Hayley Williams and Paramore are set to open for Taylor Swift on her Eras Tour next summer, and the rocker is opening up about the unusual way she first met the “Anti-Hero” songstress more than a decade ago.
“We kind of both got started around the same time, and around the same age as well,” Williams recalled during a recent interview with Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. “Me and Taylor met because both of us — Paramore and Taylor — were nominated for Best New Artist the same year at the GRAMMYS.”
The show in question was in 2008, and the late Amy Winehouse wound up taking home the award. Then, after the show, Williams and Swift wound up at the same party.
“We were at some GRAMMY party — it was actually Timbaland’s GRAMMY party. [It was] huge. I was very nervous,” Williams recalled. “But a woman came up to me and she said, ‘I’m Taylor Swift’s mom and, you know, Taylor doesn’t have a lot of friends her age that do music. And I would love to, like, you know, introduce you guys or get your number or whatever.'”
“So Andrea, the legend that she is, she connected us,” Williams added.
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Fallon also held up a photo of the pair from around that era, and Williams remarked how “in every photo of us that’s on the internet, one or both of us” is giving an enthusiastic thumbs up.
“That’s your thing!” Fallon joked.
“Yeah! It’s like just to show how cool we are,” Williams added with a laugh.
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Back in June, Swift revealed that she had recorded Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), a remake of her 2010 album, and that she’d teamed up with Hayley Williams for the track “Castles Crumbling.”
Swift previously revealed that Williams had been a big influence on her music writing around that time, which made her involvement in the remake particularly poignant.
Meanwhile, Williams will be joining Swift in 2024 for the entire European leg of her Eras tour.
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