Paramore’s ‘All We Know Is Falling’ Was a Revolutionary Emo Moment. 20 Years Later, It Still Is

It started at Warped Tour 2005. Five teens from Franklin, Tennessee thrashing around a scrappy, makeshift stage on a flatbed truck with unabashed confidence and emotion-packed songs. At the center was a beacon, sporting a graphic t-shirt and auburn hair, with a voice that pierced through all the noise. This was Paramore’s first Warped Tour appearance, and that voice belonged to lead singer Hayley Williams, a fire-cracker of a performer amidst the festival’s black-clad parade of dejected boys.

In retrospect, it’s crazy to think that Paramore, one of the biggest bands to come out of the pop-punk and emo scene, was once relegated to the female-only Warped Tour stage known as the Shiragirl stage, far from main stage acts like Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance, who would soon be their peers in the pop-rock mainstream. “As a 16-year-old who had dreams of playing with the big boys, it felt like we were being slighted,” Williams told Vulture in 2020. For Paramore, that just meant they had to rock harder. “I would spit farther, yell louder, and thrash my neck wilder than anyone,” Williams added in the same interview. 

And that she did. The way Williams commanded the tiny, pink-bannered stage was a turning point for the emo genre, and would prove to have a ripple effect beyond the confines of that scene. Here was this teen girl showing she could rock amongst the best of the scene with powerhouse vocals and great songs to match. It shouldn’t have been a phenomenon, but at that time of peak misogyny, it was. 

While most people heard of Paramore because of their breakout 2007 LP Riot!, it was All We Know Is Falling that served as their introduction to a generation of fans on that vital first Warped Tour run. This summer marks the 20th anniversary of Paramore’s sharp debut, which laid the foundation for everything the band would become. (To celebrate, Paramore has just released a deluxe version of the album, which includes the first-ever digital release of their 2006 B-sides EPThe Summer Tic.)

All We Know Is Falling is simple, introspective, and filled with hardcore influences from bands like Deftones and Underoath, filtered through a pop-punk sensibility. Explosive, dark-tinged tracks like “Emergency” and “Pressure” showed Paramore’s penchant for bangers — and have since become notable additions to the emo canon. From the album’s instrumentation to its lyrics, All We Know Is Falling displays Paramore’s strengths as they bellowed about their shared dreams and experimented with screamo singing on songs like “My Heart.”

Though Williams admitted to being careful to not use any defining pronouns in the lyrics for All We Know Is Falling and some of the band’s subsequent records, she still didn’t shy away from writing about her personal experiences as a young woman. “Conspiracy” is the first Paramore song ever written and is about the controversy behind Williams’ name being the only one on the band’s record contract because she was the key interest of Atlantic Records. “Explain to me this conspiracy against me and tell me how I’ve lost my power,” Williams wails.

“We wrote those songs over the course of probably a year,” Williams told Time in 2023. In the same interview, drummer Zac Farro shared how the actual album was recorded and created within three weeks. “That it made us not second guess ourselves… That’s something we still attribute to this day in helping us make quick decisions.” Looking back 20 years after the fact, it’s a feat that a pack of teenagers had such strong instincts from the jump.

At the time, Paramore was both accessible and preternatural; they were everyday teens that proved to young kids anyone could make a band, but with talent well beyond their years. But the mere fact of Williams’ presence made them otherworldly and spoke directly to young women; Paramore proved that their voice mattered, too. 

20 years later, it’s a fact that’s inescapable and cannot be overstated. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame has the lacy white dress from Paramore’s theatrical “Emergency” music video on display as part of the Warped Tour exhibit. In the museum description, Williams is specifically heralded for inspiring future generations of bold musicians like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo. Those Gen Z icons may not front rock bands, but Paramore, with Williams at the helm, showed them how to navigate their own thriving alternative avenue. 

In a 2005 interview, a week after the release of All We Know Is Falling, Williams was asked what advice she’d give to girls who want to be in the music industry. “Do it for yourself. Don’t do it because it seems cool or anything,” she said “It’s hard because you either have people who like you because they say you’re hot or you have people who hate you because you’re a girl. And a lot of people don’t give you a chance. But you’re doing it because you love it and it’s what you love to do, then it’s not hard.”

Nearly two decades later, in 2022, Paramore played the inaugural year of the emo nostalgia festival When We Were Young. This time, they served as co-headliners alongside My Chemical Romance, cementing their status as scene titans. During their set, Williams delivered a brutally honest emo history lesson before launching into a post-hardcore take on “Here We Go Again” from All We Know Is Falling. “When Paramore came onto the scene in roughly 2005, the scene was not always a safe place to be if you were different,” she said. “I can think of nothing more anti-establishment than young women, people of color, and the queer community… If you are one of those people, there is space for you now.” It’s a message they’ve been sharing since the early days. Now, 20 years after Paramore’s debut, it’s a goal they’ve met.