You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishikesh, your way.

I think one of the hardest things there is to do in music is write a love song that expresses something real.

I read that the song, Liar by Paramore, was written by Haley Williams, the singer of the band, about her longtime bandmate Taylor York,

and about the feelings that she started to realize that she'd had for him. Paramore has been a band for over 20 years, since Haley and Taylor and Zach Farrow, who plays drums, were all young teenagers.

Paramore's won a Grammy for Best Rock Song, and they have multiple platinum albums. But with all that history, Taylor and Haley only recently became a couple.

Liar is a song off of their most recent album. This is why, which came out in February 2023.

So I talked to Haley, Taylor, and Zach in their studio about how their song first came about, and what it means to them.

I'm Haley, I sing for the band. My name is Zach Farrow, I play the drums.

And I am Taylor, and I play guitar. With this record, we wanted to revisit a sort of aggression or urgency that we haven't explored in a while, and I think I maybe in particular was pushing that a little bit hard at times.

So we had been working on not even always aggressive songs, but just songs that felt jumpy and angular.

Zach and I were working at his studio at his house at the time, and he was like, dude, do you think maybe we could just try to write something that's chill?

Like, I just need a break from just trying to kind of go all out.

I just really wanted a slow song.

And I was like, yes, I think I need that too.

The guitar part is actually something that I had for years.

I've been trying to find a song for that since I was a teenager.

That happens all the time where there's something all right, and every so often I'll play it and just hope someone's like, oh, what's that?

And no one normally ever bites.

That's not true.

No, no, no, but all I'm saying is that when I played it, and then you were like, oh, yeah, that's great. Let's do that.

I was like, no way it might find a home finally.

Taylor apparently has had this for years, but I just found out about it.

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