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Paramore’s Hayley Williams vocally denounced Donald Trump and Project 2025 from the stage on Friday night, asking fans: “Do you want to live in a dictatorship?”
The alternative rock band, who formed in 2004 in Tennessee, were performing “Big Man, Little Integrity” from their 2023 album This Is Why at the iHeartRadio Music Awards in Los Angeles.
During the song, Williams, 35, directly addressed a camera and urged viewers to make use of their vote.
“Project 2025 is Donald Trump‘s playbook for controlling and punishing women, poor people, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community,” said Williams.
“It is time for all Americans to band together and to finally defeat the Trump agenda. And the only way to do that is by confronting him at the polls.
“Do you want to live in a dictatorship? Well show up and vote!”
It is not the first time that Williams has used her platform to speak out about politics. Last year, she declared that anyone who voted for Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis would be “dead” to her.
“I’ll be happy to tell you I’m very f***ing comfortable talking politics,” Williams told the crowd at the Adjacent Music Festival in Atlantic City, New Jersey. “If you vote for Ron DeSantis, you’re f***ing dead to me. Is that comfortable enough for anyone?”
Footage from the performance showed the crowd cheering in response to the singer’s announcement.
Williams’s remarks came shortly after she had been accused of being too uncomfortable to speak about politics on tour.
In a four-star review of This Is Why, The Independent’s chief critic Helen Brown called the band’s most recent album “a heartfelt outburst of 21st century angst.”
Earlier this week, Norm Eisen of the Brookings Institution told The Independent that Project 2025 had landed as a “devastating self-own” for the MAGA-aligned right.
“Trump himself proclaimed he was going to be a dictator on day one,” said Eisen. He went on to say that Republicans set themselves up for failure by becoming “over-confident”.
