Brick By Boring Brick Fact

This is the second single from American rock band Paramore's third studio album, Brand New.

On this track frontwoman Hayley Williams lays out her philosophical worldview. She explained to Kerrang! May 9, 2009 that, "this song is about people who cover up their reality with frills and make out like they're living a fantasy life." She added: "It's one thing to have goals and dreams but it's another thing when you
never know where you're standing in the real world. People can be hurt by that."

The album cover artfully depicts a freshly dissected butterfly. Williams explained to MTV News: "The cover is actually a butterfly I found in my driveway one day, and it was huge and really gorgeous and we clipped its wings off and pinned its body and its wings up to the fence in my backyard. I've had [it] forever in this box in my mom's house. And we all liked the idea of ripping the wings off a butterfly, because it's in the lyrics of 'Brick By Boring Brick.'" The lyric in question is "The angles were all wrong/Now she's ripping wings off of butterflies."

Hayley Williams explained to Alternative Press the story of the song: "Imagine me walking into this tiny little room where we practiced, not knowing what we were going to accomplish that day and then hearing this song within the first five minutes. I fell in love with the music to these verses from the first snare hit. It reminded me of (Pennsylvania based experimental rock band) mewithoutYou and had this darkness to it that I was crazy about. I knew that I had to write something that I thought was just as electrifying as the music or I wouldn't be happy. I didn't sleep that night. I finished the verses and the bridge and came up with several different choruses, even though I didn't like any of them. I was writing a story about a girl who escaped reality through pictures and fairy tales and anything that wasn't the real story. This way, she'd look perfect to everyone else and we'd all think that she's got it together. But being that it was all for show, it couldn't last. The lyrics in the chorus finally happened when I pictured her finally doing away with it all - burying everything she'd made up in her mind so she could face the real world for once. For the record, this song isn't autobiographical."

The song is basically an extended fairy-tale metaphor and the accompanying music video reflects that as the band members all play characters in a fairy-tale land. It was shot in Los Angeles with director Meiert Avis (the man behind U2's "Where The Streets Have No Name" clip). Bassist Jeremy Davis told MTV News: "We essentially came up with the treatment and had a bunch of directors send in their other ideas, and each was a little bit different that the others. It's our first video that's not performance based. We're not performing at all. We're in it for, like, two seconds, some of us. It's out first video that's all green screen and has a whole story behind it, and there's a lot of people acting in it, so it's cool."
Hayley Williams added: "What's cool about it is there's dark elements to it... and there's a fair amount of color too. It should be well-rounded, different, if anything, Our fans, for a long time, we've noticed them kind of saying, like, 'Man, I'd really love to see Paramore not do a performance video for once,' so here it is."

Guitarist Josh Farro told MTV News: "We came up with the concept for this video in London, actually, at a diner. We got a lot of treatments from directors, and we thought they were all right, but we kind of were like, 'Why can't we just come up with it?' And so we did. We came up with the whole idea."

Williams expanded on the clip to MTV News: "Some of the elements in the video are pretty obvious and more literally pulling from the lyrics, and then some of them are not. And I think it's cool because there is a very playful and sort of whimsical vibe to it, but it's also dark, and there are parts to it that are a bit twisted. It's our take on this sort-of dark fantasy world and how it fits into the lyrics of the song and pulling imagery straight out of the lyrics. I'm really excited for our fans to see this side of us, because we are very into videos that have a lot of artwork. We've never really done it ourselves."