Paramore’s self-titled 2013 album celebrates its seventh anniversary on April 5. The project’s fourth single, “Ain’t It Fun,” remains the group’s highest-charting Billboard Hot 100 hit and features sarcastic lyrics that resonated with fans learning to deal with adulthood. In multiple interviews, frontwoman Hayley Williams explained that she wrote the song as a motivational letter to herself to step out of her comfort zone.
“I had [spent] about three weeks in LA before we made that record and I found myself feeling sorry for myself, which is so stupid,” she explained in a 2013 interview with HelloGiggles. “I was at this great crossroads in my life: Am I going to go home and live the same old life where I was miserable for so long or am I going to try something new and step out of my comfort zone? It was kind of a letter to myself to just stop crying.”
On the bridge and outro of the song, Williams and a gospel choir sing:
Don’t go crying to your mama
‘Cause you’re on your own in the real world
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, she elaborated that the lyrics are tongue-in-cheek. “That song is to myself, actually,” Williams said. “It’s very sarcastic, if anything. I needed a kick in the butt a little bit.”
Elsewhere on the song, she sings about adjusting to adulthood:
Where you’re from
You might be the one who’s running things
Well you could ring anybody’s bell and get what you want
You see it’s easy to ignore trouble
When you’re living in a bubble
While speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Williams recalled how “Ain’t It Fun” started with a keyboard loop York randomly played in front of her.
“Taylor and I were in a hotel room, and he had this loop playing that sounded like some sort of weird love child of Siouxsie and the Banshees and Paula Abdul,” she remembered. “He didn’t even write it for Paramore, he was just playing with a sound on his keyboard. And I was like, ‘Dude, we have to try to write to this.’ By the end of the night, we were faking gospel choir vocals and yelling and screaming into this demo track.”
The song’s message and unique sound propelled “Ain’t It Fun” to No. 10 on the Hot 100 in May 2014. It has since been certified triple Platinum and netted the group a Grammy for Best Rock Song.
Paramore remains the band’s sole No. 1 album on the Billboard 200, debuting atop the chart with 106,000 copies sold in its first week.
Listen to the song above, and catch up on all the lyrics to “Ain’t It Fun” and Paramore on Genius now.
