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badnewswhatsleft · 9 months ago

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2023 september - rock sound #300 (fall out boy cover) scans

transcript below cut!

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

With the triumphant ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ capturing a whole new generation of fans, Fall Out Boy are riding high, celebrating their past while looking towards a bright future. Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump reflect on recent successes and the lessons learned from two decades of writing and performing together.

WORDS: James Wilson-Taylor PHOTOS: Elliot Ingham

You have just completed a US summer tour that included stadium shows and some of your most ambitious production to date. What were your aims going into this particular show?

PETE: Playing stadiums is a funny thing. I pushed pretty hard to do a couple this time because I think that the record Patrick came up with musically lends itself to that feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. When we were designing the cover to the album, it was meant to be all tangible, which was a reaction to tokens and skins that you can buy and avatars. The title is made out of clay, and the painting is an actual painting. We wanted to approach the show in that way as well. We’ve been playing in front of a gigantic video wall for the past eight years. Now, we wanted a stage show where you could actually walk inside it.

Did adding the new songs from ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ into the setlist change the way you felt about them?

PATRICK: One of the things that was interesting about the record was that we took a lot of time figuring out what it was going to be, what it was going to sound like. We experimented with so many different things. I was instantly really proud. I felt really good about this record but it wasn’t until we got on stage and you’re playing the songs in between our catalogue that I really felt that. It was really noticeable from the first day on this tour - we felt like a different band. There’s a new energy to it. There was something that I could hear live that I couldn’t hear before.

You also revisited a lot of older tracks and b-sides on this tour, including many from the ‘Folie à Deux’-era. What prompted those choices?

PETE: There were some lean years where there weren’t a lot of rock bands being played on pop radio or playing award shows so we tried to play the biggest songs, the biggest versions of them. We tried to make our thing really airtight, bulletproof so that when we played next to whoever the top artist was, people were like, ‘oh yeah, they should be here.’ The culture shift in the world is so interesting because now, maybe rather than going wider, it makes more sense to go deeper with people. We thought about that in the way that we listen to music and the way we watch films. Playing a song that is a b-side or barely made a record but is someone’s favourite song makes a lot of sense in this era. PATRICK: I think there also was a period there where, to Pete’s point, it was a weird time to be a rock band. We had this very strange thing that happened to us, and not a lot of our friends for some reason, where we had a bunch of hits, right? And it didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t make sense to me. But there was a kind of novelty, where we could play a whole set of songs that a lot of people know. It was fun and rewarding for us to do that. But then you run the risk of playing the same set forever. I want to love the songs that we play. I want to care about it and put passion into what we do. And there’s no sustainable way to just do the same thing every night and not get jaded. We weren’t getting there but I really wanted to make sure that we don’t ever get there. PETE: In the origin of Fall Out Boy, what happened at our concerts was we knew how to play five songs really fast and jumped off walls and the fire marshal would shut it down. It was what made the show memorable, but we wanted to be able to last and so we tried to perfect our show and the songs and the stage show and make it flawless. Then you don’t really know how much spontaneity you want to include, because something could go wrong. When we started this tour, and we did a couple of spontaneous things, it opened us up to more. Because things did go wrong and that’s what made the show special. We’re doing what is the most punk rock version of what we could be doing right now.

You seem generally a lot more comfortable celebrating your past success at this point in your career.

PETE: I think it’s actually not a change from our past. I love those records, but I never want to treat them in a cynical way. I never want there to be a wink and a smile where we’re just doing this because it’s the anniversary. This was us celebrating these random songs and we hope people celebrate them with us. There was a purity to it that felt in line with how we’ve always felt about it. I love ‘Folie à Deux’ - out of any Fall Out Boy record that’s probably the one I would listen to. But I just never want it to be done in a cynical way, where we feel like we have to. But celebrating it in a way where there’s the purity of how we felt when we wrote the song originally, I think that’s fucking awesome. PATRICK: Music is a weird art form. Because when you’re an actor and you play a character, that is a specific thing. James Bond always wears a suit and has a gun and is a secret agent. If you change one thing, that’s fine, but you can’t really change all of it. But bands are just people. You are yourself. People get attached to it like it’s a story but it’s not. That was always something that I found difficult. For the story, it’s always good to say, ‘it’s the 20th anniversary, let’s go do the 20th anniversary tour’, that’s a good story thing. But it’s not always honest. We never stopped playing a lot of the songs from ‘Take This To Your Grave’, right? So why would I need to do a 20-year anniversary and perform all the songs back to back? The only reason would be because it would probably sell a lot of tickets and I don’t really ever want to be motivated by that, frankly. One of the things that’s been amazing is that now as the band has been around for a while, we have different layers of audience. I love ‘Folie à Deux’, I do. I love that record. But I had a really personally negative experience of touring on it. So that’s what I think of when I think of that record initially. It had to be brought back to me for me to appreciate it, for me to go, ‘oh, this record is really great. I should be happy with this. I should want to play this.’ So that’s why we got into a lot of the b-sides because we realised that our perspectives on a lot of these songs were based in our feelings and experiences from when we were making them. But you can find new experiences if you play those songs. You can make new memories with them.

You alluded there to the 20th anniversary of ‘Take This To Your Grave’. Obviously you have changed and developed as a band hugely since then. But is there anything you can point to about making that debut record that has remained a part of your process since then?

PETE: We have a language, the band, and it’s definitely a language of cinema and film. That’s maintained through time. We had very disparate music tastes and influences but I think film was a place we really aligned. You could have a deep discussion because none of us were filmmakers. You could say which part was good and which part sucked and not hurt anybody’s feelings, because you weren’t going out to make a film the next day. Whereas with music, I think if we’d only had that to talk about, we would have turned out a different band. PATRICK: ‘Take This To Your Grave’, even though it’s absolutely our first record, there’s an element of it that’s still a work in progress. It is still a band figuring itself out. Andy wasn’t even officially in the band for half of the recording, right? I wasn’t even officially the guitar player for half of the recording. We were still bumbling through it. There was something that popped up a couple times throughout that record where you got these little inklings of who the band really was. We really explored that on ‘From Under The Cork Tree’. So when we talk about what has remained the same… I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t know anything about singing, I wasn’t planning on that. I didn’t even plan to really be in this band for that long because Pete had a real band that really toured so I thought this was gonna be a side project. So there’s always been this element within the band where I don’t put too many expectations on things and then Pete has this really big ambition, creatively. There’s this great interplay between the two of us where I’m kind of oblivious, and I don’t know when I’m putting out a big idea and Pete has this amazing vision to find what goes where. There’s something really magical about that because I never could have done a band like this without it. We needed everybody, we needed all four of us. And I think that’s the thing that hasn’t changed - the four of us just being ourselves and trying to figure things out. Listening back to ‘Folie’ or ‘Infinity On High’ or ‘American Beauty’, I’m always amazed at how much better they are than I remember. I listened to ‘MANIA’ the other day, and I have a lot of misgivings about that record, a lot of things I’m frustrated about. But then I’m listening to it and I’m like ‘this is pretty good.’ There’s a lot of good things in there. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like you can’t see those things. It’s kind of amazing to have Pete be able to see those things. And likewise, sometimes Pete has no idea when he writes something brilliant, as a lyricist, and I have to go, ‘No, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna use that.’

On ‘So Much (For) Stardust’, you teamed up with producer Neal Avron again for the first time since 2008. Given how much time has passed, did it take a minute to reestablish that connection or did you pick up where you left off?

PATRICK: It really didn’t feel like any time had passed between us and Neal. It was pretty seamless in terms of working with him. But then there was also the weird aspect where the last time we worked with him was kind of contentious. Interpersonally, the four of us were kind of fighting with each other… as much as we do anyway. We say that and then that myth gets built bigger than it was. We were always pretty cool with each other. It’s just that the least cool was making ‘Folie’. So then getting into it again for this record, it was like no time has passed as people but the four of us got on better so we had more to bring to Neal. PETE: It’s a little bit like when you return to your parents’ house for a holiday break when you’re in college. It’s the same house but now I can drink with my parents. We’d grown up and the first times we worked with Neal, he had to do so much more boy scout leadership, ‘you guys are all gonna be okay, we’re gonna do this activity to earn this badge so you guys don’t fucking murder each other.’ This time, we probably got a different version of Neal that was even more creative, because he had to do less psychotherapy. He went deep too. Sometimes when you’re in a session with somebody, and they’re like, ‘what are we singing about?’, I’ll just be like, ‘stuff’. He was not cool with ‘stuff’. I would get up and go into the bathroom outside the studio and look in the mirror, and think ‘what is it about? How deep are we gonna go?’ That’s a little but scarier to ask yourself. If last time Neal was like a boy scout leader, this time, it was more like a Sherpa. He was helping us get to the summit.

The title track of the album also finds you in a very reflective mood, even bringing back lyrics from ‘Love From The Other Side’. How would you describe the meaning behind that title and the song itself?

PETE: The record title has a couple of different meanings, I guess. The biggest one to me is that we basically all are former stars. That’s what we’re made of, those pieces of carbon. It still feels like the world’s gonna blow and it’s all moving too fast and the wrong things are moving too slow. That track in particular looks back at where you sometimes wish things had gone differently. But this is more from the perspective of when you’re watching a space movie, and they’re too far away and they can’t quite make it back. It doesn’t matter what they do and at some point, the astronaut accepts that. But they’re close enough that you can see the look on their face. I feel like there’s moments like that in the title track. I wish some things were different. But, as an adult going through this, you are too far away from the tether, and you’re just floating into space. It is sad and lonely but in some ways, it’s kind of freeing, because there’s other aspects of our world and my life that I love and that I want to keep shaping and changing. PATRICK: I’ll open up Pete’s lyrics and I just start hearing things. It almost feels effortless in a lot of ways. I just read his lyrics and something starts happening in my head. The first line, ‘I’m in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now’, instantly the piano started to form to me. That was a song that I came close to not sending to the band. When I make demos, I’ll usually wait until I have five or six to send to everybody. I didn’t know if anyone was gonna like this. It’s too moody or it’s not very us. But it was pretty unanimous. Everyone liked that one. I knew this had to end the record. It took on a different life in the context of the whole album. Then on the bridge section, I knew it was going to be the lyrics from ‘Love From The Other Side’. It’s got to come back here. It’s the bookends, but I also love lyrically what it does, you know, ‘in another life, you were my babe’, going back to that kind of regret, which feels different in ‘Love From The Other Side’ than it does here. When the whole song came together, it was the statement of the record.

Aside from the album, you have released a few more recent tracks that have opened you up to a whole new audience, most notably the collaboration with Taylor Swift on ‘Electric Touch’.

