Hayley Williams - Pedals Of Armor (Review)

Hayley Williams - Pedals Of Armor (Review)


DISCLAIMER: I’m not an enormous fan of Hayley Williams. I’m saying this because in the future, I plan to make album reviews many paragraphs long and go really in-depth into. Also, I’m sorry this is a little late, but there wasn’t something that I wanted to review that came out on the 15th, so I’m doing this album that I’ve already listened to.


Pedals Of Armor is an album. Not a bad album by any means, but simply an album. Putting its many good qualities aside, it was an album that had such a defined style and a formula for its songs that they began to feel repetitive. Not just the songs themselves, but the album as a whole. Though, thankfully, I can't call this album all bad because it gave us many weirder and more ambitious songs in the middle of these new style of pop songs. Some of these weirder songs felt a little forced because she probably new that at some point to certain fans, her other songs would get boring.


As much as I could shit on this album for this reason, it's my only reason to shit on this album. Besides, this repetitive style of pop songs were all good, it's just that they got so repetitive and began feeling uncreative. Going back to the positives, the album shined in how good its generic formula was. Certain songs were undeniably great, or at least good, if you heard them as singles for example. Then again, some songs in this formula were the perfect definition of how to ruin it.



In conclusion, I feel like Williams did the one thing I wish she didn't with her very first solo album; strictly define a style. As much as I knew that she was going to be yet woman in pop, I thought she was going to take a path that, in my opinion, she had the ambition and talent to take. My favorite track was "Pure Love". It gave off a vibe of 90's R&B and 80's synth-pop: an undeniable bop packed with soul and groove. My least favorite track was "Taken". The only reason is that this was the most prime example of this pop-type formula coming off under-utilized, bland, and basic. Giving this album a 1-10 using half numbers, I give this album a 5.5/10 with a five-word description of: "repetitive; parts great, parts bad."


Image sources (in order):
https://pitchfork.com/news/hayley-williams-releases-first-part-of-new-album-petals-for-armor-listen/
https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/02/hayley-williams-depression-suicidal-thoughts-interview/

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