Hayley Williams Honors Chad Gilbert: 'Forever Grateful'

Hayley Williams has paid tribute to her ex-husband Chad Gilbert, the New Found Glory founding member and lead guitarist who died on Sunday from brain cancer.

The Paramore frontwoman shared her statement in an Instagram story, opening with an admission of hesitation. "Have not known what to say or if it's appropriate. But I feel sure now that I want to [because] life is made of the paths we cross and the reasons we cross them are infinite," Williams wrote.

She credited Gilbert with shaping her musical world. "Chad is indeed a legend in the scene and my time connected to him taught me a lot. He introduced me to people that continue to shape my life in beautiful ways, and to music and culture that has made life a lot richer," she wrote.

Williams framed Gilbert's significance in terms of his effect on hardcore as a genre and a community. "There isn't much that hasn't already been said about what he contributed to the musical world a lot of us grew up in," she continued. "His influence and attitude guided the genre forward. His passion for fostering the community was inspiring and sticks with me. I will forever be grateful that from him I gained a deeper understanding and a reverence for the community and the culture of hardcore. Sending love and my sympathies to his family, NFG fam, and all his friends."

Gilbert and Williams were together from 2007 until 2017. They married in February 2016 and announced their separation a little over a year later, in July 2017. "We've grown up together and we've been beside each other through a lot of goodness and a lot of challenges," the pair wrote at the time in a shared statement on Instagram.

The divorce later surfaced in Williams' songwriting. With the release of her solo debut album, Petals for Armor, in 2020, the reasons behind the split became clearer. On the track "Dead Horse," Williams sings, "I got what I deserved / I was the other woman first."

She addressed that lyric directly in a 2020 interview with NME. "I needed to get some of that shit out; a splinter of shame needed to get pulled," she told the publication.

Williams' statement stands as one of the most personal testaments to Gilbert's legacy, coming from an artist whose decade-long connection to him intersected with her own rise from teenage frontwoman to one of the most influential voices in alternative music.