{ "id": "ept0vfvham", "slug": "riot-ept0vfvham", "title": "Riot!", "updated": "2026-10-25", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.music", "label": "Music", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music" }, { "id": "culture.music.works", "label": "Musical works and recordings", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music.works" }, { "id": "culture.music.works.recordings", "label": "Albums and recorded releases", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music.works.recordings" }, { "id": "culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums", "label": "Studio albums", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums" }, { "id": "culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums.punk-and-emo-albums", "label": "Punk and emo albums", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums.punk-and-emo-albums" }, { "id": "culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums.punk-and-emo-albums.emo-and-post-hardcore-albums", "label": "Emo and post-hardcore albums", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums.punk-and-emo-albums.emo-and-post-hardcore-albums" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums", "label": "United States · 2001 to 2020: Studio albums", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums", "path": [ { "id": "geo.us", "label": "United States", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001", "label": "United States · 2001 to 2020", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.music", "label": "Music", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.music" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works", "label": "Musical works and recordings", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings", "label": "Albums and recorded releases", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings" }, { "id": "geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums", "label": "Studio albums", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.us.t2001.culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Riot! is Paramore's second studio album, released June 12, 2007 on Fueled by Ramen. Produced by David Bendeth, its singles Misery Business, Crushcrushcrush, and That's What You Get made the teenage Tennessee band stars, selling 700,000 copies in a year.", "snippet": "Riot! is Paramore's second studio album, released June 12, 2007 on Fueled by Ramen. Produced by David Bendeth, its singles Misery Business, Crushcrushcrush, and That's What You Get made the teenage Tennessee band stars, selling 700,000 copies in a year.", "node": "culture.music.works.recordings.studio_albums.punk-and-emo-albums.emo-and-post-hardcore-albums", "markdown": "# Riot!\n\n**Riot!** is the second studio album by the American rock band Paramore, released on June 12, 2007 through the label [Fueled by Ramen](https://www.edgepedia.org/fueled-by-ramen)[1](https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/4187-paramore-riot.php). Recorded when the band members were still teenagers, it turned the Tennessee group into mainstream stars through the singles \"Misery Business\", \"Hallelujah\", \"Crushcrushcrush\", and \"That's What You Get\"[2](https://music.apple.com/us/album/riot/604804755), sold 700,000 copies in its first year, and earned the band a Grammy Award nomination for Best New Artist[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Release | June 12, 2007, Fueled by Ramen; second studio album[1](https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/4187-paramore-riot.php) |\n| Length | 11 songs, 38 minutes on the standard edition[2](https://music.apple.com/us/album/riot/604804755) |\n| Producer | David Bendeth, with whom the band relocated to New Jersey to record[4](https://time.com/6254612/paramore-interview-this-is-why-album/) |\n| Biggest hit | \"Misery Business\", the lead single, reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) |\n| Sales | 700,000 copies in its first year; eventually multi-platinum[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) |\n| RIAA certification | Platinum on July 11, 2008[5](https://bestsellingalbums.org/album/35089) |\n| Accolades | Grammy nomination for Best New Artist; gold record earned in November 2007[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) • [6](https://www.spinmagazine.com/2017/06/paramore-is-a-band-revisit-our-2008-feature-on-riot/) |\n| Aftermath | Two songs landed on the Twilight soundtrack a year after release[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) |\n\n## Background\n\nParamore formed in [Franklin, Tennessee](https://www.edgepedia.org/franklin-tennessee), after Williams moved to the town as a teenager and met drummer [Zac Farro](https://www.edgepedia.org/zac-farro) and his guitarist brother Josh at school; bassist [Jeremy Davis](https://www.edgepedia.org/jeremy-davis) and the brothers completed the lineup[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) • [7](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/paramore-history-of-emo-band). Their 2005 debut, All We Know Is Falling, had been titled after Davis left the band a week before recording sessions began; he rejoined that fall[8](https://www.altpress.com/paramore-issue-229-interview-return-to-riot/). The debut built the band's credibility, and Time later wrote that it \"gave them the tools to build on for the release of their 2007 sophomore album, RIOT!, which catapulted them to a new level of fame\"[4](https://time.com/6254612/paramore-interview-this-is-why-album/).