Hayley Williams Calls Out Spotify For Using ‘Misery Business’ On Empowerment Playlist
"It shouldn't be used to promote anything having to do with female empowerment or solidarity."
Paramore singer Hayley Williams has slammed Spotify for including that band’s song ‘Misery Business’ on an official playlist designed to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Williams has had a long history with the track, one of the band’s breakout singles. Back in 2015, the singer took to her tumblr to distance herself from its lyrics, saying they were written from a “narrow-minded perspective.”
In particular, she criticised these much-discussed lines from the second verse: “Once a whore, you’re nothing more / I’m sorry that I’ll never change”. Then, in late 2018, the singer announced that she would stop playing the song live. “Tonight we’re playing this song for the last time, for a very long time,” Williams then told a packed crowd.
“This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should, we feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while. This is to every bad decision that led us here, this is to all the embarrassing things we might have said, but we owned up to it and we grew.”
Now, over a year and a half since that decision was made, Spotify have included the song on a ‘Women of Rock’ playlist, released to coincide with International Women’s Day last week.
Quickly, Williams picked up on the inclusion, and publicly called out Spotify’s decision to put it in. “I know it’s one of the band’s biggest songs,” Williams wrote on Instagram, as reported by Loudwire. “But it shouldn’t be used to promote anything having to do with female empowerment or solidarity.
“I’m so proud of Paramore’s career. It’s not about shame. It’s about growth and progression…and though it’ll always be a fan favourite, we don’t need to include it on new playlists in 2020.”
Since the public call-out, Spotify has quietly taken the song off the official playlist.