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. Essential Albums. Take This to Your Grave Albums See All. Make America Psycho Again Save Rock and Roll Infinity On High Deluxe Edition Top Videos See All.
I've Been Waiting feat. Fall Out Boy Summer Days feat. Centuries I Don't Care Bonus Video Uma Thurman Immortals From "Big Hero 6" Irresistible As the group looked up to McIlrath, and Trohman and Stump were "die-hard" Simpsons fans, the name stuck.
The group's first cassette tape demo was recorded in Rose's basement, but the band later set off for Wisconsin to record a proper demo with 7 Angels 7 Plagues drummer Jared Logan, whom Wentz knew through connections in the hardcore scene. Several more members passed through the group, including drummer Mike Pareskuwicz of Subsist and guitarist T. While Stump at this point felt uninterested in the group, Wentz was, according to Uprising Records owner Sean Muttaqi, viewing the group as "the thing that would make him famous.
He had a clear vision. Muttaqi got word of the demo and wanted to release half of it as a split extended play with Hurley's band Project Rocket, which the band viewed as competition. Uprising desired to release an album with the emerging band, which to that point had only written three songs. With the help of Logan, the group attempted to put together a collection of songs in two days, and recorded them as Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend.
The rushed recording experience and underdeveloped songs left the band discontent. When the band set off to Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin to record three songs for a possible split 7-inch with Plan, engineer Sean O'Keefe suggested the band record the trio with Hurley.
It was one of those "a-ha" moments," recalled Wentz. The band booked a two-week tour with Spitalfield, but Pareskuwicz was unable to get time off from work and Kunasch was kicked out of the band as the group "had all gotten sick of him. The band invited Hurley instead to fill-in once more, while Stump borrowed one of Trohman's guitars for the trek.
While most shows were cancelled, the band played any show possible: "Let's just get on whatever show we can. You can pay us in pizza," remembered Wentz. As the tour concluded, the general consensus was that Hurley would be the band's new drummer, and the band began to shop around the three songs from the group's unreleased split as a demo to record labels. The band members set their sights on pop punk labels, and attempted with considerable effort to join Drive-Thru Records.
A showcase for label co-founders went largely mediocre, and the band were offered to sign to side label Rushmore, an offer that the members of the band declined. The band re-entered the studio with O'Keefe to record several more tracks to create label interest.
Wentz felt "in the backseat" in writing the songs and temporarily questioned his place in the group, but Stump argued in his favor: "No! That's not fair! Don't leave me with this band! Don't make me kind of like this band and then leave it! That's bullshit! The band's early tour vehicle was a "tiny V6 that was running on three cylinders, and it was not getting enough air, so it would drive really slowly," recalled Wentz.
It was so hot it melted the plastic molding around the windows. When it rained, we'd get all wet. Rob Stevenson from Island Records eventually offered the band a "first-ever incubator sort of deal," in which they gave the band money to sign with Fueled by Ramen for the group's one-off debut, knowing they could "upstream" the band to radio on the sophomore record.
Fueled by Ramen, at the time the smallest of independent labels clamoring to sign the band, would effectively release the group's debut album and help build the band's ever-expanding fanbase before the group moved to Island. The band again partnered with O'Keefe at Smart Studios, bringing together the three songs from the demo and recording an additional seven songs in nine days.
The band, according to Stump, didn't "sleep anywhere that we could shower [ It was crazy. Arguments during the recording sessions led to what "most reductively boils down to Wentz writing the lyrics and Stump writing the melodies. Previously, one of the band's earliest recordings, Evening Out with Your Girlfriend , had not seen release until shortly before Grave in March , when the band had gained considerable momentum.
The band actively tried to stop Uprising from releasing the recordings as the band's relationship with Muttaqi had grown sour , as the band viewed it as a "giant piece of garbage" recorded before Hurley's involvement that the band members ceased to consider the debut album of the group. Gradually, the band's fanbase grew in size as the label pushed for the album's mainstream success. According to Wentz, shows began to end in a near-riot and the group were banned from several venues because the entire crowd would end up onstage.
The band joined the Warped Tour for five dates in the summer of , and on one date the band had only performed three songs when the stage collapsed due to the large crowd. The band graced the cover of the August edition of Alternative Press , and listening stations at Hot Topic partially helped the album move 2,, copies per week by Christmas , at which point the label considered the band "tipping" into mainstream success. The band had been flooded with "hyperbolic praise," and deemed "the next big thing" by multiple media outlets.
The EP was the band's first charting on the Billboard at number From Under the Cork Tree was recorded in Burbank, California, and served as the first time the band had stayed in California for an extended period of time. The group lived in corporate housing during the making of the album. It was the first Fall Out Boy record in which Stump created all the music and Wentz wrote all the lyrics, continuing the approach they took for some songs on Grave.
Stump felt that this process was much more "smooth" as every member was able to focus on his individual strengths. He explained: "We haven't had any of those moments when I play the music and he'll say, 'I don't like that,' and he'll read me lyrics and I'll say, 'I don't like those lyrics.
Two weeks before recording sessions began, the group abandoned ten songs and wrote eight more, including the album's first single, " Sugar, We're Goin Down. The band suffered a setback, however, when Wentz had an emotional breakdown in February , culminating in an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
He had withdrawn from the rest of the group, with his condition only apparent through his lyrics, and had also become obsessed with the recent Indian tsunami and his own self-doubt. Wentz swallowed a handful of Ativan anxiety pills he described the act as "hypermedicating" in the Chicago Best Buy parking lot. After being rushed to the hospital and having his stomach pumped, Wentz moved back home to Wilmette to live with his parents. From Under the Cork Tree debuted and peaked at number nine on the Billboard upon its May release.
The record's success led to stardom among teenagers in North America, and the band's first arena tour had the group playing to 10, people per night. Rolling Stone wrote that the band's "anthems," distributed and marketed through their MySpace, connected with "skinny-jeans-wearing teen girls. The album earned the band a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist, and has sold over 2. In the wake of the band's multiplatinum success, the "especially extroverted" Wentz became the most publicly visible member of the band.
He confided to the press his suicide attempt and nude photos of the bassist appeared on the Internet in He gained additional exposure through his clothing line, his Decaydance record label an imprint of Fueled by Ramen , and eventually a celebrity relationship with pop singer Ashlee Simpson, which made the two tabloid fixtures in the United States.
The band began writing songs for the new album while touring, and intended to quickly make a new album in order to keep momentum in the wake of its breakthrough success. In early , the group released its fourth studio album, Infinity on High , which was the band's second release on major label Island.
As reported by Billboard , Fall Out Boy "drifts further from its hardcore punk roots to write increasingly accessible pop tunes," a slight departure from the group's previous more pop punk sound predominant on their effort, Take This to Your Grave. Infinity 's first week was a major success and was the band's biggest selling week, selling , copies to debut at No.
This charting was first started with lead single "The Carpal Tunnel of Love", with minor success on the Billboard charts. On the band's decision to pick the song as a single, Wentz commented "There may be other songs on the record that would be bigger radio hits, but this one had the right message.
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