PETE: Taylor is the only artist that I’ve met or interacted with in recent times who creates exactly the art of who she is, but does it on such a mass level. So that’s breathtaking to watch from the sidelines. The way fans traded friendship bracelets, I don’t know what the beginning of it was, but you felt that everywhere. We felt that, I saw that in the crowd on our tour. I don’t know Taylor well, but I think she’s doing exactly what she wants and creating exactly the art that she wants to create. And doing that, on such a level, is really awe-inspiring to watch. It makes you want to make the biggest, weirdest version of our thing and put that out there.

Then there was the cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has had some big chart success for you. That must have taken you slightly by surprise.

PATRICK: It’s pretty unexpected. Pete and I were going back and forth about songs we should cover and that was an idea that I had. This is so silly but there was a song a bunch of years ago I had written called ‘Dark Horse’ and then there was a Katy Perry song called ‘Dark Horse’ and I was like, ‘damn it’, you know, I missed the boat on that one. So I thought if we don’t do this cover, somebody else is gonna do it. Let’s just get in the studio and just do it. We spent way more time on those lyrics than you would think because we really wanted to get a specific feel. It was really fun and kind of loose, we just came together in Neal’s house and recorded it in a day. PETE: There’s irreverence to it. I thought the coolest thing was when Billy Joel got asked about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not updating it, that’s fine, go for it.’ I hope if somebody ever chose to update one of ours, we’d be like that. Let them do their thing, they’ll have that version. I thought that was so fucking cool.

It’s also no secret that the sound you became most known for in the mid-2000s is having something of a commercial revival right now. But what is interesting is seeing how bands are building on that sound and changing it.

PATRICK: I love when anybody does anything that feels honest to them. Touring with Bring Me The Horizon, it was really cool seeing what’s natural to them. It makes sense. We changed our sound over time but we were always going to do that. It wasn’t a premeditated thing but for the four of us, it would have been impossible to maintain making the same kind of music forever. Whereas you’ll play with some other bands and they live that one sound. You meet up with them for dinner or something and they’re wearing the shirt of the band that sounds just like their band. You go to their house and they’re playing other bands that sound like them because they live in that thing. Whereas with the four of us and bands like Bring Me The Horizon, we change our sounds over time. And there’s nothing wrong with either. The only thing that’s wrong is if it’s unnatural to you. If you’re AC/DC and all of a sudden power ballads are in and you’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do a power ballad’, that’s when it sucks. But if you’re a thrash metal guy who likes Celine Dion then yeah, do a power ballad. Emo as a word doesn’t mean anything anymore. But if people want to call it that, if the emo thing is back or having another life again, if that’s what’s natural to an artist, I think the world needs more earnest art. If that’s who you are, then do it. PETE: It would be super egotistical to think that the wave that started with us and My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco has just been circling and cycling back. I remember seeing Nikki Sixx at the airport and he was like, ‘Oh, you’re doing a flaming bass? Mine came from a backpack.’ It keeps coming back but it looks different. Talking to Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD when he was around, it’s so interesting, because it’s so much bigger than just emo or whatever. It’s this whole big pop music thing that’s spinning and churning, and then it moves on, and then it comes back with different aspects and some of the other stuff combined. When you’re a fan of music and art and film, you take different stuff, you add different ingredients, because that’s your taste. Seeing the bands that are up and coming to me, it’s so exciting, because the rules are just different, right? It’s really cool to see artists that lean into the weirdness and lean into a left turn when everyone’s telling you to make a right. That’s so refreshing. PATRICK: It’s really important as an artist gets older to not put too much stock in your own influence. The moment right now that we’re in is bigger than emo and bigger than whatever was happening in 2005. There’s a great line in ‘Downton Abbey’ where someone was asking the Lord about owning this manor and he’s like, ‘well, you don’t really own it, there have been hundreds of owners and you are the custodian of it for a brief time.’ That’s what pop music is like. You just have the ball for a minute and you’re gonna pass it on to somebody else.

We will soon see you in the UK for your arena tour. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

PETE: I remember the first time we went to the UK, I wasn’t prepared for how culturally different it was. When we played Reading & Leeds and the summer festivals, it was so different, and so much deeper within the culture. It was a little bit of a shock. The first couple of times we played, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, are we gonna die?’ because the crowd was so crazy, and there was bottles. Then when we came back, we thought maybe this is a beast to be tamed. Finally, you realise it’s a trading of energy. That made the last couple of festivals we played so fucking awesome. When you really realise that the fans over there are real fans of music. It’s really awesome and pretty beautiful. PATRICK: We’ve played the UK now more than a lot of regions of the states. Pretty early on, I just clicked with it. There were differences, cultural things and things that you didn’t expect. But it never felt that different or foreign to me, just a different flavour… PETE: This is why me and Patrick work so well together (laughs). PATRICK: Well, listen; I’m a rainy weather guy. There is just things that I get there. I don’t really drink anymore all that much. But I totally will have a beer in the UK, there’s something different about every aspect of it, about the ordering of it, about the flavour of it, everything, it’s like a different vibe. The UK audience seemed to click with us too. There have been plenty of times where we felt almost more like a UK band than an American one. There have been years where you go there and almost get a more familial reaction than you would at home. Rock Sound has always been a part of that for us. It was one of the first magazines to care about us and the first magazine to do real interviews. That’s the thing, you would do all these interviews and a lot of them would be like ‘so where did the band’s name come from?’ But Rock Sound took us seriously as artists, maybe before some of us did. That actually made us think about who we are and that was a really cool experience. I think in a lot of ways, we wouldn’t be the band we are without the UK, because I think it taught us a lot about what it is to be yourself.

Fall Out Boy’s ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen.

#the cover is so funny. like theyre cute but that is genuinely bug angle. that is bugs under a rock angle. THEYRE ALREADY SHORT KINGS #fall out boy #pete wentz #patrick stump #andy hurley #joe trohman #time capsule #read the charts #ANYWAY GO HERE. GO READ HERE. BECAUSE I SPENT A LONG TIME TRANSCRIBING EVEN THO TRNASNCRIBING SUCKKSSS #i looped the spell soundtrack like 5 times and got jusmpscared by track9 every time. and then i put on smfs<3 #patrick's comments about the mythologising of fob lore is so interesting #listen baby i know ur fed up and it's not ur fault but u have to understand. the story of ur band is on some genuine fanfic ass other level #the way they talk about neal avron is sooo funny #imagine being producer for this young band. and theyre brilliant but theyre also twentysomethings(derogatory)#also the way pete talks abt swift. lol. also why does he answer the q when patrick was the one in the studio lol???#ALSO also. pete being afraid of british ppl (valid and true)#and patrick pretty much taking to the uk like a duck to water (also valid and tru) is sooo funny #i rlly liked this interview i wiiiiish i got the bundle w the photobook and whatever but i was way too late :(((((((((

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sunyalucks · 3 months ago

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hi!!! i'm milly, i'm brand new to tumblr, and i'm just trying to get to know all my mutuals!!! ⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖࣪

❀˖° how would you describe your aesthetic?

❀˖° if you could only listen to one album for the rest of your life what would it be?

❀˖° what's your favorite weather?

❀˖° who are some of your favorite mutuals? (sorry if i already asked u this haha im just trying to meet more people!!!)

OMG HII welcome omg 😙 this is so cool to do so i’m be glad to try and let u know more about me:))

SO my aesthetic is literally non existent 😭it changes constantly and I dont really have a specific style BUTT i do really love the fancy, rich, european traveling type?? dont know how to explain it😣

one album for the rest of my life would KILL me bc i love so much music but i’m PROBABLY gonna go with stick season (we’ll all be here together) or the rise and fall of ziggy stardust and the spiders from mars !!

fav weather is like, both warm but cold?? like decently chilly with no sun but the weather is still warm i cant explain it😓

FAV MUTUALS IS SOO HARD 🙁 i love them all but i’ll go with @isnthatsweet , @sweetnnaivete , @maybxlle , @starlitszn , @luvusrry , @iheartgirlzn and there’s covey but she’s currently on hiatus so ☹️☹️ (i know theres so much more but guys i have the memory of a goldfish and the mouth of a yapper.) AND THEY ALSO HAVE THE PRETTIEST THE BLOGS OMG

ANYWAYSS omg im so excited to interact and get to know uuu !!!💕

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vampylily · 1 year ago

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Transcription of Fall Out Boy's interview with Rock Sound

Since I was going to read the article anyways, I thought I'd transcribe in case it'll be more accessible to read for others. The interview with Pete and Patrick goes in depth on the topics of tourdust, evolving as a band, So Much (For) Stardust, working with Neal Avron, and more.

Thank you to @nomaptomyowntreasure who kindly shared the photos of the article! Their post is linked here.

PDF link here. (more readable format & font size)

article in text below (and warning for long post.)

Rock Sound Issue #300

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

WITH THE TRIUMPHANT ‘SO MUCH (FOR) STARDUST’ CAPTURING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION OF FANS, FALL OUT BOY ARE RIDING HIGH, CELEBRATING THEIR PAST WHILE LOOKING TOWARDS A BRIGHT FUTURE. PETE WENTZ AND PATRICK STUMP REFLECT ON RECENT SUCCESSES AND THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM TWO DECADES OF WRITING AND PERFORMING TOGETHER.

WORDS: James Wilson-Taylor

PHOTOS: Elliott Ingham

You have just completed a US summer tour that included stadium shows and some of your most ambitious production to date. What were your aims going into this particular show?

PETE: Playing stadiums is a funny thing. I pushed pretty hard to do a couple this time because I think that the record Patrick came up with musically lends itself to that feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. When we were designing the cover to the album, it was meant to be all tangible, which was a reaction to tokens and skins that you can buy and avatars. The title is made out of clay, and the painting is an actual painting. We wanted to approach the show in that way as well. We've been playing in front of a gigantic video wall for the past eight years. Now, we wanted a stage show where you could actually walk inside it.

Did adding the new songs from ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ into the setlist change the way you felt about them?

PATRICK: One of the things that was interesting about the record was that we took a lot of time figuring out what it was going to be, what it was going to sound like. We experimented with so many different things. I was instantly really proud. I felt really good about this record but it wasn’t until we got on stage and you’re playing the songs in between our catalogue that I really felt that. It was really noticeable from the first day on this tour - we felt like a different band. There's a new energy to it. There was something that I could hear live that I couldn't hear before.

You also revisited a lot of older tracks and b-sides on this tour, including many from the ‘Folie à Deux’-era. What prompted those choices?

