and i'm really really proud of that i
i always reference back to my seventh grade year when mom and i moved to nashville we kind of um we we did run away like quite literally and we we came here for to seek refuge and we also had some family friends in town and that's kind of how we got on our feet here but that's when everything in my life opened up that's when i met the guys that's when music became in within reach for me
like right i learned to play the guitar and you know i it just i i'm really proud of this album because it's as much of a songwriter's album as i've ever made you talk about this person who's who at times has a very timid nature and it comes to actually expressing yourself especially in light of other people's ability and yet you find this courage and confidence to go out on stage and
i've seen paranormal man i mean when you come out it's just like this bolt of lightning and i and i wonder what it takes out of you or how you prepare yourself to actually be that person who makes sure everyone has a good time and gets the paramore experience how do you sort of put on the costume the superhero armor to be able to go out there and be that person and then know that that it's not necessarily like
there are show-offs man there are people who go on stage who literally like i'm born to do it you know off stage whereas you are a contradiction in that regard i feel like yeah and yeah and it's that's like a an uncomfortable thing about me that i fee like i can feel the push and pull of it oftentimes when i have to go between something that i'm doing that might be very public facing and then
my life at home with my family or my friends all right i do think that there is something incredible about the energy that being you know in solidarity with your friends on a stage and playing show that brings me a lot of strength that i don't credit to myself maybe as much as i should because i i do know that it's in me all the time but i i guess i just don't tap into it i
i heard dolly parton say this really incredible quote recently about i think she was talking more about business but it kind of applies here she was talking about how she tries to she tries to strengthen the muscles around her heart but her heart is her heart can't get hard it has to stay soft and has to stay really open which means you feel hard and you hurt but you've gotta fight like i'm in it
right now i'm just trying to figure out ways to strengthen myself despite the things i've been through despite like everything i wrote about with petals for armor and things that i wrote about on this record like i am a very strong resilient person um but it just comes with the territory i guess for me that when a feeling comes when it when when it happens it's you know it's possible that it can
take me out if i don't understand how to harness it i never knew you and your mum randy nashville i mean i i i you know what there's been hints of the stories i don't realize that it was literally packing bags were out of here oh yeah you know i i wonder kind of how much that is reflected in your career choice let me qualify that that that statement um you know you go searching for a new
family and you find us and you find a way to run every day yeah oh i i'm addicted to the to the feeling that's something i work on you know we've got to get out of here we're done yeah like the show's over next stop yeah and you you'd be hard-pressed to find someone better prepared or or proactive um in times of crisis like when when it hits the fan find me because i will
figure out how to we will not leave a trace you know what i mean and i and i think that's it's because of the that i i don't even think it's all because of things i actually went through physically with my mom but i think that it's um it's almost like my mom and i have been talking a lot about the concepts of general uh generational trauma and generational prayer and i think
generational trauma's come up a lot because of what we've talked about over the past year finally more and more people are willing to talk about systemic racism right and yeah what this has done to a lineage of folks but for me even just within my own family story the women went through a lot of way before i was an idea you know and certainly before i was born and you know i think i just picked up on
that at a young age and we actually ran to nashville two times and the first time we kind of got found and you would think like oh you're not you shouldn't go back to the same place but we for whatever reason nashville was the spot like my mom we both of us i loved music i really wanted to be here and i i don't know i i think my mom is a super brave and super resilient person
and i i'm grateful to have that um that north star sometimes because when i don't feel resilient i can kind of look at what she's been through and be like that's in me you know you know the early impressions of paramore when you first came out was that we spoke about this a little bit but not in relation to this conversation was that you know you were born to do it and it was
recognized within someone potentially your mom or someone else and everything was built around this ambition that you this desire that you had to be a musician and a performer and that it was all just kind of like all roads lead to haley that was kind of the way paramore was positioned amongst i would say probably either the insiders or at worst the cynics you know and i wonder when you think
back to that moment you just talked about i wanted to be a musician my mom chose nashville all the pictures and the pieces come together in that moment whether or not um there was less cynical but more purist this kind of manifestation of a new destiny based around your passion oh yes man yes i i don't i don't think of the move to nashville so much about um my career you know in context of my
career as much as i do in context of survival like it it gave my mom and i um a chance to live in a more peaceful home and you know my the rest of my family my dad's side of the family eventually came up to nashville and um you know my mom and my dad had been divorced for a long time at that point and they were friends so it yeah it was a really it was a beautiful magical time that
time which and this is why i bring it up in that song and ordinary because i feel like i really became a person then and it felt like the ideas the wild dreams that i had as a kid weren't that crazy anymore it sounds like the last 12 months there's been complications as you said on a global level but you've had to you've had to navigate and you've had to charter a path through
this you did so through music i'm you know i feel compelled based on the quality of the songwriting and the amazing ability to be able to capture heartache on this on this on this album um it feels very very fresh it feels very real i'm i'm not sure i've ever truly gotten the right answer or i i you know you know never really asked this question before which is what does it feel like when you are
experiencing it in a very very real very fresh way but you're actually navigating your way through it creatively as opposed to stewing in it which most of us do because we don't have the option to write and even people who do often choose not to until they have some clarity of thought i don't feel like there's a lot of clarity of thought here except everything that you're experiencing in
the moment hmm yeah i'm normally that type of artist that you're talking about i'm normally one who likes to have hindsight kind of information you know to yeah to build a song with um well that's where your imagination lives you know yeah that's when you can incorporate a little bit of like the facts are the facts depending on which way you look at it yeah i don't get a lot of that here it's so
raw oh man well yeah it's hard for me to to listen to um which i i i told you you know it's not it's not a record i'm gonna like pop on and be like this feels what a shame i just you know i lived it and um and also at the same time it's like it's it is it is so raw and so of the moment but it also is such a culmination of all the lessons i've learned throughout like
multiple relationships that just were what's the word um that just felt like i was my own body was like eating itself you know it just it i just i i just haven't had a great relationship with a good enough relationship with myself to receive pure and simple stuff like you know like roman romantic relationships you know and i've been in therapy now since we got home from after laughter
and i still go every week i'm very fortunate that i can do that um but i like the writing all of this stuff was kind of my i didn't know i was writing songs if i mean i know that probably seems hard to believe but a lot of them before we got into the studio were just half songs like things that you know i would just turn on my voice memo on my phone and like barely mumble through some stuff
and then i was able to sort of make sure that i was crafting it right once we were in the studio but it it felt i mean it's hard it's really hard to answer your question because the days you wake up when you are feeling anything akin to heart break or grief it doesn't feel nothing feels real nothing feels real or right and you question every move that you make you question if
you're doing something in vain you question your all your motives and and you also just kind of question the point of anything and so i think everyone was kind of feeling that way as it was just the being the year that we all had um and i think knowing that was actually helpful it was helpful to know like i can't be the only person feeling a bad feeling or something you know being struck with grief you