Album Review: Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party by Hayley Williams

Hayley finally breaks through her glass ceiling and delivers her strongest solo effort to date. It might even be her best release, period. With no disrespect to Petals for Armor or Flowers for Vases, Ego marks the first time a Hayley Williams record has truly escaped Paramore's shadow. The surprise release - a collection of seventeen "singles" - is the most confident sounding music of her entire career, easily clearing her previous solo albums and even most of her work with the famous pop-punk band.

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At first, the songs were only accessible to those who had purchased a product from her hair dye company, Good Dye Young; they were uploaded to streaming services a few days later. With no track listing or even a name given to the project, fans were left to create their own playlists. More significant still, this marked the Paramore singer's first solo release as an independent artist following her exit from Atlantic Records - a decision that speaks volumes about her confidence in the material.

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In the month that followed, the singles hit DSPs and fans began assembling their sequencing ideas for a 17-song album they'd collectively dubbed Ego. Fan-made playlists ranged from sorting the songs alphabetically to creating sequences that held an emotional through-line from beginning to end, carefully placing the pieces of the puzzle together to create the ultimate listening experience for this new collection of songs. This past Friday (August 29), fans finally got Williams's own sorting of her smattering of singles, with the album now being officially sequenced, titled Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party, and featuring one additional track, "Parachute," as the closer.

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With Hayley Williams' latest solo effort - now officially known as 'Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party', she has breathed a new lease of life into the more static confines of the idea of an album, shifting things in a manner not too dissimilar to that of Radiohead on their 2007 pay-what-you-want LP 'In Rainbows'. Releasing the record's then-17 tracks without an official tracklist - and entirely for free, through her password-encoded, nostalgia-loaded website - her latest solo work became an opportunity for fan collaboration, with thousands of different playlists and configurations popping up within a few days. It's perhaps only because the record is so musically varied and rich that this approach could yield such extensive results; a real pro of its meandering, 18-track runtime.

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Whether it’s setting up a secret Instagram profile or sending doll limbs to fans by post, for years Paramore's Hayley Williams has had a knack for offbeat music announcements. Debuting new track ‘Mirtazapine’ via WNXP Radio on Tuesday, the songwriter and multi-instrumentalist delivered a CD titled ‘Mirtazapine + Glum’ to the station and in a very on brand move, yesterday released a further 16 songs of unheard solo material directly to her new 00s themed website hayleywilliams. net , only accessible to fans with a secret 16-digit code, which they could obtain through purchasing something from the new Good Dye Young (her excellently-titled hair dye company) drop, 'Ego'.

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