Weekly Women Wednesday Vol. LXXII - Hayley Williams

I learned recently that in order for me to find strength in something, I have to know utter weakness in it. There there is no wax without the wane, and learning makes what the good things hard is what makes the sweet things so sweet. I’m sure I’ve written this before, or maybe it just feels that way because the thought has run it’s way around my mind millions of times, but I have found so much power in vulnerability. Taking the softest pieces of my heart and figuring out how to protect them. ‘Petals for Armor’ is a record that has somehow materialized my entire journey of discovering the power in fragility. Finally getting to sit down and listen to these fifteen tracks cover to cover felt like watching my life flash before my eyes, and I mean that in the most divine way possible. Hayley Williams has always been a force to be reckoned with, and this album shows us that and then some, breaking herself apart right there before us and building back up in the same fashion.

Honestly, this album felt so pivotal to me that maybe I couldn't write about it, or shouldn't. But the words felt out like sand from the top of an hourglass, grain by grain then all at once. I’ve found so many ways to fall into it, you can view each of the parts like a triptych or maybe just hit shuffle, but I prefer to dive in headfirst and listen from start to finish.  When I first listened to the lead single ‘Simmer’, I could feel a physical shift right there beneath my ribs. As long as I’ve been on this Earth I have kept any feelings that even resemble anger or strife kept strung up and well out of my reach, maybe it’s the fear of becoming untethered in rage that kept me bottling up, but this song left me with the discovery that becoming unbound is inevitable. This entire body of work feels like finally being able to come undone, in an act of profound freedom, feeling everything or nothing and whatever lies between.

Williams explores almost every corner and crevice of music in just 15 songs, from bubbly 80’s style synth to heavy and hazy ballads, letting both herself and the listener find themselves reeling from feeling the complexity of all that human emotion. It was one of the final singles ‘Why We Ever’ that left me the most gutted, looking loss right in the eyes, something I’d been avoiding for a long time. There's something about the transition from that warm bass-line and chimes to the solemn, hollowing piano. Because that’s exactly what leaving love behind feels like, memories that feel like a warm hand on your cheek turning so quickly into sinking and vacant reminders of what you once had. This is what I meant by feeling the complexity of human emotion, ‘Petals for Armor’ lets me go from facing one of my hardest truths, to the roaring triumph of ‘Watch Me Bloom’. That overwhelming sense of relief that comes with finally being present in your body after scratching and clawing the whole way back to yourself, how it washes over you leaving chills down your spine. For me this record is about losing again and again, feeling every bitter piece of it, but letting that defeat fortify your entire being.