Misery Business

Lore & Background

The origin of the song is ambiguous with Williams giving conflicting explanations. The Fueled by Ramen website reports that Williams wrote the song based on feedback the band received after a question she posted on the band's LiveJournal asking what people were ashamed of. However, on the band's blog, Williams claims the song was written about a past experience involving a male friend who she felt was being manipulated by a girl, and later on when Williams and her friend began to date, she penned the lyrics to "finally explain my side of the story and feel freed of it all". Williams joked on Twitter on May 27, 2013, that it was about London's Heathrow Airport. In January 2020, she finally revealed that it was about bandmate Josh Farro. She told Vulture in an interview published on January 22, 2020, "When I was 13 or 14 and I had a crush on Josh, he didn't like me back. He would go hang out with his girlfriend, who I wrote 'Misery Business' about because I was a dick." On September 7, 2018, Williams announced during a concert that the band will play the song "for the last time for a really long time", due to the lyric "Once a whore you're nothing more, I'm sorry, that'll never change", from the second verse that was deemed sexist and anti-feminist. Williams did not sing the song again until the 2022 Coachella Festival, when she performed an acoustic version with Billie Eilish. The song returned to Paramore's setlist during the band's Fall 2022 Tour. Williams no longer sings the line where she refers to the girl as a "whore" in the second verse of this song because of both the controversy it had produced and Williams since evolving in her views. Speaking on the controversial line, she said, "What I couldn't have known at the time was that I was feeding into a lie that I'd bought into, just like so many other teenagers—and many adults—before me."

Reader's Guide

The track was commercially successful, peaking on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 26 (for the week of January 12, 2008), making it the band's highest-charting single until "The Only Exception" reached number 24 in 2010. It also peaked at number three on the Hot Modern Rock Tracks chart. It was the group's first charting single in the UK with more than 20,000 copies sold within less than a year of the song's release. On June 2, 2022, the song was certified six times platinum in the United States by the RIAA, the first of the band's songs to have sold more than six million units in total. "Misery Business" has been described as pop-punk, emo, and alternative rock. Sheet music shows common time with a moderate tempo of 86 beats per minute, in the key of F minor. Hayley Williams' vocal range spans two octaves from F3 to E♭5. The band has consistently played the song live throughout their career apart from the gap where they decided to retire the song in 2018; however, the decision was reversed in 2022 with a lyrical change advancing Williams' change of perspective. Usually, in the band's live performance of the song, it is briefly paused midway in order for Williams to bring fans up to the stage to sing the rest of the song. Celebrities are also often invited to join the performance, with past participants including PinkPantheress, Lil Uzi Vert, and basketball player Stephen Curry.

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