I’m as baffled as anyone that Fall Out Boy has endured for more than a decade. Was there any band that seemed trendier in 2006, more destined to be a bullet point in a “Rememba the Early 2000’s?” listicle in 2018, than Fall Out Boy? That’s certainly what I expected.
Yet they had a Top 10 hit in 2015, and have a major release scheduled for two weeks from now. And it’s getting legitimate buzz. What the hell.
Today’s song doesn’t bring us back to the beginning (a tiny release in 2003), nor to the beginning most people know (“Sugar We’re Going Down” in 2005), but to their funkiest, most ambitious album, Folie à Deux, from 2008 (my favorite rock critic, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, compared it to Sgt. Pepper’s with a straight face). It was headlined by this “I Don’t Care,” which has a vicious guitar line, a banging chorus, and deliciously psychotic lyrics. It’s easily my most-listened FOB song, maybe even my favorite.
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Thought about commenting here with all my thoughts on Fall Out Boy, but I have too many. Here’s a smattering:
>>> I never subscribed to the idea of “guilty pleasures.” I like what I like, and don’t feel guilty about it. But my list of “artists I think are excellent who are seen as one-dimensional by peers, critics, and hipsters” usually starts off with Fall Out Boy, Linkin Park, and Ke$ha.
>>> Mixed reviews for Folie à Deux kept me from getting a copy when it was new, so nowadays I don’t know it well. But of their earlier work, I was always miffed that good songs like “Thnks fr th Mmrs” and “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” got all the airplay instead of great songs like “Chicago is So Two Years Ago” and “Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner.”
>>> Saw them play live one time, opening for Blink-182 in 2009 or 2010 I think. It was at an amphitheatre with seating on the grass up high, and I was left thinking, “Man, Fall Out Boy sure doesn’t translate well to this stage, but I bet they’d be insane in a small rock club.”
>>> By miles, my most listened to track is the acoustic “It’s Not a Side Effect of the Cocaine, I Am Thinking It Must Be Love.”
>>> People have to take you seriously when Elton John appears on your record.