PETE: There were some lean years where there weren't a lot of rock bands being played on pop radio or playing award shows so we tried to play the biggest songs, the biggest versions of them. We tried to make our thing really airtight, bulletproof so that when we played next to whoever the top artist was, people were like, ‘oh yeah, they should be here.’ The culture shift in the world is so interesting because now, maybe rather than going wider, it makes more sense to go deeper with people. We thought about that in the way that we listen to music and the way we watch films. Playing a song that is a b-side or barely made a record but is someone’s favourite song makes a lot of sense in this era.

PATRICK: I think there also was a period there where, to Pete’s point, it was a weird time to be a rock band. We had this very strange thing that happened to us, and not a lot of our friends for some reason, where we had a bunch of hits, right? And it didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t make sense to me. But there was a kind of novelty, where we could play a whole set of songs that a lot of people know. It was fun and rewarding for us to do that. But then you run the risk of playing the same set forever. I want to love the songs that we play. I want to care about it and put passion into what we do. And there’s no sustainable way to just do the same thing every night and not get jaded. We weren’t getting there but I really wanted to make sure that we don’t ever get there.

PETE: In the origin of Fall Out Boy, what happened at our concerts was we knew how to play five songs really fast and jumped off walls and the fire marshal would shut it down. It was what made the show memorable, but we wanted to be able to last and so we tried to perfect our show and the songs and the stage show and make it flawless. Then you don’t really know how much spontaneity you want to include, because something could go wrong. When we started this tour, and we did a couple of spontaneous things, it opened us up to more. Because things did go wrong and that’s what made the show special. We’re doing what is the most punk rock version of what we could be doing right now.

You seem generally a lot more comfortable celebrating your past success at this point in your career.

PATRICK: Music is a weird art form. Because when you’re an actor and you play a character, that is a specific thing. James Bond always wears a suit and has a gun and is a secret agent. If you change one thing, that’s fine, but you can’t really change all of it. But bands are just people. You are yourself. People get attached to it like it’s a story but it’s not. That was always something I found difficult. For the story, it’s always good to say, ‘it’s the 20th anniversary, let’s go do the 20th anniversary tour’, that’s a good story thing. But it’s not always honest. We never stopped playing a lot of the songs from ‘Take This To Your Grave’, right? So why would I need to do a 20-year anniversary and perform all the songs back to back? The only reason would be because it would probably sell a lot of tickets and I don’t really ever want to be motivated by that, frankly.

One of the things that’s been amazing is that now as the band has been around for a while, we have different layers of audience. I love ‘Folie à Deux’, I do, I love that record. But I had a really personally negative experience of touring on it. So that’s what I think of when I think of that record initially. It had to be brought back to me for me to appreciate it, for me to go, ‘oh, this record is really great. I should be happy with this. I should want to play this,’ So that’s why we got into a lot of the b-sides because we realised that our perspectives on a lot of these songs were based in our feelings and experiences from when we were making them. But you can find new experiences if you play those songs. You can make new memories with them.

PATRICK: ‘Take This To Your Grave’, even though it’s absolutely our first record, there’s an element of it that’s still a work in progress. It is still a band figuring itself out. Andy wasn’t even officially in the band for half of the recording, right? I wasn’t even officially the guitar player for half of the recording. We were still bumbling through it. There was something that popped up a couple times throughout the record where you got these little inklings of who the band really was. We really explored that on ‘From Under the Cork Tree’’. So when we talk about what has remained the same… I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t know anything about singing, I wasn’t playing on that. I didn’t even plan to really be in this band for that long because Pete had a real band that really toured so I thought this was gonna be a side project. So there’s always been this element within the band where I don’t put too many expectations on things and then Pete has this really big ambition, creatively. There’s this great interplay between the tour of us where I’m kind of oblivious, and I don’t know when I’m putting out a big idea and Pete has this amazing vision to find what goes where. There’s something really magical about that because I never could have done a band like this without it. We needed everybody, we needed all four of us. And I think that’s the thing that hasn’t changed - the four of us just being ourselves and trying to figure things out. Listening back to ‘Folie’ or ‘Infinity On High’ or ‘American Beauty’. I’m always amazed at how much better they are than I remember. I listened to ‘MANIA’ the other day. I have a lot of misgivings about that record, a lot of things I’m frustrated about. But then I’m listening to it and I’m like, ‘this is pretty good.’ There’s a lot of good things in there. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like you can’t see those things. It’s kind of amazing to have Pete be able to see those things. And likewise, sometimes Pete has no idea when he writes something brilliant, as a lyricist, and I have to go, ‘No, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna use that.’

On ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ you teamed up with producer Neal Avron again for the first time since 2008. Given how much time has passed, did it take a minute to reestablish that connection or did you pick up where you left off?

PETE: It’s a little bit like when you return to your parents’ house for the holiday break when you’re in college. It’s the same house but now I can drink with my parents. We’d grown up and the first times we worked with Neal, he had to do so much more boy scout leadership, ‘you guys are all gonna be okay, we’re gonna do this activity to earn this badge so you guys don’t fucking murder each other.’ This time, we probably got a different version of Neal that was even more creative, because he had to do less psychotherapy.

He went deep too. Sometimes when you’re in a session with somebody, and they’re like, ‘what are we singing about?’, I’ll just be like, ‘stuff’. He was not cool with ‘stuff’. I would get up and go into the bathroom outside the studio and look in the mirror, and think ‘what is it about? How deep are we gonna go?’ That’s a little bit scarier to ask yourself. If last time Neal was like a boy scout leader, this time, it was more like a Sherpa. He was helping us get to the summit.

The title track of the album also finds you in a very reflective mood, even bringing back lyrics from ‘Love From the Other Side’. How would you describe the meaning behind that title and the song itself?

Patrick: I’ll open up Pete’s lyrics and I just start hearing things. It almost feels effortless in a lot of ways. I just read his lyrics and something starts happening in my head. The first line, ‘I’m in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now’, instantly the piano started to form to me. That was a song that I came close to not sending the band. When I make demos, I’ll usually wait until I have five or six to send to everybody. I didn’t know if anyone was gonna like this. It’s too moody or it’s not very us. But it was pretty unanimous. Everybody liked that one. I knew this had to end the record. It took on a different life in the context of the whole album. Then on the bridge section, I knew it was going to be the lyrics from “Love From The Other Side’. It’s got to come back here. It’s the bookends, but I also love lyrically what it does, you know, ‘in another life, you were my babe’, going back to that kind of regret, which feels different in ‘Love From The Other Side’ than it does here. When the whole song came together, it was the statement of the record.

Aside from the album, you have released a few more recent tracks that have opened you up to a whole new audience, most notably the collaboration with Taylor Swift on ‘Electric Touch’.

PETE: Taylor is the only artist that I’ve met or interacted with in recent times who creates exactly the art of who she is, but does it one such a mass level. So that’s breathtaking to watch from the sidelines. The way fans traded friendship bracelets, I don’t know what the beginning of it was, but you felt that everywhere. We felt that, I saw that in the crowd on our tour. I don’t know Taylor well, but I think she’s doing exactly what she wants and creating exactly the art that she wants to create. And going that, on such a level, is really awe-inspiring to watch. It makes you want to make the biggest, weirdest version of our thing and put that out there.

Then there was the cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has had some big chart success for you. That must have taken you slightly by surprise.

PETE: There's irreverence to it. I thought the coolest thing was when Billy Joel got asked about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not updating it, that’s fine, go for it.’ I hope if somebody ever chose to update one of ours, we’d be like that. Let them do their thing, they’ll have that version. I thought that was so fucking cool.

It’s almost no secret that the sound you became most known for in the md-2000s is having something of a commercial revival right now But what is interesting is seeing how bands are building on that sound and changing it.

PETE: It would be super egotistical to think that the wave that started with us and My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco has just been circling and cycling back. I remember seeing Nikki Sixx at the airport and he was like, ‘Oh you’re doing a flaming bass? Mine came from a backpack.’ It keeps coming back but it looks different. Talking to Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD when he was around, it’s so interesting, because it’s so much bigger than just emo or whatever. It’s this whole big pop music thing that’s spinning and churning, and then it moves on, and then it comes back with different aspects and some of the other stuff combined. When you’re a fan of music and art and film, you take different stuff, you add different ingredients, because that’s your taste. Seeing the bands that are up and coming to me, it’s so exciting, because the rules are just different, right? It’s really cool to see artists that lean into the weirdness and lean into a left turn when everyone’s telling you to make a right. That’s so refreshing.

PATRICK: It’s really important as an artist gets older to not put too much stock in your own influence. The moment right now that we’re in is bigger than emo and bigger than whatever was happening in 2005. There’s a great line in ‘Downton Abbey’ where someone was asking the Lord about owning this manor and he’s like ‘well, you don’t really own it, there have been hundreds of owners and you are the custodian of it for a brief time.’ That’s what pop music is like. You just have the ball for a minute and you’re gonna pass it on to somebody else.

We will soon see you in the UK for your arena tour. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

PATRICK: We’ve played the UK now more than a lot of regions of the states. Pretty early on, I just clicked with it. There were differences, cultural things and things that you didn’t expect. But it never felt that different or foreign to me, just a different flavour…

PETE: This is why me and Patrick work so well together (laughs).

PATRICK: Well, listen; I’m a rainy weather guy. There is just things that I get there. I don’t really drink anymore all that much. But I totally will have a beer in the UL, there’s something different about every aspect of it, about the ordering of it, about the flavour of it, everything, it’s like a different vibe. The UK audience seemed to click with us too. There have been plenty of times where we felt almost like a UK band than an American one. There have been years where you go there and almost get a more familial reaction than you would at home.

Rock Sound has always been a part of that for us. It was one of the first magazines to care about us and the first magazine to do real interviews. That’s the thing, you would do all these interviews and a lot of them would be like ‘so where did the band’s name come from?’ But Rock Sound took us seriously as artists, maybe before some of us did. That actually made us think about who we are and that was a really cool experience. I think in a lot of ways, we wouldn’t be the band we are without the UK, because I think it taught us a lot about what it is to be yourself.

Fall Out Boy’s ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen

#fall out boy #fob #tourdust #pete wentz #patrick stump #fob interview #so much for stardust #smfs era #your unemployed friend at 2pm on a monday:#anyways. hope this is helpful i loved the interview!

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little-devils-advocate · 4 months ago

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My Personal Experience With Neil Gaiman Here on Tumblr

So, I'm sure anyone who comes across my Blog will see from my Pinned Post that it was previously Deactivated here on Tumblr. I essentially used the Blog to discuss controversial issues: abortion, gun control, BLM, etc. & had done a lot of work there. I had been running it for years & talked about some pretty heavy stuff, catching a lot of criticism for my views, but I had never been Deactivated or even had anything taken down.

