Misery Business

Paramore's breakout hit, "Misery Business" is about a mean girl who rules her school and terrorizes her classmates. She's skinny ("A body like an hourglass"), very popular, and in the business of misery. Paramore lead singer Hayley Williams takes her down, singing about how being popular doesn't make you great, and isn't really original ("There are a million other girls who do it just like you").

Hayley Williams wrote the song with the band's guitarist, Josh Farro. The lyrics are based on real events - Williams wrote it to get her high school experience off her chest. "The song is about a girl who ruined one of our friend's lives with sex, using her sexuality to get what she wanted, and it really affected us, watching him crumble," Farro told the Manchester Evening News August 9, 2007. Williams, who was 17 when she wrote the lyrics and 18 when it was released, went into much greater detail in a June 27, 2007 blog post titled "redemption. it's a long story." "I had no idea what power someone could have over another," she wrote. "I watched her use sex to manipulate one of my friends, in particular, to the point that none of us - in our little circle of friends - recognized him. He went from being someone so innocent and joyful to becoming someone who was shut off from everything."

The music video got loads of airplay on MTV and helped break the band. It stars Amy Paffrath as a high school mean girl who get her comeuppance at the end. Of the music concept, Hayley Williams said she wanted to mutilate every part of her rival's existence.