Hayley Williams has surprise dropped a new 17-track solo album, ‘Ego’, just a few days after debuting new music in a Nashville radio station.
WNXP Nashville premiered a new song called ‘Mirtazapine’ last week, which was part of a CD that also contained another song titled ‘Glum’.
On the new song, Williams sings: “Here comes my genie in a screw cap bottle / To grant me temporary solace / I could never be without her / I had to write a song about her / Who am I without you now? / Mirtazapine / You make me eat, you make me sleep / Mirtazapine / You let me dream, you let me dream.”
It turns out ‘Mirtazapine’ and ‘Glum’ were both from her third solo album, which has appeared on her website. Fans can access it by entering a 16-digit code which they can obtain by buying something from her hair dye company Good Dye Young’s new drop.
‘Ego’ is Williams’ first release since she became an independent artist when her record deal with Warner/Atlantic ended.
are you in for a treat?! 17 new songs are waiting at https://t.co/mWPf7ye5mh pic.twitter.com/qF0uPt9DrT
— Paramore-Music.com (@paramoremusicom) July 28, 2025
The track titles – which are currently in a random order on a ’00s-style website – are:
‘Kill Me’
‘True Believer’
‘BloodBros’
‘Negative Self Talk’
‘EDAABP’
‘Ice In My OJ’
‘Mirtazapine’
‘Brotherly Hate’
‘I Won’t Quit On You’
‘Disappearing Man’
‘Hard’
‘Glum’
‘Love Me Different’
‘Whim’
‘Discovery Channel’
‘Dream Girl In Shibuya’
‘Zissou’
Fans quickly warmed to the guitar-driven song. One fan called ‘Mirtazapine’ “one of the best songs I’ve ever heard”, while others were simply just happy that Williams was once again releasing solo material.
It’s not the first time Williams has released solo music in a way that departs from the usual album rollout timeline. Her previous solo album, ‘Flowers for Vases / descansos’, was released in February 2021 with only a day’s notice.
The album – the follow-up to 2020’s ‘Petals For Armor’, scored a four-star review from NME. In our review, we wrote: “Perhaps partly as a result of how it was created, ‘Flowers for Vases/descansos’ is less spiny and biting than her debut solo album. While that record brought to mind the intricacies of Thom Yorke and Warpaint, and burned with a simmering anger, this comes from a softer, more exposed place with Williams’ voice as its centrepiece. As if tugging up grubby fistfuls of dead weeds to make room for living things to flourish, ‘Flowers for Vases/descansos’ rakes back the debris and leaves Hayley Williams exposed. Sowing new seeds, it’s an approach that reaps rewards.”
Since the release of ‘Flowers for Vases/descansos’, Williams has shared solo material in the forms of a collaboration with Turnstile in late April, and a sensual Moses Sumney joint ‘I Like It I Like It’ in May. In June, Hayley Williams was announced as a guest feature on David Byrne’s new album ‘Everybody Laughs’.
Meanwhile, at the weekend, Williams was one of a host of names, alongside Waxahatchee, Jeff Tweedy, Weyes Blood, Rufus Wainwright, Maren Morris and Dan Reedy, who joined Bleachers during their show at Newport Folk Festival.
