Today, June 5, is Pete Wentz’s birthday, and what better way to celebrate the Fall Out Boy bassist and lyricist than with some of his best work with the band? As a young emo kid, Fall Out Boy was the biggest band in my life all through high school. And like a lot of my peers, they still occupy a place in my heart reserved for the music of my formative years. I’ve seen them on many tours, played the CDs to death, watched countless interviews. But I will never get tired of Fall Out Boy.
Obviously, a list of Pete Wentz’s best work will be different for every fan. But these are my personal favorites that feature either great bass lines or iconic songwriting. And if I think about his age, I’m going to have a breakdown about the inevitable passage of time, so let’s move on, shall we?
“What a Catch, Donnie”
“What a Catch, Donnie” is a rare ballad from Fall Out Boy, featured on their 2008 album Folie à Deux. Without getting into the minutiae of fans’ response to the style shift of this album, let’s just say it quickly became my favorite. Maybe it was the naivety of youth that allowed me to ignore the negativity of the majority. But I felt none of the pervasive “their early stuff was way better” and only “yay, more music from my favorite band!”
Despite the hate this album got, “What a Catch, Donnie” never fails to bring the fanbase to its knees. While Folie à Deux was Fall Out Boy’s most collaboratively written album, Pete Wentz penned this song particularly for Patrick Stump. It’s a potent mix of sentiment, softness, vulnerability, and powerful nostalgia that hooks you right in the heart. The ending of “What a Catch, Donnie” always hits hard for longtime fans. But if you were entrenched in the rest of the Fueled By Ramen roster, it hit way harder.
“Saturday”
Another classic Pete-and-Patrick friendship track, “Saturday” is a beloved song not only for fans, but for the band itself. Featured on their 2003 debut album Take This To Your Grave, Patrick Stump wrote the initial lyrics, which Pete Wentz then finalized. Despite the general idea of Wentz as primary songwriter, a lot of Fall Out Boy’s best tracks were co-written with Stump.
“Saturday” has closed almost every Fall Out Boy live show, and for all its relative simplicity, it’s bolstered by its delightful sentimentality. Personally, I always get mushy about this song. Once in 2016, I saw Fall Out Boy for free on my birthday (they played Universal Studios Mardi Gras, I was working at the theme park at the time, it’s a whole thing). My birthday fell on a Saturday that year, the very day of the show. And guess what song they closed the set with?
“Dance, Dance”
Put on “Dance, Dance” in a crowded room if you want to give every millennial emo kid in the place whiplash, because we’ll raise our heads so fast it’ll be like a pack of hunting dogs just caught a scent. Sometimes I think Pete Wentz deserves an award for that opening bass line. Can someone with way more authority figure that out, maybe?
As a whole, “Dance, Dance” really is perfection. From the opening bass, to the rhythmic chorus, to the utterly ridiculous, iconic music video. There’s not one element that doesn’t work, but I know some of you are going to complain about Patrick Stump’s propensity to run his words together in the early days. However, that’s kind of a big part of Fall Out Boy’s charm.
Can I decipher more half of the lyrics on their first, like, four albums? Probably not. Could I look them up and learn? Definitely! Have I done that in the last 23 years? Absolutely not, and I don’t plan to. Actually, I consider it none of my business. Because if Patrick Stump wanted me to know exactly what he was saying, he would have enunciated in the first place.
“Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part To Save the Scene and Stop Going to Shows)”
Fall Out Boy’s 2005 album From Under the Cork Tree is a certifiable no-skip, so it’s difficult to pick a track that really stands out the most for me. Overall, it would probably be “XO”. But there’s really no “XO” without “Get Busy Living…” (I’m sorry, Fall Out Boy, I love you, I’m not writing the entire song title).
The outro of “Get Busy Living…” is a classic example of the raw vocal power Pete Wentz possesses, but doesn’t often unleash. One of my (many) favorite things about early Fall Out Boy was when Pete would sneak in spoken-word poetry. It wasn’t often, and they stopped doing it for a long time. However, their latest album So Much (For) Stardust brought it back. Here, “Get Busy Living…” and “XO” are inherently linked for me because of this spoken-word outro.
It builds into an intensity that becomes almost overwhelming. Just when you feel like you’ve been pulled too tightly, there’s a split second where Pete’s voice sounds stretched like a rubber band on the verge of snapping—and then Patrick Stump opens “XO” in a transition so smooth it’s like those 27 seconds of tension didn’t even happen.
The post I’ve Found the Cure to Growing Older, and It’s Celebrating Pete Wentz’s Birthday With Some Fall Out Boy Faves appeared first on VICE.