As you can see from what I have Posted here since restarting, I am a huge advocate for the homeless. I had been Following @neil-gaiman for a while as a minor fan, mainly due to my enjoyment of his stories Stardust & American Gods. I've read none of his books, because the writing style didn't appeal to me, but I have some of them & watched the Stardust movie & the American Gods show.

Anyway, I'd previously seen him Posting here on Tumblr complaining about his residuals & how little money he was making, which rubbed me the wrong way for obvious reasons, but I let it go, because it wasn't that big of a deal to me at the time. Everyone has scruples.

OP:

Months later I saw him Posting about the recent writer's strike & going on a tangent again. Everyone was patting him on the back & agreeing with him & it irked me. Badly. So, I Reblogged it with a picture of a tent city & a link to Sia's album Some People Have Real Problems. Obviously, it irked me that someone of his means was complaining about his residuals & how little writers make when people all over the country are struggling to make ends meet, many of them falling victim to homelessness. Like I said: some people have real problems. Writers also make much more than your average worker, but I digress.

He. Was. PISSED. He then proceeded to attack me on his Blog. I can't remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of 'I'm famous, how dare you question me!' I was then attacked relentlessly by his mob of fans to whom I vehemently defended myself & my position. I even recall one fan telling me that 'One day [I was] gonna wake up & regret insulting Neil Gaiman.' I think it's safe to say that day never came. 🙄

I wish I had screenshots for you all, but, like I said, my Blog was almost immediately taken down after the incident, which I find crazy as nothing I Posted in regards to this was out of line in any way. I did have some questionable shit on my Blog due to my endless defense against trolls, but like I said before, none of it had ever gotten pulled until then, so I'm really not sure what happened. I checked his Blog, but I can no longer find the Post there.

My guess is that Neil has some very serious issues with women &, quite frankly, I'm not suprised. I feel terrible for cracking up at him being dragged through the mud when I first got online this morning. I just saw part of the Post on FB via Threads & couldn't read it all, so I wondered what he did this time. I could never have imagined that it had to do with a SA or I would never have cracked a joke. I will try to be fully informed before I Post from now on, I just really felt a sense of vindication & closure when I saw that, & now even more so. And to that asshole, I will never wake up & regret insulting Neil Gaiman; Maybe if he wasn't being an entitled piece of shit with a broken moral compass I never would have done it. It just goes to show you that we need to stop idolizing celebrities. "You don't know these people."

I hope any of his victims continue to come forward so he can get his just desserts. On a personal level, I am so, so sorry that this happened to you & I empathize with you.

-LDA

Context:

#neil gaiman #personal story #tumblr #deactivated #sia #love a terfing jk rowling fan #at least I read her books #fuck you #jk rowling #me too #Spotify

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pisshandkerchief · 1 year ago

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When I got into Fall Out Boy on the tail end of last year I never imagined I'd be here. I remember learning all the lore and getting to know the band in the middle of the Stardust release cycle, feeling a little out of the loop, like I was late to the party (kind of like how I felt with MCR). but you guys have made me feel so welcomed and loved, even if I'm so much newer here than the rest of you. I'll never forget getting excited over every new song teaser, laughing and joking about every new music video and TikTok from the band, watching everyone be so supportive of Joe on his mental health break, being so happy when he felt good enough to come back. I'll never forget watching all the interviews, picking them apart with my mutuals, seeing first hand all the love and respect for each other the members of this band have. To get a little personal here, I was in a tough place in my life when Stardust was first announced. I was in my senior year of highschool, and for awhile I didn't have a phone, so I had to keep up with Tumblr at night, on a shitty old computer. At school I would listen to every song teaser in class and talk to some of my Tumblr friends on Google chat about it because it was my only option. I remember as soon as Stardust came out I downloaded it onto my old iPod and listened to it every night to fall asleep. It was so important to me to have this thing I could connect with people over. To witness this band who love each other so much, who pour that love out in every interview, who spread it to the world through the music they make, who are so open and honest about their mental health, who say that it's ok to feel despair, to be frustrated with the world, that sometimes life does feel meaningless, but you can find pleasure in the details, you can always pick yourself up and keep going, because there will always be people who want you whole: that meant the world to me. I bonded with one of my closest friends, Charlie, over Fall Out Boy. The first vinyl I ever bought was the gold special edition of So Much (For) Stardust. The first concert that I actually wanted to go to, that I chose for myself, was the Fall Out Boy show I went to with Charlie (this was also the first time I had the privilege of meeting an online friend in person. it's an experience I'll never forget, and one I hope I get to repeat).

This has gotten rambly, but what I'm trying to say is this: there is so much love in this community. Love for the band, love for the music, love for each other. I may not have been with Fall Out Boy for very long but I know this is going to stick with me. I feel so honored to be experiencing perhaps the best (and definitely the happiest) era of Fall Out Boy as it happens. I feel so honored to be experiencing it with all of you and I hope that we stay in touch. I don't have the words to describe how much this album, this tour, this band, has meant to me already. Thank you. All of you. Fall Out Boy forever 💜

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softnsquishable · 1 year ago

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Thanks to this lovely post, I have been able to transcribe the entirety of the new Rock Sound magazine interview with Pete and Patrick. Find the entire transcript below the cut!

WHAT A TIME TO BE ALIVE

WITH THE TRIUMPHANT ‘SO MUCH (FOR) STARDUST’ CAPTURING A WHOLE NEW GENERATION OF FANS, FALL OUT BOY ARE RIDING HIGH. CELEBRATING THEIR PAST WHILE LOOKING TOWARDS A BRIGHT FUTURE. PETE WENTZ AND PATRICK STUMP REFLECT ON RECENT SUCCESSES AND THE LESSONS LEARNED FROM TWO DECADES OF WRITING AND PERFORMING TOGETHER.

You have just completed a US summer tour that included stadium shows and some of your most ambitious production to date. What were your aims going into this particular show?

Pete: Playing stadiums is a funny thing. I pushed pretty hard to do a couple this time because I think that the record Patrick came up with musically lends itself to that feeling of being part of something larger than yourself. When we were designing the cover to the album, it was meant to be all tangible, which was a reaction to tokens and skins that you can buy and avatars. The title is made out of clay, and the painting is an actual painting. We wanted to approach the show in that way as well. We’ve been playing in front of a gigantic video wall for the past eight years. Now, we wanted a stage show where you could actually walk inside it.

Did adding the new songs from ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ into the setlist change the way you felt about them?

Patrick: One of the things that was interesting about the record was that we took a lot of time figuring out what it was going to be, what it was going to sound like. We experimented with so many different things. I was instantly really proud. I felt really good about this record but it wasn’t until we got on stage and you’re playing the songs in between our catalogue that I really felt that.It was really noticeable from the first day on this tour - we felt like a different band. There’s a new energy to it. There was something that I could hear live that I couldn’t hear before.

You also revisited a lot of older tracks and b-sides on this tour, including many from the ‘Folie à Deux’-era. What prompted those choices?

Pete: There were some lean years where there weren’t a lot of rock bands being played on pop radio or playing award shows so we tried to play the biggest songs, the biggest versions of them. We tried to make our thing really airtight, bulletproof so that when we played next to whoever the top artist was, people were like, ‘oh yeah, they should be here.’ The culture shift in the world is so interesting because now, maybe rather than going wider, it makes more sense to go deeper with people. We thought about that in the way that we listen to music and the way we watch films. Playing a song that is a b-side or barely made a record but is someone's favorite song makes a lot of sense in this era.

Patrick: I think there also was a period there where, to Pete’s point, it was a weird time to be a rock band. We had this very strange thing that happened to us, and not a lot of our friends for some reason, where we had a bunch of hits, right? And it didn’t make any sense to me. It still doesn’t make sense to me. But there was a kind of novelty, where we could play a whole set of songs that a lot of people know. It was fun and rewarding for us to do that. But then you run the risk of playing the same set forever. I want to love the songs that we play. I want to care about it and put passion into what we do. And there’s no sustainable way to just do the same thing every night and not get jaded. We weren’t getting there but I really wanted to make sure that we don’t ever get there.

Pete: In the origin of Fall Out Boy, what happened at our concerts was we knew how to play five songs really fast and jumped off walls and the fire marshal would shut it down. It was what made the show memorable, but we wanted to be able to last and so we tried to perfect our show and the songs and the stage show and make it flawless. Then you don’t really know how much spontaneity you want to include, because something could go wrong. When we started this tour, and we did a couple of spontaneous things, it opened us up to more. Because things did go wrong and that’s what made the show special. We’re doing what is the most punk rock version of what we could be doing right now.

You seem generally a lot more comfortable celebrating your past success at this point in your career.

Pete: I think it’s actually not a change from our past. I love those records, but I never want to treat them in a cynical way. I never want there to be a wink and a smile where we’re just doing this because it’s the anniversary. Thai was us celebrating these random songs and we hope people celebrate them with us. There was a purity to it that felt in line with how we always felt about it. I love ‘Folie à Deux’ - out of any Fall Out Boy record that’s probably the one I would listen to. But I just never want it to be done in a cynical way, where we feel like we have to. But celebrating it in a way where there’s the purity of how we felt when we wrote the song originally, I think that’s fucking awesome.

Patrick: Music is a weird art form. Because when you’re an actor and you play a character, that is a specific thing. James Bond always wears a suit and has a gun and is a secret agent. If you change one thing, that’s fine, but you can’t really change all of it. But bands are just people. You are yourself. People get attached to it like it’s a story but it’s not. That was always something that I found difficult. For the story, it’s always good to say, ‘it’s the 20th anniversary, let’s go do the 20th anniversary tour,’ that’s a good story thing. But it’s not always honest. We never stopped playing a lot of the songs from ‘Take This To Your Grave’, right? So why would I need to do a 20-year anniversary and perform all the songs back to back? The only reason would be because it would probably sell a lot of tickets and I don’t really ever want to be motivated by that, frankly.

One of the things that’s been amazing is that now as the band has been around for a while, we have different layers of audience. I love ‘Folie à Deux’, I do, I love that record. But I had a really personally negative experience of touring on it. So that’s what I think of when I think of that record initially. It had to be brought back to me for me to appreciate it, for me to go, ‘oh, this record is really great. I should be happy with this. I should want to play this.’ So that’s why we got into a lot of the b-sides because we realized that our perspectives on a lot of these songs were based in our feelings and experiences from when we were making them. But you can find new experiences if you play those songs. You can make new memories with them.

