🎶 Listening to This Is Why by Paramore.

A pretty different sound to some of their past albums, including the one that I most recall from my more formative years - Riot! But, hey, it’s 2023, and we’ve all changed a lot.

For one, the band members are no longer teenagers, but rather in the dreaded mid-30s. And producing work that feels fairly spot on in terms of describing the terror and angst of a certain very common kind of modern-day adult life.

We start off with a track that could have provided the background music to vast number of social media posts discussing the latest stupid thing, at least in spirit:

This is why I don’t leave the house

You say the coast is clear

But you won’t catch me out

Then they turn to the topic of the news, never a safe watch these days.

Every second, our collective heart breaks

All together, every single head shakes

Shut your eyes, but it won’t go away

Turn on, turn off the news

Next up, as instantiation of the guilt we feel when once again we’re running late, once again we forgot to do whatever we promised, once again we failed to do the Right Thing, once again we concocted an excuse that we know isn’t exactly true.

Intentions only get you so far

What if I’m just a selfish prick?

And whatever happened to the supposed Roaring Twenties, version 2?

In a single year, I’ve aged one hundred

My social life: a chiropractic appointment

But honestly, rather than me typing out their entire track list it’d be more fun to go listen to the album.