AUSTIN, Texas — The thing about Paramore is it feels like they haven’t aged a day.
At their first-ever Austin City Limits Music Festival set on Sunday night, they brought the millennial nostalgia in full force. It felt like a 2007 Warped Tour, in the best way.
With her bright-orange hair, chipped black nail polish and near-flawless vocals, frontwoman Hayley Williams is almost a mirror image of the teen girl she was when Paramore first got their start. Fellow bandmates Zac Farro and Taylor York don’t look or sound too shabby either.
But while their looks and sound could play tricks on a casual audience member, Paramore and their fans know a lot of time has passed – and they’ve stuck together through it all.
“We’ve been doing this a long time … For Zach, Taylor and me, since 2002. This is our 20th year,” Williams said to massive cheers. “We all have physical therapists now.”
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Williams joked about her fear that she’d be out of breath on ACL’s Hulu stream, but she needn’t have worried. She and the band never missed a beat.
They gave the crowd everything they could ask for in the hour they were allotted. After starting with their brand-new single, they played songs from four out of their five previous records, all to enormous reaction. It was clear throughout the entire set that much of the audience had been with this band since day one.
But things were never more crazed than during the songs from their peak pop-punk era. Fans went wild for “Decode,” Paramore’s song from the “Twilight” soundtrack, and went even harder for “Riot!” track “That’s What You Get.”
Then there was “Misery Business,” Paramore’s most well-known song – and one they stopped playing in 2018 due to its anti-feminist nature.
“I know,” Williams said with a smirk as the drum beat for the song began. “You better show up and show out.”
Yet again, she needn’t have worried.
When Williams announced the band had one more song, the crowd was legitimately sad to see them go. Calls for an encore went on for several minutes after they left the stage – but festival scheduling is tight, whether fans like it or not.
With Paramore, the crowd would’ve stayed with them all night.
If you missed Paramore during Weekend 1 of ACL, they will return to the American Express stage next Sunday, Oct. 16.
Britny Eubank on social media: Twitter