(FlickR)I was born in the year of the dragon, some of my friends the year of the rabbit, and I think my younger brother the year of the tiger, so I think this year could be the year of the sea anenome.
Never mind what year of which irrelevant animal it is, what I'm more concerned with is, whether it's in fact the month of the split.
This month my conversations with my friends have been referring to splits particularly of the celebrity variety. Regardless of whether they were genuine star crossed lovers, or a publicists concoction, we couldn't believe how many people were residents of splitsville. Pop stars, actors, sports stars, reality TV stars but most recently a split occurred between a group of four, Paramore.
I originally discovered Paramore back in 2005, after meeting a friend at an All American Rejects concert. I stayed in contact with the avid morrisey and Panic! At the Disco fan (what a combination?) adding him on Myspace, Yahoo Messenger and Last.fm (all social networking bases covered). Meeting through love of music we carried on speaking and he sent me music to keep an eye on. He sent me; Mewithoutyou, Acceptance and Paramore. I listened to all three; Mewithoutyou, were appropriate to the sound at the time, emo and screaming about a love story, Acceptance were a generic pop rock sound and then there was Paramore a great band that spoke to me and were fronted by a girl !?
I couldn't believe how catchy and refreshing all the songs were, Franklin, Emergency and a particular favourite Pressure. This was eye opening, listening to a band who were talking about teenage angst and lost love spoke to me, without relying on rhyming stanzas.
My fandom exploded when I went to see Give It a Name in 2005, surrounded by thousands of other teens waiting to hear their favourite bands vocalise their confusion and love stories, in a way that they couldn't. It was the first day of the mini indoor festival and BRAND new comers the Blackout had just taken to the stage, I was particularly fond of this band, having been "talking" with one of them on Myspace. They screamed through their unrecognised songs, using overwhelming enthusiasm to make up for the thin crowd. We went on to look round the stalls, the merchandise and of course the boys (ha). The crowd got thicker and eventually after another lesser known band the Gym Class Heroes burst onto stage. Another Fuelled By Ramen graduate that were about to shake the music industry awake for a brief minute. Following them Paramore came on the stage, Hayley bounded on, and the band shadowed her. I was beaming my new found heroine was there in the flesh, about to rock me and my friends world. I stood there transfixed listening, jumping and shouting every single word back at the band as if my life depended on it. The one thing that surprised me though, was that no one else had seemed to have heard of them and that made them all the more important to me.
Like people do in life I drifted apart from the band, new bands came along and I wasn't keen on the direction Paramore were going so decided to stop buying the records. I started listening to Paramore again recently, really enjoying the slowly tempo of Only Exception and the bite of Playing God, but the news that two of the founding members were leaving, has made this reunion all the more bitter.
Not only is it a break-up it's a messy one. Like in relationship, mud is being flown (blogs) and people are making the break-up trendable on networks such as twitter.
It's always sad when people you know break up and in this case people you don't. A band that bonded together in their home town got thrown into the spotlight at such enormous speed that it seems to have broken them. The band who went against the crowd, rallied up a huge following are now less like a group of friends, are more like the damaged wings of the butterfly on their album cover, Brand New Eyes.