\n\nThe recording period sat amid internal turbulence. Bassist Jeremy Davis was briefly expelled from the band and reinstated after negotiations between the remaining members[9](https://lyricsweb.com/album/paramore/riot). Guitarist Hunter Lamb left in March 2007 to marry, a departure fans learned of through a post on the band's [LiveJournal](https://www.edgepedia.org/livejournal)[8](https://www.altpress.com/paramore-issue-229-interview-return-to-riot/).\n\n## Recording and production\n\n**Producer and sound.** When the band made Riot!, they relocated to New Jersey, where producer David Bendeth was living[4](https://time.com/6254612/paramore-interview-this-is-why-album/). Bendeth, who had worked with [Hawthorne Heights](https://www.edgepedia.org/hawthorne-heights) and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, also co-wrote some of the tracks[8](https://www.altpress.com/paramore-issue-229-interview-return-to-riot/) • [7](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/paramore-history-of-emo-band). He told Billboard that the band wanted to compete with the male-fronted rock acts dominating the mid-2000s: \"They were underdogs because she was a girl, and at the time it was Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the Disco and all these boybands that were rock.\" He described beefing up the guitars at Williams's request and concluded, \"I felt like when I finished the record and we listened back, that we had created this monster that was built like a British tank. It was solid. You could listen to it all the way through\"[7](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/paramore-history-of-emo-band).\n\nThe album's hyper-compressed production drew criticism later. A mastering-focused comparison noted that the record's heavy compression, common by 2007, is especially audible at the end of \"Let the Flames Begin\"[10](https://paoprod.com/projects/album-comparisons/paramore-riot/), and NME's contemporaneous review blamed Bendeth's \"slick miscalculation\" for making the band sound lost under a glossed sheen[11](https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-paramore-8707-328693).\n\n## Songs and singles\n\nThe album opens with \"For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic\" and its statement of self-possession, \"I'm not so naive, my sorry eyes can see\"[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). The lead single, \"Misery Business\", came from a page in the 17-year-old Williams's diary in which she berated her crush's new girlfriend; Pitchfork called the song the sinister apex of third-wave emo's anti-girl bitterness[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). Williams said in a 2007 interview that the lyrics made herself come across stronger than she felt in real life[8](https://www.altpress.com/paramore-issue-229-interview-return-to-riot/). The crush was her bandmate [Josh Farro](https://www.edgepedia.org/josh-farro), foreshadowing intraband turmoil that followed the band for years[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\nSoon-to-join guitarist [Taylor York](https://www.edgepedia.org/taylor-york) helped pen \"That's What You Get\", the album's most celebrated song outside the singles, whose refrain \"That's what you get when you let your heart win\" Pitchfork called a cool-headed retort to an era of mostly male romantic apocalypse[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). \"Hallelujah\" was, by Pitchfork's account, written by the band before they had ever released an album in order to show Atlantic that the other members should not be fired[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\nThe band's Christian upbringing left visible marks even though they did not consider themselves a Christian band: each member first thanked Jesus Christ in the album's CD booklet, and songs such as \"We Are Broken\", \"Miracle\", and \"Let the Flames Begin\" carry themes of salvation and renewal[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). A special edition of the album included Paramore's 2006 cover of the [Foo Fighters](https://www.edgepedia.org/foo-fighters)' \"My Hero\"[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). For the closing track, \"Born for This\", the band ran a competition for fans to record the gang vocals in the bridge[12](https://www.punktastic.com/interviews/paramore/).\n\n## Commercial performance\n\nRiot! sold 700,000 copies in its first year and eventually went multi-platinum[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). The [Recording Industry Association of America](https://www.edgepedia.org/recording-industry-association-of-america) certified it Platinum on July 11, 2008[5](https://bestsellingalbums.org/album/35089). The band earned a gold record for the album in November 2007 and received a Best New Artist Grammy nomination in December[6](https://www.spinmagazine.com/2017/06/paramore-is-a-band-revisit-our-2008-feature-on-riot/). ChartMasters estimates 3.3 million equivalent album sales across the album's lifetime, and it also earned an Australian Gold certification in 2009[13](https://chartmasters.org/album/paramore/riot).