Hayley Williams Covers Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’

Hayley Williams released an acoustic cover of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees” on Instagram Monday as part of her “self-serenade” series of covers. (Past renditions have included Phoebe Bridgers’ “Smoke Signals” and Björk’s “Unison.”)

In the caption for the cover, recorded as an iPhone voice memo, Williams explained that it would be “the last of the self-serenades for a while.”

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for a while, anyway. the top requested song throughout my brief career in self-serenadism has been a @radiohead song. seemed sacrilegious at first until i realized that the band themselves have never once regarded what they do as precious or never-to-be-toyed with. they are never beholden to any one version of their expression and public affections don’t seem to sway them. so many times people thought they were at their best only for them to bloom more beautifully into something unexpected and unequivocally better. for a time i pretended to be over Radiohead (iiii knowwww) but good good things always find you and welcome you back. so, in admiration of one of the best bands of all time – and in humility to everyone who did *not* ask for this – here’s a self-serenade of “Fake Plastic Trees”. enjoy it if you can.

A post shared by hayley williams (@yelyahwilliams) on Aug 7, 2020 at 11:44am PDT

“The top requested song throughout my brief career in self-serenadism has been a @radiohead song,” she wrote. “Seemed sacrilegious at first until I realized that the band themselves have never once regarded what they do as precious or never-to-be-toyed with. They are never beholden to any one version of their expression and public affections don’t seem to sway them. So many times people thought they were at their best only for them to bloom more beautifully into something unexpected and unequivocally better.”

She continued: “For a time I pretended to be over Radiohead (I know) but good things always find you and welcome you back. So, in admiration of one of the best bands of all time — and in humility to everyone who did not ask for this — here’s a self-serenade of ‘Fake Plastic Trees.’ Enjoy it if you can.”

Williams released her debut solo album, Petals for Armor, in May.