News broke recently of Fall Out Boy announcing a special edition re-release of their iconic sophomore album From Under The Cork Tree. While we wait for October 17, why not celebrate 20 years of absurd music videos and complete sentences as song titles? Here is a (highly subjective) Top 5 list of songs from the album.
“Dance, Dance”
When that iconic bass line hits, all the Millennials in the room raise their heads like a pack of prairie dogs. “Dance, Dance” is a staple of Emo Nites, karaoke, high school carpool sing-a-longs, and long cries in your bedroom when the reality of the inevitable passage of time hits you square in the chest. 20 years later, and I still know exactly when to make the big heart gesture that Patrick Stump does in the music video.
Speaking of the music video, it’s a veritable feast for the eyes. It primarily features Fall Out Boy performing at a high school homecoming dance. Meanwhile, geeky teenage Fall Out Boy tries and (mostly) fails to impress girls and not get beat up. Pete Wentz shows off in the dance circle for his date. Patrick Stump nearly gets his ass beat. Joe Trohman strikes out, while Andy Hurley gets a homecoming make out after sitting on the bleachers reading comics.
“Dance, Dance” really started Fall Out Boy on their pop-punk music video reign. This also included the video for “A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me.’” You remember, the vampire extravaganza with Panic! At The Disco and The Academy Is… cameos.
“Sugar, We’re Goin Down”
While “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” is a pretty obvious entry for a Top 5 list, it remains solely because it was my first real introduction to Fall Out Boy. Sure, I’d heard “Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy” first in 2003. But two years later, when I heard “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” on my portable radio tuned to the local alternative station, sitting alone on the bathroom floor for some reason, that’s when Fall Out Boy really appeared to me like a divine vision.
And again, we’re gifted with another classic Fall Out Boy music video. The iconic imagery of the kid with antlers, that maroon fair isle sweater, the deer crossing sign graffitied with a heart. Not to mention the big twist of the bigoted hunter dad getting hit by a car, revealing his deer legs. It’s a sweet love story presented against the backdrop of raw lines like “A loaded God complex / Cock it and pull it.”
“XO”
“It never calls me when I’m down / Love never wanted me / But I took it anyway” lives rent free in my brain. As an album closer, “XO” delivers long after it fades out into nothing. Brash and thrashy at first, the chorus suddenly slows into an almost lamentation. From there it picks up again to shake us by the shoulders.
It’s a secretive kind of song, both revealing and shameful all at once. The fast-paced, thrumming beginning belies a desire to hide behind some sort of bravado. Moving through the motions of hooking up, but after comes the shame. The slow rolling through regret, secrecy, choice: love or sympathy, culminating in the lines, “To the love, I left my conscience pressed / Through the keyholes / I watched you dress / Kiss and tell / Loose lips sink ships.”
“I Slept With someone in fall out boy and all i got was this stupid song written about me”
One thing I really miss about Fall Out Boy is their use of complete sentences as song titles. They started slowly breaking this habit around the 2008 Folie à Deux era. By the time of their 2013 comeback Save Rock and Roll, they had left this naming convention in the dust. Still, From Under The Cork Tree‘s song titles remain a time capsule of the band’s influence on the emo scene. Just look at the tracklist of Panic! At The Disco’s 2005 debut A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, for example.
This song in particular is great for its snide subtleties. The way it plays into one perspective of shame with the title, but another perspective in the lyrics. “Douse yourself in cheap perfume / It’s so fitting, so fitting of the way you are / Can’t cover it up, can’t cover it up.” That sly chorus gives us the outsider point of view, at odds with the first person title.
“Get busy living or get busy dying (do your part to save the scene and stop going to shows)”
When Fall Out Boy’s 2023 album So Much (For) Stardust dropped, I found myself pleasantly surprised to find them returning to a formerly lost art. That is, letting Pete Wentz recite his affectionately weird spoken word poetry. At the end of the penultimate track on From Under The Cork Tree, Wentz goes on a poetically memorable tangent. This fizzles into a distorted yet seamless transition to the album closer “XO.” 20 years later, I can recite this poetic transition with perfect recall usually reserved for Social Security Numbers. And don’t even mention the break from “Now talking’s just a waste of breath” to “And living’s just a waste of death” where Wentz goes from firmly reciting to passionate yelling.
“From day one I talked about getting out / But not forgetting about how all my worst fears are letting out / He said ‘Why put a new address on the same old loneliness?’ / When breathing just passes the time until we all just get old and die / Now talking’s just a waste of breath and living’s just a waste of death / And why put a new address on the same old loneliness? / And this is you and me, and me and you / Until we’ve got nothing left.”
Photo by Saverio Truglia/WireImage
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