Pete: We have a language, the band, and it’s definitely a language of cinema and film. That’s maintained through time. We have very disparate musical tastes and influences but I think film was a place we really aligned. You could have a deep discussion, because none of us were filmmakers. You could say which part was good and which part sucked and not hurt anybody’s feelings, because you weren’t going out to make a film the next day. Whereas with music, I think if we’d only had that to talk about, we would have turned out a different band.

Patrick: ‘Take This To Your Grave’, even though it’s absolutely our first record, there’s an element of it that’s still a work in progress. It is still a band figuring itself out. Andy wasn’t even officially in the band for half of the recording, right? I wasn’t even officially the guitar player for half of the recording. We were still bumbling through it. There was something that popped up a couple times throughout that record where you got these little inklings of who the band really was. We really explored that on ‘From Under The Cork Tree’.

So when we talk about what has remained the same…I didn’t want to be a singer, I didn’t know anything about singing. I wasn’t planning on that. I didn’t even plan to really be in this band for that long because Pete had a real band that really toured so I thought this was gonna be a side project. So there’s always been this element within the band where I don’t put too many expectations on things and then Pete has this really big ambition, creatively. There’s this great interplay between the two of us where I’m kind of oblivious, and I don’t know when I’m putting out a big idea and Pete has this amazing vision to find what goes where. There’s something really magical about that because I never could have done a band like this without it. We needed everybody, we needed all four of us. And I think that’s the thing that hasn’t changed. - the four of us just being ourselves and trying to figure things out. Listening back to ‘Folie’ or ‘Infinity On High’ or ‘American Beauty’, I’m always amazed at how much better they are then I remember. I listened to ‘MANIA’ the other day. I have a lot of misgivings about that record, a lot of things that I’m frustrated about. But then I’m listening to it and I’m like, ‘this is pretty good.’ There’s a lot of good things in there. I don’t know why, it’s kind of like you can’t see those things. It’s kind of amazing to have Pete be able to see those things. And likewise, sometimes Pete has no idea when he writes something brilliant, as a lyricist, and I have to go, ‘No, I’m gonna keep that one, I’m gonna use that.’

Patrick: It really didn’t feel like any time had passed between us and Neal. It was pretty seamless in terms of working with him. But then there was also that weird aspect where the last time we had worked with him was kind of contentious. Interpersonally, the four of us were kind of fighting with each other…as much as we do anyway. We say that and the myth gets built bigger than it was. We were always pretty cool with each other. It’s just that the least cool was making ‘Folie’. So then getting into it again for this record, it was like no time had passed as people but the four of us got on better so we had more to bring to Neal.

Pete: It’s a little bit like when you return to your parents’ house for a holiday break when you’re in college. It’s the same house but now I can drink with my parents. We’d grown up and the first times we worked with Neal, he had to do so much more boy scout leadership, ‘you guys are all gonna be okay, we’re gonna do this activity to earn this badge so you guys don’t fucking murder each other.’ This time, we probably got a different version of Neal that was even more creative, because he had to do less psychotherapy.

Pete: The record title has a couple of different meanings, I guess. The biggest one to me is that we basically all are former stars. That’s what we’re made of, those pieces of carbon. It still feels like the world’s gonna blow and it’s all moving too fast and the wrong things are moving too slow. That track in particular looks back at where you sometimes wish things had gone differently. But this is more from the perspective of when you’re watching a space movie, and they’re too far away and they can’t quite make it back. It doesn’t matter what they do and at some point, the astronaut accepts that. But they’re close enough that you can see the look on their face. I feel like there’s moments like that in the title track. I wish some things were different. But, as an adult going through this, you are too far away from the tether, and you’re just floating into space. It is sad and lonely but in some ways, it’s kind of freeing, because there’s other aspects of our world and my life that I love and that I want to keep shaping and changing.

Patrick: I’ll open up Pete’s lyrics and I just start hearing things. It almost feels effortless in a lot of ways. I just read his lyrics and something starts happening in my head. The first line, ‘I’m in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now’, instantly the piano started to form to me. That was a song that I came close to not sending to the band. When I make demos, I’ll usually wait until I have five or six to send to everybody. I didn’t know if anyone was gonna like this. It’s too moody or it’s not very us. But it was pretty unanimous. Everybody liked that one. I knew this had to end the record. It took on a different life in the context of the whole album. Then on the bridge section, I knew it was going to be the lyrics from ‘Love For The Other Side’. It’s got to come back here. It’s the bookends, but I also love lyrically what it does, you know, ‘in another life, you were my babe’, going back to that kind of regret, which feels different in ‘Love For The Other Side’ than it does here. When the whole song came together, it was the statement of the record.

Aside from the album, you have released a few more recent tracks that have opened you up to a whole new audience, most notably the collaboration with Taylor Swift on ‘Electric Touch’.

Pete: Taylor is the only artist that I’ve met or interacted with in recent times who creates exactly the art of who she is, but does it on such a mass level. So that’s breathtaking to watch from the sidelines. The way fans traded friendship bracelets, I don’t know what the beginning of it was, but you felt that everywhere. We felt that, I saw that in the crowd on our tour. I don’t know Taylor well, but I think she’s doing exactly what she wants and creating exactly the art she wants to create. And doing that, on such a level, is really awe-inspiring to watch. It makes you want to make the biggest, weirdest version of our thing and put that out there.

Then there was the cover of Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’, which has had some big chart success for you. That must have taken you slightly by surprise.

Patrick: It’s pretty unexpected. Pete and I were going back and forth about songs we should cover and that was an idea that I had. This is so silly but there was a song a bunch of years ago I had kind of written called ‘Dark Horse' and then there was a Katy Perry song called ‘Dark Horse’ and I was like, ‘damn it’, you know, I missed the boat on that one. So I thought if we don’t do this cover, somebody else is gonna do it. Let’s just get in the studio and just do it. We spent way more time on those lyrics than you would think because we really wanted to get a specific feel. It was really fun and kind of loose, we just came together in Neal’s house and recorded it in a day.

Pete: There’s irreverence to it. I thought the coolest thing was when Billy Joel got asked about it, and he was like, ‘I’m not updating it, that’s fine, go for it.’ I hope if somebody ever chooses to update one of ours, we’d be like that. Let them do their thing, they'll have that version. I thought that was so fucking cool.

Patrick: I love when anybody does anything that feels honest to them. Touring with Bring Me The Horizon, it was really cool seeing what’s natural to them. It makes sense. We changed our sound over time but we were always going to do that. It wasn’t a premeditated thing but for the four of us, it would have been impossible to maintain making the same kind of music forever. Whereas you’ll play with some other hands and they live that one sound. You meet up with them for dinner or something and they’re wearing the shirt of the band that sounds just like their band. You go to their house and they’re playing other bands that sound like them because they live in that thing. Whereas with the four of us and bands like Bring Me The Horizon, we change our sounds over time. And there’s nothing wrong with that either. The only thing that’s wrong is if it’s unnatural to you. If you’re AC/DC and all of a sudden power ballads are in and you’re like, ‘Okay, we’ve got to do a power ballad’, that’s when it sucks. But if you’re a thrash metal guy who also likes Celine Dion then yeah, do a power ballad. Emo as a word doesn’t mean anything anymore. But if people want to call it that, if the emo thing is back or having another life again, if that’s what’s natural to an artist, I think the world needs more earnest art. If that’s who you are, then do it.

Pete: It would be super egotistical to think that the wave started with us and My Chemical Romance and Panic! At The Disco has just been circling and cycling back. I remember seeing Nikki Sixx at the airport and he was like, ‘Oh, you’re doing a flaming bass? Mine came from a backpack.’ It keeps coming back but it looks different. Talking to Lil Uzi Vert and Juice WRLD when he was around, it’s so interesting, because it’s so much bigger than just emo or whatever. It’s this whole big pop music thing that’s spinning and churning, and then it moves on., and then it comes back with different aspects and some of the other stuff combined. When you’re a fan of music and art and film, you take different stuff, you add different ingredients, because that’s your taste. Seeing the bands that are up and coming to me, it’s so exciting, because the rules are just different, right? It’s really cool to see artists that lean into the weirdness and lean into a left turn when everyone’s telling you to make a right. That’s so refreshing.

Patrick: It’s really important as an artist gets older to not put too much stock in your own influence. The moment right now that we’re in is bigger than emo and bigger than whatever was happening in 2005. There’s a great line in ‘Downton Abbey’ where someone was asking the Lord about owning this manor and he’s like, ‘well, you don’t really own it, there have been hundreds of owners and you are the custodian of it for a brief time.’ That’s what pop music is like. You just have the ball for a minute and you’re gonna pass it on to somebody else.

We will soon see you in the UK for your arena tour. How do you reflect on your relationship with the fans over here?

Pete: I remember the first time we went to the UK, I wasn’t prepared for how culturally different it was. When we played Reading & Leeds and the summer festivals, it was so different, and so much deeper within the culture. It was a little bit of a shock. The first couple of times we played, I was like, ‘Oh my God, are we gonna die?” because the crowd was so crazy, and there was bottles. Then when we came back, we thought maybe this is a beast to be tamed. Finally, you realize it’s a trading of energy. That made the last couple of festivals we played so fucking awesome. When you really realize that the fans over there are real fans of music. It’s really awesome and pretty beautiful.

Patrick: We’ve played the UK now more than a lot of regions of the states. Pretty early on, I just clicked with it. There were differences, cultural things and things that you didn’t expect. But it never felt that different or foreign to me, just a different flavor…

Pete: This is why me and Patrick work so well together (laughs).

Patrick: Well, listen; I’m a rainy weather guy. There is just things that I get there. I don’t really drink anymore all that much. But I totally will have a beer in the UK, there’s something different about every aspect of it, about the ordering of it, about the flavor of it, everything, it’s like a different vibe. The UK Audience seemed to click with us too. There have been plenty of times where we felt almost more like a UK band than an American one. There have been years where you go there and almost get a more familial reaction than you would at home.

Rock Sound has always been a part of that for us. It was one of the first magazines to care about us and the first magazine to do real interviews. That’s the thing, you would do all these interviews and a lot of them would be like ‘so where did the band’s name come from?” But Rock Sound took us seriously as artists, maybe before some of us did. That actually made us think about who we are and that was a really cool experience. I think in a lot of ways, we wouldn’t be the band we are without the UK, because I think it taught us a lot about what it is to be yourself.

Fall Out Boy’s ‘So Much (For) Stardust’ is out now via Fueled By Ramen.

