They might be the most famous Chicago punk band, while not exactly representing that sound. Nor did they fit in with emo traditionalists. Patrick Stump to Rolling Stone, Teenage pop-punk is about wanting to escape. But what happens when your dreams come true? Breaking out of the pop-punk box meant leaving certain fans in their wake.
Vincent van Gogh in a letter to his brother, Theo, His co-sign proved that Fall Out Boy had transcended pop-punk, even before the album came out. They may have outgrown Chicago, but they were still there for the true fans. Pete Wentz to MTV, The music video depicts the band as bumbling, awkward rockstars, delivering laugh-out-loud lyrics that cheekily diss anyone who resents their newfound fame. Emo was always an inherently funny concept - but Fall Out Boy were the first band to admit it themselves.
Fall Out Boy believed in themselves enough to not give a shit about the rock establishment. Instead, they opened up their arrangements, unashamedly blending genres - new wave, punk, pop, reggae. But its lyrics - a kiss-off to a former lover - and video, starring a young Kim Kardashian - were all Pete. Fame and notoriety, adoration and loathing: for the reality TV generation, these things were one and the same. Rockstardom is about performing masculinity; and more often than not, he chose to toe the line of sexual ambiguity.
A mixed-race, swooshy-fringed style icon for the s, he did for hoodies and guyliner what James Dean did for leather jackets and plain white tees. To his fans, of course, Wentz was more than just a pretty face - although it certainly helped.
He was as literary as Elliott Smith or Conor Oberst, but his lyrics were too tongue-in-cheek to ever come off as pretentious. He dropped diaristic confessions and future lyrics on his LiveJournal, as if they were one and the same; and his writing embodied the quippy, lowercase tone that defined pre-Twitter social media.
Bridging the gap between Page Six and his peers in the scene, he spawned an online teen gossip culture whose personalities and websites soon infiltrated the established celebrity-industrial complex. To Wentz, the media was merely an extension of his LiveJournal.
The hint-dropping worked. After a very public two-year courtship , he married Ashlee Simpson in , and the two had a son before divorcing in Now, social media fame has become the norm for artists and wannabes alike. Their successors - from Kim Kardashian to Cardi B - have become archetypes for s fame.
By turning social media into an extension of his art and personality, Wentz played a huge part in its acceptance. His hacked nudes - which, in true noughties fashion, he snapped with his Sidekick - exposed the first penis many millennial girls ever saw. But not all publicity is good publicity. The endless stream of Pete Wentz celebrity coverage only made the band bigger, but it came at the expense of his sense of self. In hindsight, the harsh scrutiny of fame only compounded his internal struggles.
Pete Wentz to Rolling Stone, An untalented asshole is just an asshole, but there was more to Wentz than his infamy. In the long run, however, his artistry outlives his reputation.
Wentz and Stump can seem like one traditional rock frontman cut in half. Like Elton John and Bernie Taupin, singer and lyricist, Pete and Patrick always speak through each other in their music. He has an unusually rich, soulful tenor; though you may not have noticed it until the music opened up to accommodate his voice. Stump and Wentz sang and wrote in a way that emphasised lyrics and melodies equally, turning wordy lyrics into pop hooks that sound completely natural.
The magic of Fall Out Boy is that you get sincere emotion and winking irony at the same time. Through his imprint Decaydance Records , Wentz spawned his own scene around him. Bands like Panic! As Stump came out of his shell, emo fell by the wayside. But who could have known it would be the final peak of emo?
The arms race was over - and Fall Out Boy had won. Taking cues from The Killers and the dance-punk revival, pop-punk and emo morphed into electropop: Metro Station, Cobra Starship.
They - and top 40 as a whole - began to embrace hedonism, bratty irony, and Europop-influenced synthesisers. Fall Out Boy soldiered on. Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes, But while Thriller was about a band of underdogs overcoming obstacles, Buffaloes is about having already made it - and still having to live with self-doubt, forever.
Being an artist means never getting comfortable. Instead of trying to stay young, Fall Out Boy embraced a more adult outlook - critiquing themselves, romance, and their fame. Compared to Infinity On High, Folie was a commercial disappointment. Fall Out Boy were every bit as honest in as they were in His confessions became more abstract, his metaphors more florid.
In the video, Stump plays the captain of a lonely fishing boat, his only friend an flightless seagull. He drifts aimlessly at sea, until he rescues the survivors - including his bandmates - from a nearby shipwreck. The band were rolling an end-credits montage on themselves, with a bittersweet message: Fall Out Boy belongs to the people.