\n\nOne year after the album's release, the band landed two songs on the Twilight soundtrack, and the blockbuster teen vampire film expanded their celebrity further[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\n## Critical reception\n\nContemporary reviews divided over the production. NME scored the album 5/10, writing that the record \"stalls where it should shine\" under Bendeth's expensive iron, though it conceded \"Misery Business\" was deceptively brilliant[11](https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-paramore-8707-328693). Retrospective assessments have been far warmer: Pitchfork's 2023 Sunday Review rated the album 8.8/10, calling it a record that \"permanently altered the pop-punk landscape and marked the arrival of the ambitious and brilliant Hayley Williams\"[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\nThe album's standing has also been complicated by its most famous lyric. The line \"once a whore, you're nothing more\" in \"Misery Business\" has been reappraised, and Paramore stopped playing the song live for four years before eventually returning it to setlists[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\n## Legacy\n\nRiot! made Williams the only woman fronting an emo band of Paramore's stature in an era Williams described as \"brutally misogynistic\"; she often took the blame for the band's public falling-outs as the only member whose name appeared on the record contract[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/) • [14](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/29/paramore-hayley-williams-this-is-why-interview). At the inaugural [When We Were Young](https://www.edgepedia.org/when-we-were-young) festival in 2022, she wrote that the band had become \"a pillar of the very scene that threatened to reject us\" and credited young girls, queer kids, and people of color with shifting the scene together[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/).\n\nThe record's influence runs through later pop music: Pitchfork names [Billie Eilish](https://www.edgepedia.org/billie-eilish), Olivia Rodrigo, and [Taylor Swift](https://www.edgepedia.org/taylor-swift), who called Williams a primary lyrical inspiration for her album [Speak Now](https://www.edgepedia.org/speak-now), among those downstream of the band's songwriting[3](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/). Williams herself has remembered the album as \"a lightning in a bottle sort of moment in time\", recalling seeing the album's title spray-painted on a building near a Camden venue and realizing fans were making it their own[7](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/paramore-history-of-emo-band).\n\n## References\n\n1. [Paramore - Riot! - Reviews, Album of The Year](https://www.albumoftheyear.org/album/4187-paramore-riot.php)\n2. [Riot! - Album by Paramore, Apple Music](https://music.apple.com/us/album/riot/604804755)\n3. [Paramore: Riot! Album Review, Pitchfork (Jenn Pelly, December 3, 2023)](https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/paramore-riot/)\n4. [Paramore Revisits Its Expansive Discography, From All We Know Is Falling to This Is Why, TIME](https://time.com/6254612/paramore-interview-this-is-why-album/)\n5. [RIOT! by PARAMORE - Sales & Charts, Best Selling Albums](https://bestsellingalbums.org/album/35089)\n6. [Paramore Is a Band: Revisit Our 2008 Feature on Riot!, SPIN](https://www.spinmagazine.com/2017/06/paramore-is-a-band-revisit-our-2008-feature-on-riot/)\n7. [How Paramore blazed a unique trail in the world of 2000s emo, Louder](https://www.loudersound.com/bands-artists/paramore-history-of-emo-band)\n8. [Return to 'Riot!' with Paramore's first major AltPress 2007 interview, Alternative Press](https://www.altpress.com/paramore-issue-229-interview-return-to-riot/)\n9. [RIOT! by Paramore - Tracklist & Story Behind the Album, LyricsWeb](https://lyricsweb.com/album/paramore/riot)\n10. [Album Comparisons: Riot!, PAO Productions](https://paoprod.com/projects/album-comparisons/paramore-riot/)\n11. [Paramore: RIOT!, NME (June 25, 2007)](https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-paramore-8707-328693)\n12. [Paramore interview, Punktastic](https://www.punktastic.com/interviews/paramore/)\n13. [Riot! by Paramore - Sales & Streaming Stats, ChartMasters](https://chartmasters.org/album/paramore/riot)\n14. [Paramore: 'We realised this band isn't worth risking our health for', The Guardian (2022)](https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/sep/29/paramore-hayley-williams-this-is-why-interview)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Music › Musical works and recordings › Albums and recorded releases › Studio albums › Punk and emo albums › Emo and post-hardcore albums*\n\n*Initially written Sep 17, 2026 · Reviewed: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Sep 30, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Riot!\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Riot!](https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham](https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Riot!\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/riot-ept0vfvham. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Riot! is Paramore's second studio album, released June 12, 2007 on Fueled by Ramen." }