“By request of Queen Taylor, here’s your breakthrough hit!” Taylor Swift asked Paramore to play Misery Business during the Eras tour

Taylor Swift and Paramore onstage
(Image credit: Michael Campanella/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management | Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for The New Yorker)

Paramore have added fan favourite song Misery Business to their setlist at the request of Taylor Swift.

The beloved alternative band, currently supporting Swift across Europe on the pop megastar’s Eras tour, performed the 2007 Riot! single for the first time in six months at the Friends Arena in Solna, Sweden, on May 17.

Footage of singer Hayley Williams introducing the track has been published on Tiktok.

“This one came straight from the top, I’m not gonna lie,” Williams says in the clip (embedded below).

“Me and the guys, we knew that we were testing the waters by pulling this out. […] So, by request of Queen Taylor, here’s your fucking breakthrough hit, Stockholm! Let’s fucking go!”

Paramore played Misery Business again at the two other Eras dates in the Fiends Arena, held on May 18 and 19.

Misery Business was Paramore’s breakout song and is frequently considered their signature track.

The single was the band’s first to chart, reaching number 26 in the US, and has since been certified six times Platinum by the RIAA.

However, at a September 2018 concert, Williams stated onstage that Paramore will stop performing Misery Business live, due to a lyric in the second verse that’s been described as “slut-shaming”.

The singer told that night’s audience in Nashville, Tennessee: “Tonight we’re playing this song for the last time, for a really long time.

“This is a choice that we’ve made because we feel that we should, we feel like it’s time to move away from it for a little while.

“This is to every bad decision that led us here, this is to all the embarrassing things we might have said, but we owned up to it and we grew.”

Paramore resumed playing Misery Business in 2022, but have done so without repeating the perceived offensive lyric.

The Eras tour continues tomorrow (May 24) at Estádio Da Luz in Lisbon, Portugal.

@1989vinyl

♬ original sound - Molly
Matt Mills
Contributing Editor, Metal Hammer

Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.