Hayley Williams has shared a tribute to Chad Gilbert following the death of the New Found Glory guitarist and founding member. Gilbert died on September 20, with New Found Glory and his wife, Lisa Cimorelli, saying he passed away peacefully in his sleep while surrounded by friends and family.
Williams, the Paramore singer, described feeling unsure whether to speak publicly because she and Gilbert had become estranged. But her message ultimately centered on the musical culture they shared, the lasting relationships he helped bring into her life, and what she learned through her connection to the hardcore community.
“Life is made of the paths we cross,” Williams wrote in an Instagram Stories message, explaining why she decided to say something after initially holding back. Her post was not framed as a reassessment of their personal history. Instead, it recognized Gilbert’s place in a scene whose influence extends well beyond a list of records or a single band’s career.
Williams remembers a scene-shaping musician
Williams called Gilbert “a legend in the scene” and said their time together introduced her to people who still shape her life, as well as music and culture that made it richer. She credited his “influence and attitude” with helping guide the genre forward and highlighted his commitment to building community.
That emphasis is important in the context of hardcore. In this usage, hardcore refers to a punk-rooted music culture as much as a specific sound. Its communities have historically been sustained by local shows, touring bands, independent releases, friendships and the active participation of fans. Williams’ tribute focused on that connective side of Gilbert’s legacy: the people, ideas and cultural entry points that continue to matter after someone is gone.
She wrote that she would remain grateful for the deeper understanding and reverence for hardcore that Gilbert gave her. Williams also sent sympathy to Gilbert’s family, New Found Glory’s members and extended circle, and his friends.
“His passion for fostering the community was inspiring and sticks with me,” Williams wrote.
The message carefully acknowledges a relationship that had ended while still making room for respect and grief. Williams and Gilbert’s relationship began in 2008. They married in 2016 and divorced in 2017. Their joint statement at the time characterized marriage as difficult and love as a risk, while expressing hope despite an outcome different from the one they had anticipated.
For public figures, tributes after an estrangement can be reduced to speculation about the relationship itself. Williams’ statement resists that impulse. Its subject is Gilbert’s effect on a wider musical community, and the individual routes into that community that he opened for others.
Gilbert’s New Found Glory career
Gilbert was a founding member and guitarist of New Found Glory. He played on every album by the band, beginning with its 1999 debut, Nothing Gold Can Stay, through its 11th and most recent album, 2026’s Listen Up!.
That uninterrupted span places Gilbert at the center of New Found Glory’s recorded history. A founding member is not merely an early contributor; the term identifies someone involved in establishing the group itself. In Gilbert’s case, the supplied record also establishes long-term continuity: he remained present across the band’s full album catalog to date.
His musical work was not limited to New Found Glory. Gilbert also performed with Shai Hulud and International Superheroes of Hardcore, a New Found Glory side project. Together, those credits illustrate the overlap between band membership, side projects and adjacent scenes that Williams identified in her tribute. Musicians’ influence is often carried not only by official releases, but through the networks of people and projects around them.
New Found Glory and Cimorelli’s joint statement called Gilbert a “legendary musician,” while saying that he most valued being a husband and father. The statement described a hospital lobby quickly filling with visitors, presenting that response as evidence of how loved he was.
For readers following music-industry losses more broadly, Gilbert’s death follows another recent remembrance of a singer whose work was closely associated with a distinct alternative-era sound: Pete Byrne of Naked Eyes was remembered after his death at 74.
What is known about Gilbert’s illness
No cause of death was given in the announcement. Gilbert had, however, been dealing with cancer for many years. Earlier in 2026, he disclosed that doctors had found three brain tumors. He had also been diagnosed with adrenocortical carcinoma years after treatment for a rare adrenal cancer.
Adrenocortical carcinoma is a cancer involving the adrenal cortex, the outer part of an adrenal gland. The available information does not establish a cause of death or provide a complete medical timeline, so it would be inappropriate to draw conclusions beyond the details publicly shared. The family-and-band statement instead stressed the peaceful circumstances of his death and the presence of his wife and mother at his side.
That distinction matters. Public discussion around an artist’s illness can quickly turn incomplete medical information into definitive explanations. Here, the reported facts are narrower: Gilbert had a long history of cancer, disclosed brain tumors earlier this year, and died peacefully on September 20. Anything further has not been provided.
A tribute about influence, not revisionism
Williams’ words land because they do not pretend that history becomes simple in the aftermath of a death. She directly noted the hesitation she felt before posting. The result is a tribute that gives weight to the influence Gilbert had on her, without claiming to resolve every part of their past.
Her description of hardcore also offers the clearest lens for understanding what she wished to honor. Community-building is a meaningful part of the legacy she identified: introducing people to one another, bringing new listeners toward music and culture, and giving others a deeper appreciation of a shared scene. Those effects are less easily measured than album credits, but they can endure across years and relationships.
Gilbert’s legacy therefore has two related dimensions in the information currently available. One is his extensive musical work: a founding guitarist who played on all of New Found Glory’s albums, while also performing with Shai Hulud and International Superheroes of Hardcore. The other is the communal influence remembered by Williams and reflected in the response described by his band and family.
Williams closed her message with sympathy for Gilbert’s family, his New Found Glory family and friends. It is a concise sentiment, but one aligned with the central idea of her tribute: the paths made through music and community can remain meaningful even when the people on those paths have long since gone separate ways.
