One more turn for 2013’s reigning champs…

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Katherine St Asaph: When I want to listen to “Dreaming,” I listen to “Dreaming.” But if I had a band I’d probably write a homage too.
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Brad Shoup: They kick up a big-band ruckus now, even incorporating the kinds of dissonant slashes that denote your favorite alt-rock concern hasn’t gone corporate. Speaking of, the Blondie/Journey vibes were uncanny: a dash of “Dreaming,” a dab of “Union City Blue,” a skosh of “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Williams wants to extend the title past waking hours, but she’s having too much fun with the “day” part. The playing is muscular and vigorous but ultimately inconsequential, like watching a consensus #1 draft pick work out at the combine.
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Scott Mildenhall: A Google search for “paramore daydreaming blondie“: satisfying, much like the song itself. The dreamers it concerns could be the madding crowds convincing themselves content as much as Hayley Williams waxing wistful for a time when she was still only able to fantasise about outgrowing them, but it needn’t be (and isn’t) either. Small-townness is just a state of mind, and yearning is universal.
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Patrick St. Michel: What Paramore does oh-so-well is confront any cynical feelings the listener might have (“these lyrics are sort of cheesy”) and blasts them away (“oh man that hook! I can’t keep this up anymore, this rules!”).
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Crystal Leww: Paramore’s self-titled album is such a triumph that even on a weaker song like “Daydreaming”, there’s still enough good bits to make it into a single. A lot of this can be attributed to the drumming, which basically works in tandem with Williams’ vocals to drive the song. The best moments have to do with the interplay between the two: the uptick in tempo halfway through the chorus, the way that “dream of somewhere else” is sung wistfully in quiet, and that last explosion of a chorus. Gotta give it up to drummer Ilan Rubin; after the departure of the Farro brothers, it must’ve been difficult to find someone who fits, but he manages to do it beautifully.
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Alfred Soto: The middle stretch of Paramore’s eponymous record is a gas. The album’s first deceleration of tempo finds Hayley Williams looking for a street where reality isn’t much different from dreams and the passing cars honk like synthesizers in Cars songs and the drums do the reminding that reality is here to stay, thank you. Although the album sports its share of ballads, “Daydreaming” is its softest song. She’s be back to wagging her finger at boyfriends who go crying to their mommas soon enough.
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Zach Lyon: The stakes seem low — “It’s not that I won’t remember where I’m from/Just don’t wanna be here no more” — but I’ll steal a lyric from sister song “Last Hope” for subtext: “Every night I try my best to dream tomorrow makes it better/Then I wake up to the core reality: not a thing has changed.” There’s agency in daydreaming, obv, and here’s a song about the danger therein, where “We’re only half alive” peeks at you from the void you built; you get so used to the dead half pulling the black hood over the living one, it’s easy to forget it can happen the other way around. Think about that new home on that new street in that new reality, she says. Don’t forget that you’re dead. Also this song is basically Modern English.
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Daniel Montesinos-Donaghy: “Daydreaming” is perfectly moon-eyed in its youthful ambition and desire for a particularly adolescent something, true to Hayley Williams’ schoolhall setting: “We wait for the bell/and we dream of somewhere else.” While the song is fine, an unwelcome feeling seeps in that the adolescent repetition is a slight regression for Paramore, especially in the wake of their increased songwriting focus and graceful genre-hopping. But then that final chorus arrives, preceded by a sudden burst of unease and subtly atonal guitars, it’s a punch-the-sky moment. The cynicism and regression fade — this is a band that knows what they’re doing. They are way too deep in the pocket by this point.
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