Fall Out Boy
From Under The Cork Tree
Fueled By Ramen/Island Records
This is the 3rd studio album from Fall Out Boy, it was recorded in Burbank, California and released May 5th, 2005. The highest position the album reached in the UK album charts is 12. Singles from the album were ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’, ‘Dance, Dance’ and ‘A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More Touch Me’.
Some facts: Pete Wentz wrote all the lyrics and they were mainly all about the depression and anxiety he suffered from as well as the suicide attempt he made. Two weeks before recording the band scrapped 10 songs and wrote 8 more including hit single ‘Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down’, the chorus of which was nearly thrown away by their record label. First song on the album ‘Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued’ is a true story as their lawyer made them change it from the proposed title of ‘My Name Is David Ruffin and These Are The Temptations’ as he pointed out that they would get sued for that.
Tracklisting:
1. Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued
2. Of All the Gin Joints in All the World
3. Dance, Dance
4. Sugar, We’re Goin Down
5. Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
6. I’ve Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song)
7. 7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen)
8. Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year
9. Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends
10. I Slept with Someone in Fall Out Boy and All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me
11. A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More “Touch Me”
12. Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows)
13. XO
8 years on and this album still means as much to me as the day it was released. It was one of the albums my 14 year old self put on her Christmas list and lo and behold my mother did well and bought it for me. Cue me spending the next 3 hours instead of getting ready for Christmas dinner at my auntie’s sitting in the living room with this on repeat learning every single word. It’s something I did very regularly to the point where even now I think I could still sing the majority, if not all, the album to you without actually hearing it. Talented, probably. Obsessed, completely. This band came along at a time in my life where I loved blink-182 but wanted to explore the musical world some more and let’s face it, 14 is a confusing age so when you have Fall Out Boy come along with their pop punk tunes they are going to capture your attention.
My life revolved around this band for such a long time that I think my mum just assumed I was going through another Busted, McFly or blink phase. But of all the albums and I do love them all because there is something good about every one, though they are not all perfect. This one to me will always be the album I love the most. It’s the first album of FOB’s I owned, the first one I listened to, the first one I learnt the words to etc. They say the bands you love as a teenager always stay with you and are the ones you will always love the most however your music style or listening changes as you get older and that could not be more true. When FOB announced their hiatus I, like many many others, was devestated but this year at the grand age of 22 and not a teenager anymore they announced their return and it sparked a fangirl excitement that is a lot more rare in me these days unless you’re Benedict Cumberbatch. It was like my teenage self had just stuck it’s head round the door and was like I’ll handle this situation for you and internally and externally if I’m truly honest screamed with excitement and cried with happiness.
With personal lyrical content on this release it is something that a lot of people can relate to. Teenage life is hard, we’ve all been there and sometimes even after it’s finished it can still be bloody difficult and I think for me there is a lot in those lyrics that I can relate to. If you really listen to them you can pick out the stories and the emotion, though most of the time hidden behind innuendo or lines that seem not to make any sense, there is something truly remarkable there. Lyrically, it’s not as poignant for me as Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ but I just think that is because it is not as immediate in it’s storytelling and emotion, where Kurt just puts it all out there for you to see and hear and feel, Pete with his lyrics skirts around the edges, never being too overly direct and if you really want to find the meaning behind them you have to do a bit of digging.
The immediacy and catchiness of the music though is something that really captured the attention of many and saw this band’s career and status skyrocket in an almost unprecendented fashion for someone in the music scene they were in. Them along with My Chemical Romance have been credited or blamed, depending on how you see it, with emo culture that dominated the early and mid 2000’s. The heyday of MySpace, super skinny jeans, tonnes of eyeliner, sweatbands, those plastic thin bands around your wrist and the MySpace pose [don’t pretend you’ve never done because we all have]. Though many may, for want of a better term, slag off emo and everything that came with it, it was a genre and subculture that really connected with teenagers again. Since grunge of the early 90’s nothing had ever really had an impact on kids like that did. Britpop, girl power and nu metal were like throwaway concepts by the side of this scene that took in a bunch of confused teenagers and told them it’s ok to be like that and while you are let’s make friends and dance along to these proper good songs.
Being not just an album that I personally love but also an album that has truly shaped a scene and a whole generation of kids, this will be one of those albums that will live on forever. Generation after generation will discover this album and have their eyes opened by it or be comforted by the lyrical content taking solace in the words being sung to them. This is 13 tracks of pop-punk brilliance with an emphasis on infectious hooks and sing a long choruses and with this Fall Out Boy became one of the biggest American pop-punk bands ever and that even today, nearly 10 years on, the opening bars of songs such as ‘Sugar, We’re Going Down’ cause excitement from many, long term fans or brand new discoverers. A true classic of an album.
Credits
Mixtape Couture 