#fall out boy #fob #patrick stump #pete wentz #rock sound #so much for stardust #so much (for) stardust #rock sound issue 300 #fueled by ramen

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archivalofsins · 8 months ago

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Admittedly I'm in a downer mood- So, we're gonna talk about Mikoto!

I love all the callbacks to MeMe in Double. It's exactly like how in the climax of some musicals they reference back to other songs within them.

The best examples of this I can think of off the top of my head are-

Dirty Dudes Must Die (Nerdy Prudes Must Die Starkid)

Literally the name is a direct reference to the title of the musical and a song previously in it.

Nerdy Prudes Must Die

"Nerdy prudes must die. Nerdy prudes must die. Everybody cool watch those nerds run for their lives. Jaegerman will rise blood will be my prize. Nerdy, nerdy prudes watch me shock and cock you block. The jock you demonized."

Dirty Dudes Must Die: "Dirty dudes must die. Dirty dudes must die. Every dirty dude watch us nerds destroy your kind. Chastity will rise- Your soul will be my prize. Everybody cool watch me score rewrite the lore of the nerds you minimized."

"Everybody cool watch those nerds meet their demise. The cleansing of your kind expose the bloody lie. Nerdy, nerdy prudes watch me spawn and prey upon you anti-socialites."

"Who will pray for me when I'm gone? Or until another Richie comes along-"

Dirty Dudes Must Die: "You think I'd stop with him? You think the time that I was chaste was being waste on a holy mission? I'm the girl you thought you knew- Just keep your hand right on my thing like all the guys who came before you."

"Who will prey for me when I'm gone? Or is this the eternal dark without a dawn? Who will pray for you when your body's gone? This is the consequence for what you've done!"

Dirty Dudes Must Die- "Who will pray for you when your body's gone? This is the consequence for what you've done!

"Or is this the eternal dark without a dawn? " - "I'm not a loser!"

Dirty Dudes Must Die: "If I can finally be cool. I will know that I'm not a loser. And if I finally break the rules I will know of my world I'm the ruler. The darkness will spare my soul."

Cool as I think I am

"What if people see me as someone other than who I am? Cooler than I think I am- Am I cooler than I think I am? If I can finally be cool- I will know that I'm not a loser! And if I finally break the rules- I will know of my world I'm the ruler! But is that who I think am- Is that who I think I am? Who do I think I am? Who do I think I am..."

So Much for Stardust (So Much (for) Stardust Fall Out Boy)

Also, funnily enough the album title adds the parenthesis to recontextualize the album title, giving it a double meaning. Just like what's done within the English lyrics of Double. This makes it possible to read the title as So Much Stardust or So Much for Stardust. Simultaneously giving the impression of having a lot and nothing. As to say So much for in English is to go basically so much for that I thought I had it but I didn't.

Titling the album this way directly foreshadows the ending.

"(So much for stardust) We thought we had it all, thought we had it all- Thought we had it all, thought we had it all, thought we had it all."

Love From The Other Side

"I saw you in a bright clear field."

So Much (For) Stardust- "I'm in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now."

"Sending my love from the other side of the apocalypse- And I just about snapped." - "I saw you in a bright clear field. Hurricane heat in my head. The kinda pain you feel to get good in the end, good in the end. Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain. "Give up what you love. Give up what you love before it does you in."

So Much (For) Stardust: "I feel like something bad has stretched out over and over again. Until I'm creased and I'm about to break down the middle. Split me right down the middle, right, right down the middle, yeah."

Heartbreak Feels So Good

"No matter what they tell you. The future's up for grabs and no. No matter what they sell you. Is there a word for bad miracle? Nobody said the road was endless. Nobody said the climb was friendless. But, could we please pretend this-Won't end?" - "We'll cry later or cry now, but baby. Heartbreak feels so good."- "It's open season on blue moods. Light from a screen of messages unsent."

So Much (For) Stardust: "Life is just a game, maybe- I'm stuck in a lonely loop, my baby." - "Another year of possibilities left unwrapped."

"We were a hammer to the statue of David. We were a painting you could never frame and- You were the sunshine of my lifetime. What would you trade the pain for?"

So Much (For) Stardust: "In another life you were my babe. In another life you were the sunshine of my lifetime. What would you trade the pain for? I'm not sure."

Hold Me Like A Grudge

"Thaw out my freezer, burn feelings, for twenty summers."

So Much (For) Stardust: "I'm in a winter mood, dreaming of spring now. I'm burning myself down. Burning myself down, burning." - "The stars are the same as ever I don't have the guts to keep it together. Stuck in the permafrost, stuck in the permafrost."

Goodbye (Inside Bo Burnham)

Don't Wanna Know

"I'd bet I guess the answer but I don't wanna know." -"I'd give away the ending but you don't wanna kn-"

Goodbye: "Wanna guess the ending if it ever does-"

Comedy

"If you wake up in a house that's full of smoke don't panic, call me and I'll tell you a joke."

Goodbye: "If I wake up in a house that's full of smoke- I'll panic so call me up and tell me a joke. When I'm fully irrelevant and totally broken, damn it. Call me up and tell me a joke. Oh shit; you're really joking at a time like this?"

Look Who's Inside Again

"Trying to be funny and stuck in a room. There isn't much more to say about it. Can one be funny when stuck in a room?"

Goodbye- Does anybody want to joke when no one's laughing in the background?

"Well, well- Look who's inside again. Went out to look for a reason to hide again. Well, well- Buddy, you found it."

Goodbye: "So this is how it ends. I promise to never go outside again."- "So long, goodbye. Hey, here's a fun idea. How 'bout I sit on the couch and I watch you next time? I wanna hear you tell a joke when no one's laughing in the background.

And my favorite one

Welcome To The Internet

"Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything. All of the time. Apathy's a tragedy and boredom is a crime."

Goodbye: Wanna guess the ending? If it ever does; I swear to God that all I've ever wanted was- A little bit of everything, all of the time. A bit of everything, all of the time. Apathy's a tragedy, and boredom is a crime.

"Look at you, you, you- Unstoppable, watchable. Your time is now. Your inside's out. Honey, how you grew. It was always the plan to put the world in your hand."

Goodbye: I'm finished playing, and I'm staying inside.

The same lyrical techniques are applied throughout Double. In more subtle ways. This method of having lyrics that tie back to previous songs to create a consistent narrative isn't just a thing specific to English ones either.

It's something that's been prominent within music for a good while.

Though I see it more within English music simply due to listening to more music in that language. I think it's interesting that this is most overt with Mikoto.

Especially when I haven't noticed this being done as much within the lyrics of other prisoners' songs. This could come from the fact that Mikoto as a character is very referential, and staff has stated this since the beginning.

Thank you @doctorbunny for getting these for me and the translations.

[MeMe Creator's Comment] (Left Image) From here on out its gonna be Hell! I drew the storyboards with that in mind. What a dreadful murderer… I hope you'll keep that feeling in mind (lol) (Right Image) Instead of the usual showy kind of MV, the colours and composition are more like a Western movie with a theatrical elocution full of wit. I love the designs of the tarot cards and T shirt so much I want to wear them myself, I hope you enjoy watching! Director - DMYM

This could come from the fact that Mikoto's character has been openly influenced by western media to an extent. Something I've discussed in other posts. This could impact the way his songs are written as well. Though that's just speculation on my part.

However, the self-referential lyricism is undoubtedly there. So, I'd like to do what I did with those other songs with lyrics within Double. To highlight the consistent narrative being told within Mikoto's trials a bit more. So, people can maybe understand where my thoughts on certain things come from.

While subtle these lines still get the main point across spectacularly.

Let's get into it-

DOUBLE

"I’ve got you, leave it to me."

MeMe

“I” will save "me".

An easy one right out of the gate with that one off the table let's get into the fun stuff.

"All those ridiculous accusations."

Double: "All I did was dream, and that’s what you found GUILTY? “He’s a liar”, you said, and made me out to be a scoundrel, why?"

"Hurting it, holding it down, it doesn’t change anything, does it? Ahhh, it’s the same anywhere I go. It’s like what’s wrong isn’t wrong. I’m already the fake one."

Double: "Keeping things at bay, you’re doing your best “No, I need to do more…”, say what? You’re gonna break. Me, the newborn other you, I’ll take it all on."

"You don’t have to keep it in and hide it away. “I” will save “me”. Snuggle together and say “Good night”. Switch, Shake up that brain."

Double: "Doesn’t matter if you didn’t wish for it, can’t get rid of me now. Just the two of us, relieved, aren’t you? I’ll protect you (us)." - "Welcome home, another day, another day with that hardly barely there of a smile."

"“I” will save “me”. Snuggle together and say “Good night”. Switch, shake up that brain." - "The minus energy that I swallowed hugged me- Maybe it’s ok to try to keep on living split in half, make that heart beat."

Double: "Hey now, I saved you, right? So why in the hell are you crying? Cling to me, hoist me up as your “savior”, stand up and sing out your gratitude, that’d be good."

"So I will NEVER forgive you if this is happening to me even though I’m right. Why, hey why, please let me out of here? Please tell me it’s a mistake, that’s it’s a lie. That I’m right, I’ll forgive you if you tell me now."

Double: "Hey, I just wanted to save you, so why did it come to this? Cling to me, hoist me up as your “savior”, stand up and sing out your gratitude, so why?"

Why, hey why, I’m nowhere to be found?

But he is somewhere to be found in MeMe he hands this card to the other one. The Death card in its upright position a symbol of change- letting things go.

I’ll forgive you If you tell me now.

Mikoto says exactly the same thing to the other as he does to Milgram- If you just tell me I was right that this wasn't too much. If you just show them, I'll let all of this go.

I'll forgive it just-

Come to know me as an honest man, eat your words, gulp them down.

You mistook me for something I'm not made ridiculous accusations said I'm a liar. The least you could do is apologize. We all make mistakes though...

"So I wasn’t forgiven. How cruel, even though I said I didn’t do anything. It’s making me resentful."

You just got the wrong person right go on just say you got the wrong person it's not that difficult to admit.

Double: "I don’t even know, the reason why I’m here “He’s a liar”, you said, and made me out to be a scoundrel, why?"

Mikoto states in his second trial voice lines even though he said he didn't do anything while in the voice drama Mikoto (John) states he doesn't even know what happened.

"I don’t remember a thing, it couldn’t be helped, I’m DOUBLE (MeMe) I was having such a hard time, I was trying so hard."

"If I could laugh- If I could go back, I’d play dead even though I’m alive right? If I could end- If I could stop, how long would this dream go on?" - "If I could break it- If I could change. Can I do it, I wonder from when I started to gave up? If I could lose it- If I could choose, is this selfish? This isn’t too much is it?"

