Hayley Williams responds to accusations of toxic workplace at her Nashville hair salon

Oct 14, 2024

"I will no longer hold my team back from stopping assholes who are trying to take advantage of and attack my character"

Hayley Williams has responded to claims and accusations that a Nashville hair salon she co-founded is a “toxic workplace”.

Last week, the Paramore vocalist shared a statement promoting mental health and sharing resources for those in need via her hair cosmetics brand Good Dye Young. While the statement was initially well-received, things soon took a turn after comments on the post began accusing Williams’ Nashville salon Fruits Hair Lab of deleting comments from ex-workers who claimed to have experienced toxic behaviour in the workplace, allegedly caused a worker to require therapy.

Soon, more commenters – even from non-workers – began demanding an explanation, and said that Williams’ statement on mental health was “performative” if she had been complicit in fostering a toxic workplace, including “ignoring” complaints that were raised to her.

Now, Williams has responded to these allegations in an Instagram comment on one of her posts, saying she will not allow for her character to be attacked, and explained her role at Fruits Hair Lab.

Williams wrote: “i have interacted with stylists at our salon only a handful of times. i co-founded and funded the salon but i am not the boss, nor do i even have a job title there. a salon manager was hired from day one because brian and i are rarely in nashville.

“when this group of Fruits employees chose to leave, the remaining team of stylists reported that the environment in the salon became immediately more positive and less toxic. do with that what you will. next, there are things being said here about both GDY and Fruits that are provably false. this situation has so much more than i feel is appropriate to share on the internet.

“i think it’s also important to say that neither me nor anyone working for GDY deleted ANY comments that were posted in this comments section. from now on, i will no longer hold my team back from stopping assholes who are trying to take advantage of and attack my character.

Williams concluded: “and lastly, the big news that we (privately) gave all of our staff at GDY and Fruits on World Mental Health Day this year, is that their health insurance (which was already provided) will now include unlimited mental health services as of 11/1. if keeping that private was performative, well then fuck me i guess.”

Read Hayley Williams’ full statement below.

not to come back to this but hayley has now commented on everything https://t.co/hQXm1V9VYh pic.twitter.com/pBkGTZOYcO

— ash 🙂 (@hiimynameisash) October 12, 2024

Recently, Williams has revealed Paramore are working on new music, with the singer telling Dork that the band had recorded music in Clouds Hill studio in Hamburg.

She went on to say they had been playing with an idea that “felt like it was on the other side of the tracks to what we’d been working on at home,” according to Williams. “But that excites me.”

The band last released their 2023 album ‘This Is Why’, given four stars by NME: “Paramore are reaching to where, finally, their music has wanted to get to for the best part of the past decade. Rather than try to top their peerless anthems, the band have instead uncovered a new warmth on ‘This Is Why’, and the effect is triumphant indeed.”

In other news, Paramore and Bug Girl have announced a merch collaboration with all proceeds donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians.