Hayley Williams reflects on “crazy” experience recording ‘Twilight’ soundtrack
Paramore's 'Decode' was the film soundtrack's lead single
By Sam Moore
Paramore musician Hayley Williams has said that it was “crazy” that the band were featured on the soundtrack to Twilight, while labelling the films as “peak camp”.
Paramore composed the song ‘Decode’ for the vampire fantasy romance and Williams said in an interview with Rolling Stone UK that she initially “struggled” with the fact the pop punk band were on the sountrack.
Williams said: “There was part of me that read the books, I loved them, they were easy reads and they were fun. It was: holy shit, we have a song in a movie – that was crazy. And then the resentment set in like, ‘oh my god, we’re the Twilight band’. It took a long time to get over that part of myself that wanted to be like ‘you’re a poser’.”
She also added that the movie allowed the band to reach more fans: “Let’s not pretend like Twilight didn’t catapult our band into a different route. We were not as well known before that soundtrack came out. It opened us up to a slew of fans that probably wouldn’t have given us a chance before that or didn’t know we existed before.”
Williams also called the films “peak camp” and added “we’re still a band so everyone’s doing fine”.
‘Decode’ served as the soundtrack’s lead single and went on to sell over two million copies as it became Paramore’s second top 40 hit in the US.
The track would later be nominated for a Grammy and win a Teen Choice Award for Choice Rock Song.
Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell also created new music for the soundtrack which also featured existing music from Muse, Linkin Park and Iron & Wine.