(MeMe) I was having such a hard time, I was trying so hard. - "Ahhh, It’s the same anywhere I go it’s like what’s wrong isn’t wrong!"

Mikoto: [scream] You’re all fucking annoying! I’ll beat you all to death, pieces of shit!!!

Mikoto: AAAHHHHHHHHHH!! DESTROY EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING! EVERYTHING!!

Mikoto: My Life... It wasn't supposed to be this way.

Doesn’t matter if you didn’t wish for it, can’t get rid of me now. - I’m already the fake one. - Me, the newborn other you, I’ll take it all on.

#milgram #mikoto kayano

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earlgreytea68 · 26 days ago

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So you reblogged that post earlier about FOB being the only band not to do a full album for WWWY fest.

I have some thoughts on that. First I'm pretty sure they've said at some point that they'd never do a full album for a concert. Second, considering what festival it was, I'd think they'd have to pick one of the pre-h albums to fit the theme.

TTTYG is out because I don't realistically see Patrick ever agreeing to do Grenade Jumper.

Cork Tree is out because Pete isn't comfortable with Dark Alley.

I think they are still getting used to the Folie love and that would also require too many cameos.

That leaves maybe IOH, but there could be hang ups there too that I'm not immediately thinking of.

Honestly the two easiest albums for them to play in full would probably be AB/AP and Stardust.

The Days of Fall Out Past was most likely just the best thing for them to do.

I think AB/AP would be tough because I've heard Patrick say he thinks the hardest song for his voice live would be "Novocaine."

They just got off a tour where they basically knocked off the shelf almost every song they'd never played live, and reset the clock on the whole thing, and I think they genuinely had no interest in pigeon-holing themselves back into playing a whole album as if they aren't already out there playing all the songs on all these albums anyway. I know the point of the festival is nostalgia, but Pete has always been adamant they're not a nostalgia band. Sure, Days of Fall Out Past is an extremely nostalgic concept, but it notably ends with an album that's still only a year old. So it's not really so much nostalgia as it is showing their trajectory so far, and emphasizing that it's still an in-progress story. I don't think they were interested in doing anything else. (I think possibly it was a big statement they wanted to make that they're still a CURRENT band. This wasn't a reunion for them, and they didn't play it like one. They brought their current show with them. Pete emphasized that during the set.)

#fall out boy #fob

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27-royal-teas · 2 years ago

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Analyzing the meaning of the song 27 when we line it up with what we know about the 27 club

So, for context, nobody thought pete would really live past 27. the 27 club is a group of celebrities in the arts that died at age 27 (Amy Winehouse, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, etc), usually from their own self-imposed destruction. But fall out boy and their history is so inexplicably tied to this number that I absolutely had to write an essay about it. this song is a complete masterpiece in its own right and it's definitely up in my top three fob songs of all time

The song starts like this:

“if home is where the heart is then we’re all just fucked

i cant remember, i cant remember

And i want it so bad id shoot the sunshine into my veins

I cant remember the good old days”

The first line feels almost like begging. Hes wondering where he belongs, because he doesnt feel safe at home, and this song was during the time where the band was fighting a lot, and they were kind of his home as well. so if home is where the heart is and he doesnt feel safe at any of his homes, if he cant belong, then will he ever? Anywhere? A kerrang feature interviewing pete said that this song was him trying desperately to hold the band together, which is expressed with this first opening line (“if home is where the heart is then we’re all just fucked”). Clearly he is clinging on with a single thread, and this was shown when the band went on hiatus not long after.

‘And i want it so bad id shoot the sunshine into my veins’ obviously a drug reference, of being so desperate that youd do anything to get the good feeling back, and here it is linked to ‘i cant remember the good old days’ because it feels almost like a desperate kind of longing. this might relate to the line ‘you were the sunshine of my lifetime’ which repeats multiple times through fob’s eighth studio album, So Much (for) Stardust. In the context that this is referring to a person (anyone, but likely patrick; pete keeps his lyrics vague for a reason) it would be overexposing yourself to something that gives you temporary happiness but in the long run can kill you. hm just something to consider but i know they probably didnt plan that far ahead lyricwise lol

“And it’s kind of funny,

The way we’re wearing anchors on our shirts

When being anchored aboard just feels like a curse”

A lot of folie is actually linked to this sort of nautical theme (what a catch especially) and i think this references ‘they say the captain goes down with the ship’ because anchors are usually on nautical themed shirts or the shirts of sailors, but pete is saying he hates being tied down to the ‘ship’ which can be interpreted as the band maybe possibly. either way hes definitely pointing out the irony of wearing something that symbolizes stability when he is DEFINITELY not stable (who ever looked at pete wentz and thought ‘this man is stable’?) (i digress)

then comes the chorus. i love this chorus so fucking much it is interpretation goldddd

“My mind is a safe, and if i keep it then we all get rich

my body is an orphanage, we take everyone in

doing lines in dust and sweat

on last night’s stage

just to feel like you”

ok so obviously petes referring to his mind as the safe because hes the one who makes the lyrics and thus hes the one who earns the band the profit. Its a safe because he is inscrutable. It is also a safe because he only takes out what he wants, and only he has the key. ‘My body is an orphanage, we take everyone in’ COULD refer to how hes kind of promiscuous but more than that fall out boy was known for being the band that didnt really care who their fans were. They were marketed towards teenage girls and for that they were looked down upon. His body could be a metaphor for the band itself, and taking everyone in could mean that they accept the people that other bands dont typically want as fans.

‘Doing lines in dust and sweat on last night’s stage just to feel like you” this is a reference to the 27 club, and refers to stars doing drugs to be able to function/feel normal and human again. Idk. i just really like this line its so great

“The m-m-milligrams in my head burning tobacco in the wind

Chasing the direction, chasing the direction you went”

Im going to break this verse in half specifically because patrick fucking does NOT ENUNCIATE and also its long (how many times did i think ‘and youre a bottled star’ was ‘and you’re a bathroom stall’ rip)

The milligrams and the tobacco are pretty self explanatory- more drugs. 27 club connections via the drugs. burning tobacco gives way to the vision of trying to cling on to a high with desperation, and he’s chasing it- chasing the direction it went.

“youre a bottled star, the planets align, youre just like mars

You shine in the sky, you shine in the sky”

pete uses a TON of star and sky metaphors in his writings, this song included. A bottled star would mean a person who is repressing their talent. It could also mean a celebrity who is drowning their problems in liquor. Mars is the roman god of war and often a symbol of masculinity (although im not sure how relevent the second part is). It means raw, unbridled energy. here pete is saying (in his vague, vague writing voice ://) that when the person he is talking about drinks, they lose all control and are pretty much unstoppable. drawing this to the 27 club, a lot of the members died by alcohol or drug abuse, so it makes sense.

The use of star and sky metaphors throughout this song really bring it home- yes, the stars may be bright and pretty, they might shine and sparkle, but at the end of the day they will burn away and self combust. So we have to hold it together if we want to keep our own worlds in once piece.

“Are all the good times getting gone

they come and go and go and and come and go, oh yeah

ive got a lot of friends who are stars but some are just black holes”

For this verse lets work our way backwards. more space and star metaphors. stars clearly refers to his friends in the industry, but black holes could mean they have an almost deafening energy, or are on their way to becoming a part of the 27 club itself. The good times coming and going represents the sort of panic thats felt in the entertainment industry as a whole; the competition against time itself, for fear that when youre old people wont want to know what you have to say. So often the people who act and sing are so unbearably young, and once they pass thirty two they arent marketable anymore. pete is putting to words the worry and the scramble to get things done- to make a name for yourself- before your time is up. And AGAIN relating to the number 27, its quickly approaching 30, so you better move fast if you want to become famous.

The rest of the verses from here are just chorus repeats, so let’s talk about how tangled fall out boy is with the number twenty seven. other than the 27 club, what’s so important about it? It’s not a prime number. Theres really nothing out of the ordinary about it.

Except, there is.

Everyone celebrated when pete made it past his 27th birthday. In 2011, patrick wrote his Confessions of a Pariah blog post. He and joe were both 27 at the time, and i think that might have been a deciding factor in what inspired pete to reach out. He didn’t want his best friend to give into depression, much less when he was 27.

The band got together again not long after that. the first track off Save Rock and Roll, My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark, dropped February 5th, 2013. The rest is pretty much history.

I don’t know. All speculation. But the number 27 is definitely linked with fall out boy, although it’s not relevant right now, and i just think its so damn interesting

#probably no one will read this its not very interesting but im proud and I had fun #fall out boy #fob #meta #27 #folie a deux #bandom #toby’s metas #Toby speaks #lyric analysis

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alienelvisobsession · 6 months ago

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The David Bowie Connection

David Jones’s very first performance was not as David Bowie, Ziggy Stardust, or the Thin White Duke, but as an Elvis impersonator in front of a crowd of Boy Scouts in Bromley. The year was 1958, David was 11 years old, and among the songs that he sang for his audience there was probably “Hound Dog”, which his cousin Kristina remembers as one of the records he owned, and to which they danced to “like possessed elves”. It’s important to remember that it was difficult to get American records back then in England, but through his work as a promoter, David’s father managed to bring home a collection of American 45s, which included Little Richard, Fats Domino and, obviously, Elvis. Rock ‘n roll was like a ray of sunshine in David’s grey postwar world, still plagued with food rations and the rubble of bomb sites.

In high school, David liked jamming with his guitar, like Elvis did, and he was also interested in fashion and science fiction like him. Rock ‘n roll was elusive in England, but there were cafés with a jukebox where you could hear it as if it were some secret information. David liked oddities and stagecraft, like Elvis’ gyrations and extravagant clothes. He also loved Little Richard, whom he thought would die on stage because of the energy he put during his concerts. He would later say: “Elvis had the choreography, he had a way of looking at the world that was totally original, totally naïve, and totally available as a blueprint. Who wouldn’t want to copy Elvis? Elvis had it all. It wasn’t just the music that was interesting, it was everything else. And he had a lot of everything else.”

After a few unsuccessful albums, David Jones – now using the name David Bowie, like the knife – started experimenting with what the press called “glam rock”, that a lot of people thought was decadent and deviant. In 1972, when questioned about young boys with glitter makeup attending concerts, he said: “What about Elvis Presley? If his image wasn’t bisexual then I don’t know what is. People talk about fag rock, but that’s an unwieldy term at the best of times.” You could say that Bowie, like Elvis, obliterated boundaries in music, as much as in fashion, changing forever what was permitted and accepted as a stage artist, playing with clothes, makeup and sexuality in new ways.

