Hayley Williams Considers New Album More of a Prequel than a Sequel

Without any advance warning, singer-songwriter Hayley Williams released Flowers for Vases/descansos, the follow-up to last year’s Petals for Armor. 

Produced by Daniel James, mixed by Carlos De la Garza, and mastered by Heba Kadry, album serves more as a prequel than as a sequel to Petals for Armor. 

“If anything, it’s a prequel or some sort of detour between parts 1 and 2 of Petals,” says Williams in a press release. “The meaning of the album as a whole is maybe entirely different from diving into each song in particular. For me, there’s no better way to tackle these individual subjects other than holistically. The ways I’ve been given time (forcibly, really) to stew on certain pains long enough to understand that they in fact, need to be released…indefinitely. I may never have been offered such a kindness, an opportunity to tend to the seeds I’d planted, to harvest and to weed or prune what is no longer alive in order to make space for the living.”

I wrote and performed this album in its entirety. That’s a career first for me.

She recorded the album at her Nashville home where she’s lived since Paramore released After Laughter.

“Twenty-twenty was really hard, but I’m alive and so my job is to keep living and help others to do the same,” she says. 

Along with new music, Hayley has relaunched her previously sold-out limited edition Apotheke candle.

 Named among the top albums of last year by NPR, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, VICE and others, Petals for Armor debuted atop Billboard’s “Alternative Albums” and “Rock Albums” charts while also landing at No. 18 on the overall SoundScan/Billboard 200.

Photo: Lyndsey Byrnes