Paramore | Lyrics

There's a temptation to lump Paramore's teenaged lead singer/lyricist Hayley Williams as a boy-crazed rock chick stirring heartache and venom into a potent pop-punk attack. Really listen, though, and it's clear there's a lot more soul and spirit -- or should we say spirituality? -- in her lyrics than that.

Hailing from outside Nashville, the quartet has strong Christian roots that it soft-pedals in its music but that nevertheless inform Williams' lyrics -- although she couches them carefully enough that she could just as easily be singing to a dude or to the Divine. But there are plenty of moments when things are pretty clear -- such as "My Heart" from the group's 2005 debut album "All We Know is Falling," in which Williams beseeches "Sing us a song and we'll sing us back to you/We could sing our own but what would it be without you?/This heart, it beats ... for only you." God Rock lives.

Moving to a major label for their sophomore album Riot! did not at all alter Williams' faith, although she's asking some bigger and deeper questions in her lyrics. "What must we do to restore our innocence/And all the promise we adored?/Give us life again/Cause we just wanna be whole," she calls in "We Are Broken." There's no vow of romantic -- or at least emotional -- chastity here, however; Williams, like so many of her peers, is still looking for the perfect terrestrial love and finds that she's often "drowned out all my sense" when she follows her heart. But the quest for transcendence through the words of her songs remains more important, whether she's "screamin' Hallelujah/We'll make it last forever" or urging in the anthemic "Born For This," "Everybody sing/Like it's the last song you will ever sing ... Everybody live/Like it's the last day you will ever see."

Somewhere, Bono is smiling.