Hayley Williams performed three songs from her solo album Petals for Armor live for the first time for the latest installment of NPR’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert.
For the mini-set — recorded in Williams’ home — the Paramore singer played “Pure Love,” “Taken,” and “Dead Horse” alongside a band that included Becca Mancari and Julien Baker.
“I’ve never done this without Paramore,” Williams admits during the performance; Petals for Armor, written during a period of self-imposed isolation, arrived amid the coronavirus pandemic, preventing the singer from touring behind the LP. Williams previously performed the album’s “Roses/Lotus/Violet/Iris” as part of the Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute concert Honor Her Wish in October.
In a recent interview for Rolling Stone’s How Was Your 2020? series, Williams said the mistake she learned the most from this year was “believing that my putting out an album meant that I was really living and becoming my own woman. I didn’t have time to really live simply or become my own person until all of my ‘plans’ were thwarted by the pandemic and other tragedies. To feel purpose by way of activism, to feel rested by way of solitude and surrender… I honestly think I had some shit pretty twisted until this year. I’m still learning.”
