Paramore Conspiracy Theories (Book 2)

But Why Was Caught In The Middle Released As A Single?

Been a while since I wore the conspiracy hat, time to dust it off I guess 

The first part of this is a bit of a rant, then I'll get to a personal theory I have about why CITM was released.

Seriously though I don't know why CITM was released as a single. Don't get me wrong, I loved the song and thought maybe it could work as a single, but at the time I also thought Told You So was terrible and now TYS is one of my favorite tracks on the album; point is I changed my mind on a few things after hearing the album a few more times. I like CITM, but as a radio freindly commercial single I definietly would prefer Rose-Colored Boy or Fake Happy as in my personal opinion they both have better melodies that CITM. CITM's melody is good but I definitely find the vocals and instrumentation a bit grating with repeated listens, especially the way Hayley stretches notes in the chorus. I can really only listen to that song once during a listening session. Although I find the lyrics of CITM compelling and very meaningful, the execution is not really as good. Bottom line, in my personal opinion, I couldn't really see CITM a being one of those songs they play every hour on the hour like Ain't It Fun was, I feel like people would become annoyed by it. 

Paramore would disagree however because they surprise released Caught In The Middle on June 26th with a video and everything, and the video in my opinion was a let down. If you wanna do a stupid video, don't pick the most meaningful song to do it with, that's how Fake Happy was ruined. Seriously pick a stupid song to do a stupid video for, like Grudges, the most forgettable track on the record in my opinion. 

A lot of people are now calling for videos for Pool and No Friend and Idle Worship, and to be honest I'm terrified of that, becuase I think those songs deserve meaningful videos to display the meaningful lyrics. Especially No Friend, there's a lot of vivid imagery in that song and it could make an incredible video, but I'm worried they'll make a stupid stop motion video with toy dinosaurs or some shit. Seriously, it's like either they don't give a fuck anymore or their label doesn't give a fuck anymore, or maybe both.

Onto the conspiracy part of this post; I don't think they were actual expecting to release CITM. Personally I think the only reason they released it is because RCB didn't do that well. I think they were planning on RCB pulling in the same success as Ain't It Fun, I even made a post about how they used the exact same marketing tactics for RCB that they did for AIF. The time that CITM was released doesn't seem like a coincidence to me, because it was released around the anniversary of Ain't It Fun going platnium, a week after in fact. Ain't It Fun was certified platnium the week of June 18th 2014, about three and a half months after it was released, making it Paramore's most successful single ever. 

So I guess the sum of the theory I'm proposing is; Paramore released Rose-Colored Boy with the hope that it would match or beat the success of Ain't It Fun, setting a deadline for the week of June 18th when Ain't It Fun reached its peak success. In the meantime if it didn't succeed they pick the next most radio friendly song to release as a backup, hoping for a "song of the summer" type success. They wait the three and a half months, up to the very last week, Rose-Colored Boy does nothing so they release their backup single with no announcment a week later, and a video that looks like it was done in a day that they probably weren't actually expecting anyone to see. 

Some of you will say "but the video was recorded months ago!" Yeah, and the video and plan for RCB was obviously made months before that. I'm not saying this is true, it's just a theory that I personally believe, so don't come at me with torches and pitchforks, if you think it's not true then think that. It's a conspiracy theory, it could be true or untrue which is why it is not called a conspiracy fact. 

What do you guys think of all this? Tell me in the comments below, and thanks for reading. - H