Love Letter To A Record: JUNO On Paramore's 'After Laughter'

Music Feeds’ Love Letter series asks artists to reflect on their relationship with the music they love and share stories about how it has influenced their lives. Here, vocalist Kahlia Ferguson from Brisbane/Meanjin alt-pop duo JUNO reflects on her love for Paramore’s 2017 album, ‘After Laughter’.

JUNO have just released their new single ‘come thru’ – produced by Taka Perry (Sycco, A.GIRL, CODY JON) and band member Sam Woods – a colourful indie bop about the desire for a relationship to be a two-way street. ‘come thru’ is about wanting to give your all to a relationship, but only if the other person is willing to do the same,” the band explains in a press statement. “I’ve had some awful past relationships where I constantly felt like I was giving everything to people who didn’t give the same in return. Before entering my current relationship, I was really clear that if I’m going to commit to this, I need them to show up and support me and give as much I will.”

JUNO’s Kahlia Ferguson’s Love Letter To Paramore’s After Laughter

I was 13 when I was first introduced to Paramore and Hayley Williams. My high school friend Samantha sent me a low-quality YouTube clip of them performing their single ‘Misery Business’ acoustically at Warped Tour and I was utterly hooked. Down the rabbit hole I went.

Hayley was a small-framed teenager belting her heart out in a very male-dominated music scene. Young girls like me sat at our computers utterly bewitched. I wanted to be just like her. I wanted to be her. So, I picked up my guitar and I started writing.

Perhaps it was the dramatic side fringes, or the headbanging, or the droning guitars, or (likely) the bold fiery red hair, but my developing frontal lobe was nuts about Paramore. I bought a box of red hair dye and wore a dramatic winged eyeliner to school every day.

I begged my Mum to let me see them when they announced their first Australian Tour. These days they pack out Riverstage, but back then I was a terrified 13-year-old girl in a sweaty Fortitude Valley mosh pit; my poor Mum stood at the back of the venue making sure I didn’t drown in a sea of scene kids.

Paramore’s alt-rock tunes soundtracked my coming-of-age, and their glistening pop record After Laughter played a huge role in my adulthood.

Flash-forward to the release of their poppiest album to-date, and I was no longer a teenager. My (traumatic) relationship of two years had finally come to an end and my brain had decided to turn on me. I found myself in my car every day driving around the city aimlessly listening to music. This album was on high rotation.

Perhaps it’s a little unhinged, but when I’m down in the dumps a ‘sad lyric bop’ is all I want. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good ‘looking out the window on a rainy-day ballad moment’, but usually not when I’m in the depths of despair. If it feels like I bop, it feels like I’m conquering the sadness.

After Laughter came out at a really good time for me.

‘Hard Times’, ‘Rose-Coloured Boy’ and ‘Fake Happy’ are all tracks I have spun an obnoxious amount of times. Taylor York (the guitarist) played a huge role in production on these tracks. It’s serving 80’s pop-rock with a notable Talking Heads influence. Very danceable. The lyrics are a healthy combination of both playful and brutal with lines like:

You say, “We gotta look on the bright side”

I say, “Well, maybe if you wanna go blind”

See I’m gonna draw my lipstick wider than my mouth

And if the lights are low they’ll never see me frown

Throughout my life, dancing through my depression has been insanely therapeutic. Jumping on stage and singing about my sadness to a driving pop beat just does something for me. I think that’s why people listen to music and go to shows and obsess over the artists that they love. Songs take you out of yourself for a little while, and this album felt like a moment of relief for me when I’d crank it at full volume alone in my car.

Tracks like ‘Forgiveness’ and ‘26’ are a little more solemn sonically. After a string of hard-hitting pop anthems, these songs feel like a couple of long sighs after a bad day. ‘26’ hits hard with lyrics like:

Hold onto hope, if you got it

Don’t let it go for nobody

And they say that dreaming is free

But I wouldn’t care what it cost me

While the surface of After Laughter is shimmering and seemingly jovial, brewing below are lyrics that feel like entries from the darkest days of someone’s journal. My therapist once advised me to sit in front of the mirror for five minutes every morning and fake a smile. Apparently, it’s been clinically proven that your brain will be tricked into feeling better for a while.

I sense that’s what this album was for Hayley Williams and Paramore. It most definitely was for me.