She may have helped launch Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour last month, but Paramore frontman Hayley Williams has had her fair share of eras, especially when it comes to her celebrity hair.
Over the years, Grammy winners’ curls have been dyed red, blue, yellow, green and every shade in between.
“I like to feel like I look loud, because it sometimes helps my introvert feel a little bit bolder,” Williams, 34, tells Page Six Style.
In the early days of Paramore, the singer would ask her boy bandmates to dye their hair in their hotel room “using a boxed red dye from Walgreens” – but in 2006, she met hairstylist Brian O’Connor, who was then an apprentice at Pink Mullet Salon. Franklin, Tennessee.
“If it weren’t for Brian, I wouldn’t be known for my hair,” says Williams, adding that the couple “pretty much got creative together.”
O’Connor created the star’s iconic “matchstick” ‘do’ (“darker red on top,” “yellow tipped”) for Paramore’s “Emergency” and “Misery Business” videos, and it’s been her mane ever since.
The duo’s relationship extends beyond music; In 2016 they launched Good Dye Young, a vibrant semi-permanent color line, and in 2022 the duo opened a salon in Nashville called Fruits Hair Lab.
“I’ve always wanted to tell a story with Hayley’s hair,” says O’Connor, who most recently turned the pop-punk icon’s hair into a high updo on the opening night of Swift’s tour in Glendale, Arizona, on March 17. , “packaged” the style with faux pearls and sparkly clips to make Williams stand out on the massive stage.
“Hayley is a tiny person – she’s a big woman but very petite. Anything that shines or catches the light basically went into that spin that first night,” she explains.
O’Connor tells us that he usually starts with his music as he brainstorms new hairstyles and shadows for Williams.
“I hear a song, a passage, or a lyric, and that’s when my mind begins to picture this picture that coincides with what it’s trying to convey—not just through its music, but through itself,” he explains.
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Over the years, this has translated into everything from a bright bubblegum pink look in 2010 to a two-tone yellow-orange bob in 2014.
Most recently, Williams got back to his roots with an orange-red paint job—just in time for Paramore’s massive arena tour, which kicks off in May.
If history is any indication, fans can expect plenty of headline-worthy hair moments from the star in the months ahead; after all, when it comes to experimenting with color, Williams says that he and O’Connor are “not very worthy of all that bullshit.”