Hayley Williams definitely got people’s attention when, at May’s Adjacent Music Festival in Atlantic City, she bluntly told Rob DeSantis supporters, “You’re f–king dead to me.” But now, the Paramore frontwoman wishes she’d expressed her feelings on the politician in a more productive way.
“I hate that the only thing I really know to say to people I deem racist or bigoted in any way is ‘you’re dead to me’ when I know that message isn’t the kind that’s going to change a hateful heart,” Williams shared in a Saturday (June 3) open letter Paramore’s Discord channel. “How can I feel soft and tragic about it in one moment and ragey and rigid the next? Because that’s human.”
The so-called “rigid and ragey” moment in question came midway through the band’s set at the Memorial Day Weekend festival, with Williams telling fans in the audience that she’s “very f–king comfortable talking politics.” Then, she added, “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re f–king dead to me. Is that comfortable enough for anyone?”
The Atlantic City show wasn’t the only time distaste for Florida’s Gov. DeSantis was declared on stage at a Paramore concert. During the band’s Friday show in Washington, D.C., Florida’s Rep. Maxwell Frost joined the musicians, where he shouted, “F— Ron DeSantis! F— fascism!”
Elsewhere in the “Still Into You” singer’s new Discord post, she apologized for kicking a couple of fans out of a recent Paramore concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. Videos of the confrontation went viral online, which Williams said made her rethink how she handled the altercation in the moment.
“As a group – all 25,000 of us or so – exiled these people from the show in record time,” she wrote. “It was a moment that I would not fully process for a couple of days, when a friend showed me a video from the inside of the crowd, up close to the action… I have not been able to shake the feeling that I abused my responsibility and my platform in that moment… that I hurt those two in a way that will outlast the momentary discomfort of their poor concert etiquette.”
