Hayley Williams was the biggest star on Broadway April 28 as she closed out a trio of shows at the Ryman for her Hayley Williams at a Bachelorette Party tour, supporting last year’s widely acclaimed Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party.
Joining Williams all three nights was experimental duo Water From Your Eyes, the project of guitarist Nate Amos and vocalist (and occasional Stereogum correspondent) Rachel Brown. The band played a tight 40-minute set, featuring selections from their 2025 release It’s a Beautiful Place. Brown told the crowd, “Let’s party rock, as they say.” And with a grungy, electronic groove as the soundtrack, everyone did.
As the lead singer of Paramore for the past 15 years, Hayley Williams has been through some shit. There’s been good: world tours, multiplatinu…
These Ryman shows mark Williams’ first hometown shows as a solo artist. She had a headline tour booked around her first solo album Petals for Armor in 2020, but it was canceled because of COVID-19. For many fans, this experience was a long time coming, and the excitement in the room was palpable as Williams prepared to take the stage. While instructions were piped in over the P.A. to “Ask your doctor about Ego Death” in order to experience “joy for the first time since 2016,” Williams bounded into view. She was armed with a guitar to shred into EDAABP’s first single “Mirtazapine,” which she premiered on local NPR music discovery radio station WNXP last year. She would play the entire album over the course of the night.
For her final show at home on this world tour, Williams pulled out all the stops. Beyond the top-notch production and touring band — guitarists Logan MacKenzie and Brian Robert Jones, bassist Joey Howard and drummer Joey Mullen, who are affectionately known as the ParaFour since they’ve spent lots of time on the road as touring members of Paramore — Williams brought her vocal best to the Mother Church (to no one’s surprise). Her voice is remarkably dexterous and clear, and she’s got more soul in her pinky finger than most of us will have in our lives. She’s both a once-in-a-generation talent and somehow wildly underrated. For as long as she has been playing the game, Hayley Williams has only gotten stronger with age.
Hayley Williams at the Ryman, 4/28/2026
As she sat down at the piano for the titular song from Ego Death, Williams remarked that her past few days in Nashville have included all the city’s signature experiences: debilitating allergies, a tornado watch and reconnecting with friends — including state Rep. Justin Jones, who joined her onstage to accompany the song on tambourine. Since Jones had appeared in the music video for the song, it was the perfect start to a series of surprises for the evening. Before heading backstage, Jones rallied the crowd in support of joy and resistance, sharing a philosophy he learned from Williams that they’ve come to share: “We bury our friends in the morning, protest in the evening and dance all night.”
Hayley Williams at the Ryman, 4/28/2026
As Jones exited, Williams stepped up to the mic to welcome another guest, hugely popular singer-songwriter Noah Kahan. The duo met at the Grammys just months ago, and Kahan — perhaps in town ahead of a scheduled album signing event at Grimey’s — joined Williams to sing “Downfall.” It’s a tearjerker of a piece from his new album The Great Divide, released just last week.
After a brief detour into almost-happiness (“Whim,” which Williams introduced as “a love song”), the show continued in its emo glory for “Glum” and the brooding “Negative Self Talk.” Then, Williams went back to the piano for her scathing but hopeful reflection on Nashville, “True Believer,” followed by a stunning if brief rendition of Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”
Checking in with the rock star about making her third solo LP ‘Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party’
The theme of the night, and to a degree the album as a whole, was catharsis. There seemed to be a shared understanding between the crowd and the artist, largely based on the shared experience of living in the South, hating Nashville for all its flaws but never failing to see its potential — despite the weight that comes from existing here some days. Before the breakdown of the self-appreciating “Love Me Different,” Williams led the crowd in a unified group sigh, and you could feel the weight lift off the room as the music restarted and everyone began to dance. Williams’ family was present for the show, and her mother Cristi Williams, who works to connect musicians with mental health support via her organization Shading the Limelight, cheered the loudest following this moment.
Hayley Williams at the Ryman, 4/28/2026
To wrap up the evening, Williams had even more guests to surprise the crowd with. First, producer and frequent collaborator Daniel James, who partnered with Williams for the live debut of “DMs” from their Power Snatch project, and later local rockers Total Wife, who crashed the stage to end the show with the cleansing thrash of “Parachute.” As Williams bounced off the stage, she shouted out to the crowd, “See you when I get home!” No one does it like she does, and we’ll sorely miss her until she gets back. I think the feeling is mutual.