Even before the video was released, speculation was rampant that they were signalling the end. The band officially went on hiatus in November , after eight years together. They had lives to live - and it was better to be apart than codependent. If every band stopped at their logical endpoint, this story would end here. But life goes on. Neither band necessarily did anything wrong, but truly great musical chemistry is one in a million.
Patrick had never seemed happier. Away from Fall Out Boy, Stump realised his relationship with his own musicality. He lost weight and bleached his hair, looking almost unrecognisable. Largely self-produced, Soul Punk sounded nothing like Fall Out Boy - driven by lush synths, bone-dry drums, and Michael Jackson-influenced vocals.
Nostalgia be damned, Stump found a new voice through new-old sounds. This was an album about dismantling hero worship, the kind of pedestal Fall Out Boy fans put the band on. Stump, like Fall Out Boy, was signed to Island Records - but he soon came up against the limitations of promoting solo and side projects. Soul Punk was simultaneously both and neither. You only get one chance at first exposure; Stump would've been better received as a completely new face.
Solo, Stump is a distinctive, often cynical lyricist, heavily influenced by Wentz even in his absence. Stump sounds more comfortable in Fall Out Boy, a familiar home. It remains a promising debut without a true follow-up. Patrick Stump to Red Bull, Stump was always naturally self-effacing, but Soul Punk inspired so much vitriol that it tainted what should have been a personal and creative high point.
In , Stump wrote a blog post confessing his existential frustrations, that some readers legitimately interpreted as a suicide note. The note moved Wentz to reach out. The two experimented alone, writing songs until they knew it felt right.
Pete, Patrick, Joe and Andy recorded an album in secret with producer Butch Walker, planning singles, videos, and a tour.
In February , after three years and three other projects, the only logical thing to do was get the band back together. They called their comeback album Save Rock And Roll - a title at once tongue-in-cheek, ironic, and totally serious. They shed the cynicism of , determined to make rock music that actually rocked - and felt current. Their success was anything but assured - who knew how the fans would react? Record sales were in freefall, streaming was ascendant; top 40 radio had shut out traditional rock bands.
Save Rock And Roll, The album opens with The Phoenix , a war cry not driven by heavy power chords, but booming production, string samples, and dance-punk drums.
In , Fall Out Boy crossed over from the pop-punk scene to top 40 radio. While retaining the spirit of their songwriting, they opened up their sound and expanded their appeal.
In , they reinvented themselves a second time. Young Volcanoes is an acoustic guitar-driven stomper in the wake of Mumford and Sons, Avicii and the Lumineers. It was more than a marketing move - by embracing all their musical influences, Save Rock And Roll made a statement about how we listen to music in the 21st century. Save Rock And Roll still feels like a thrilling musical and cultural moment.
But its crowning jewel is The Young Blood Chronicles, a full-length visual album released out of order over a full year. Fall Out Boy are kidnapped by a band of music-hating vixens, tortured, and pitted against each other - metaphors for their career to date. A cast of musicians, past and present, play alternative protagonists on both the record and film. Shot half a feature film?
By the end of the era, it was hard to tell if they had saved rock and roll, or killed it. In October , they were still mulling it over. In September - just four months after The Young Blood Chronicles wrapped up, and a year before anyone expected any new material - Centuries premiered. Driven by a catchy but superfluous Suzanne Vega interpolation, it felt like a guaranteed hit.
It was pure stadium rock, but synthetic, unfamiliar, and a little terrifying. Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, At the same time, the seeds Light 'Em Up planted had blossomed. Without even being sports fans, the band had become jock jam staples , their songs featured at countless sporting events. Who were they making music for? Had the old emos been replaced by a band of jock imposters? Wentz himself lists it as his least favourite FOB album.
Fall Out Boy have gained and lost fans with each new release. Emo was a culture; a culture I did not get. Turning 15 this May, Grave was your standard emo album.
On the cover, four unsmiling white boys sit with their arms crossed. Then there are songs are that a little less obvious if you are not familiar with the band. As someone who often nurses crushes of different genders at different times, I liked that I pick whom gender to sing about.
For anyone who is gay, bi, trans, non-binary, and genderfluid, Fall Out Boy lyrics became a safe space. A walking contradiction of sexual flamboyance and ambiguity, Wentz openly promotes a kind of fluidity rarely ascribed to heterosexual men. He also had no qualms kissing other men on stage or in photographs. At the Disco. Some tumblr users still declare that Pete Wentz was the first bisexual person they related to.
Wentz, however, does not identify as bisexual. And I probably even made it a bigger deal than it was. Some could cry out queerbaiting, or appropriation of gay culture, and those would be fair points. Wanting to be a minority just to be fighting people is a very privileged thing to say, and rather offensive to those who are gay.
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