Songfacts®:

• Some heavy emotions are simmering in this rocktronica track where Hayley Williams reflects on her anger. She kicks off the song by singing:
  
  Rage is a quiet thing
  You think that you've tamed it
  But it's just lying in wait
  
  Williams says the song is about "specific kinds of abuse and revenge."
• At the end of this song, Williams takes the higher road, choosing to "Wrap yourself in petals." She liked this phrase so much, she used it as the basis for the album title, Petals for Armor.
• The instrumentation stresses the song's message of anger management. Rather than incorporating thrashing guitars to signify rage, there is a calming watery harp, an alluring bass, and sinister vocal harmonies.
• Williams wrote the song with her Paramore bandmate, guitarist Taylor York, and with Paramore touring musician Joseph Howard. York also produced the track.
  
  On her next album, Flowers For Vases in 2022, she wrote all the songs with someone outside the Paramore ambit: Daniel James, who also produced the set.
• Speaking to BBC Radio 1 about the track, Williams said, "This song was such a shock. I really thought like 'Oh, I'm just gonna write. I have a lot of anger. I feel angry, like I've been through things that make me feel angry, I've witnessed things that are so not justified, and I'm angry.'"
• Hayley Williams is best known as the frontwoman for the rock band Paramore. She released a song as a solo artist in 2009 called "Teenagers" for the Jennifer's Body soundtrack, but "Simmer" was her first solo single, included on her 2020 debut solo album, Petals for Armor. Previously, Williams did make guest appearances on other artist's tunes, such as:
  
  B.O.B.'s "Airplanes."
  
  Zedd's "Stay The Night."
  
  New Found Glory's "Vicious Love."
  
  Chvrches "Bury It."
• The accompanying Warren Fu-directed music video shows a naked Williams running through the woods trying to escape a masked entity. When the entity eventually catches up with Williams, she knocks it unconscious. This results in its mask coming off, revealing Williams herself.
  
  Fu also shot the video for Paramore's After Laughter single "Rose-Colored Boy."
• Hayley Williams performed the song live for the first time during her set on the February 4, 2020 episode of BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge.
• Warren Fu shot the video during a cold winter day in Tennessee. The director admitted to MTV News that after seeing ice and hail in the weather forecast, he wondered if they should change the visual's concept. He was especially hesitant to shoot the running scenes as Williams' character, Mercy, is completely naked.
  
  "The idea behind Mercy running bare in the forest was to show a raw vulnerability and to give it a feeling of taking place out of time," Hu explained.
  
  However, Williams was happy to go ahead with their original plan. "'I'm all in. Doin' it for the art, man!'" he said, paraphrasing her.