Bowie’s fascination with Elvis was so big that in June 1972 he attended his concert at Madison Square Garden. “I came over for a long weekend,” Bowie recalled many years later. “I remember coming straight from the airport and walking into Madison Square Garden very late. I was wearing all my clobber from the Ziggy period and I had great seats near the front. The whole place just turned to look at me and I felt like a right cunt. I had brilliant red hair, some huge padded space suit and those red boots with big black soles. I wished I’d gone for something quiet, because I must have registered with him. He was well into his set.”

That was the concert that triggered the famous New York Times headline “Like a Prince from Another Planet”. It’s serendipitous that Bowie’s influential album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars”, where he plays an androgynous alien rock star, came out that same month. The alter ego and stage persona of Ziggy Stardust, which he used in 1972-73, had started to form the year before, during an American tour. Like everything in his music and stagecraft, Bowie was inspired by many things, from Iggy Pop to experimental theater. Ziggy Stardust was loosely inspired by Vince Taylor, a 1950s rock ‘n roller who Bowie witnessed going off his rocker and obsessing over aliens, but it’s also reminiscent of Elvis (whose fall from grace had already started, according to many, and whose mythology includes being an alien). Unlike other early Elvis fans, though, Bowie loved Elvis’ 1970s jumpsuits and explicitly told his costume designer Freddie Burretti to draw inspiration from them for his stage costumes. As a result, Ziggy’s costumes are as outrageous as Elvis’, but in a different way.

To double down on his rock n’ roll opera, “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide”, the melodramatic song with which Ziggy closed his concerts, is essentially about a washed-up rockstar. Ziggy literally sang it in an Elvis-style jumpsuit, and a solemn voice announced at the end of the concert: “Mr. Bowie has left the building”. Ziggy is an archetypal messiah rockstar who arrives on earth from Mars, becomes a prophet of rock ‘n roll, and then literally destroys himself. You can argue that Ziggy Stardust was a departure from hippies: a postmodern interpretation of a rockstar, and a meditation on superstar status.

The following album, “Aladdin Sane”, where Bowie continues the story of Ziggy Stardust, features the rockstar with a lightning bolt drawn across his face, which many say is a reference to Elvis’ TCB logo.

Elvis and Bowie, who share the same birthday, are very different artists, but if Elvis was the sacrificial lamb of rock ‘n roll, Bowie had his example to become a master in brand renewal, and studied deaths and rebirths. After killing his Ziggy Stardust alter ego, Bowie had other inspirations and continued to create extravagant personas to use on stage and off stage, not without controversies.

Bowie’s connection with Elvis went further than just liking his early hits: he had an awareness of his own fallibility that made him empathize with Elvis on a more profound level. Of his disastrous 1978 movie “Just a Gigolo”, for example, he said that it was “thirty-two Elvis movies rolled into one.” He was still very much fascinated with him in 1975-76, to such a degree that he pitched his song “Golden Years”, which incorporates elements of 1950s doo-wop into a funk tune, to him. Although it’s unclear if Elvis ever heard the song, Bowie’s office did contact Colonel Parker for a possible collaboration, maybe as a producer for one of Elvis’ albums.

Even Bowie’s last song, “Black Star”, references Elvis. Written at a time when Bowie knew he was dying, the song has the same title as an an alternative version of the title track for his 1960 western movie “Flaming Star”. It’s a song about death, as in the movie Pacer knows his time has come and Elvis sings: “Every man has a black star / A black star over his shoulder / And when a man sees his black star / He knows his time, his time has come”. It seems to me that Bowie intended to close a circle with this reference: since they were born on the same day, it seemed only natural to reference Elvis’ fictional death in one of his movies. Only, in one of his most clever postmodern games, Bowie’s death wasn’t fictional after all.

Here is David Bowie imitating Elvis’ voice for a Christmas message on BBC radio 6 Music in 2013:

youtube

August 16, 2002 marked the 25th anniversary of Elvis’ death and Bowie opened the concert with “I Feel So Bad” and “One Night”, and told the story of what he was doing when Elvis died:

youtube

Here is a link with my other connection posts. I have written about many artists who were inspired by Elvis, from Jimi Hendrix to Quentin Tarantino. If you have any suggestions about artists who have an Elvis connection worth exploring let me know, and I’ll do some research for my next post.

#elvis presley #elvis #david bowie #ziggy stardust #70s music #rock and roll #rock n roll history #Youtube

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euphoriabled-memes · 2 years ago

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So Much (For) Starters.

All starters are lyrics taken from the album So Much (For) Stardust by the band Fall Out Boy, released March 24, 2023. Please feel free to change as you see fit. ( Seeing as I’ve made this meme the day this album came out, some lyrics may be incorrect. My apologies! )

Love From The Other Side

“You know I'm dying out here.”

“What would you trade the pain for?”

“You were the sunshine of my lifetime.”

“I'd never go, I just want to be invited.”

“Sending my love from the other side of the apocalypse.”

“Every lover's got a little dagger in their hand.”

“Nowhere left for us to go but Heaven.”

“Give up what you love before it does you in…”

Heartbreak Feels So Good

“No matter what they tell you, the future's up for grabs.”

“Is there a word for bad miracle?”

“Nobody said the road was endless.”

“Could we please pretend this won't end?”

“We could cry a little? Cry a lot?”

“We could dance our tears away, emancipate ourselves.”

Hold Me Like A Grudge

“When you ask how I've been, I know you mean well.”

“I guess I'm getting older 'cause I'm less pissed.”

“Silent killers are these years coming like waves.”

“You put the ‘fun’ into dysfunction.”

“Hold me like a grudge.”

“The world is always spinning, and I can't keep up.”

“Part-time soulmate, full-time problem.”

“I guess, somehow, we made it back.”

“I am a diamond on the inside, just add the pressure!”

“I thought I knew better, I thought it would get better.”

“I figured somehow by now, I would have got it together.”

“We'll do more than just get by.”

Fake Out

“Make no plans and none can be broken.”

“Do you laugh about me whenever I leave?”

“Do I just need more therapy?”

“Love is in the air, I just gotta figure out a window to break out.”

“My mood board is just pictures of you.”

“I'm not sad anymore.”

“We did it for futures that never came and for pasts that we're never gonna change.”

Heaven, Iowa

“Kiss my cheek, baby, please.”

“Would you read my eulogy?”

“I will never ask you for anything — except to dream sweet of me.”

“I will never ask you for anything.”

“Tell me when the party ends.”

“Will you still love who I am?”

“They don't know how much they’ll miss.”

“Save your breath; half your life you've been hooked on death!”

“Be careful what you bottle up.”

“I'm saving this all for later.”

So Good Right Now

“We'll drive until the engine just gives up.”

“I know I've made mistakes, but at least they were mine to make.”

“I'll be whatever you need me to be.”

“I cut myself down to whatever you need me to be.”

The Pink Seashell

“There's no point to any of this, it's all just a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and a series of near escapes.”

“I take pleasure in the detail, you know, a, a Quarter Pounder with cheese? Those are good.”

I Am My Own Muse

“I like playing dumb, letting you figure me out.”

“I was faded, in my own defense.”

“We got to throw this year away.”

“The trumpets bring the angels, but they never came.”

“I know I keep my feelings so tucked away.”

“Just another day spent hoping we don't fall apart.”

“Let's twist the knife again like we did last summer.”

Flu Game

“I guess to you now, I'm just a face in the crowd.”

“Oh, God, kindly please, would you kill me now?”

“Carved out a place in this world for two, but it's empty without you.”

“I've got all this love I've got to keep to myself.”

“All this effort to make it look effortless.”

“I can't be who you need me to be.”

“Every candle's gotta run out of wax.”

Baby Annihilation

“Time is luck, and I wish ours overlapped more.”

“The first time I took the mask off, just had another one on underneath.”

“I'm just melted wax on a birthday cake, another year fades away.”

“If you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself.”

“What is there between us, if not a little annihilation?”

The Kintsugi Kid (Ten Years)

“I'm pretty sure, as far as humans go, I am a hard pill to swallow.”

“I spent ten years in a bit of chemical haze and I miss the way that I felt nothing.”

“Passed my old street, the house I grew up in. It breaks your heart.”

“Four of the Ramones are dead.”

“And I miss the way that I felt nothing.”

“You don't know me anymore.”

What A Time To Be Alive

“That’s the way the world used to be before our dreams started bursting at the seams.”

“I don't care if it's pretty.”

“The view's so pretty from the deck of a sinking ship.”

“Everything is lit except my serotonin.”

“Please, I just need someone to hold me.”

“Oh, what a time to be alive.”

“They say that I should try meditation, but I don’t want to be with my own thoughts.”

“I just want to be your cherry on top.”

“when I said ‘leave me alone’ this isn't quite what I meant.”

So Much (For) Stardust

“I feel like something that's been stretched out, over and over again.”

“I don't have the guts to keep it together.”

“Life is just a game, maybe.”

“I'm stuck in a lonely loop.”

“I need the sound of crowds, or I can't fall asleep at night.”

“Another year of possibilities left unwrapped like gifts the day right after Christmas passed.”

“I'm pretty positive my pain isn't cool enough.”

“I think I've been going through it.”

“In another life, you were the sunshine of my lifetime.”

“I used to be a real go-getter.”

“I used to think it'd all get better.”

“We thought we had it all.”

#has anybody done this yet #Lyric Meme #lyric starters #fall out boy lyric meme #fall out boy rp meme #Fall Out Boy lyric starters #fall out boy rp starters #indie rp meme #indie rp starters #indie roleplay starters #indie roleplay meme #indie roleplay prompts #rp meme #rp starters #roleplay meme #roleplay starters #roleplay prompts #so much for stardust starters #so much (for) stardust starters

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bxngthedoldrums · 2 years ago

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a petekey reading of so much (for) stardust

aka you knew i'd do this aka i didnt take four literature classes in college for nothing aka make sure your tinfoil hat is SECURED to your noggin aka dear lord forgive me for committing sins of petekey in the year of 2023

look. i have to do this or i don't deserve this blog. amen

~ love from the other side

okay. yea, immediately the "you were the sunshine of my lifetime" thing is sort of sus, because we all know pete wentz and anytime sun or summer is involved it's Something. this is solidified in "summer falling through our fingers again" in verse 2, but it's interesting that he uses "ours" in this lyric bc i feel like recently most of pete's summer lyrics have been pretty self-inflicted. it's impossible to not note the whole "inscribed like stone and faded by the rain" in the bridge v. "the tombstones were waiting" line in bang the doldrums. i shant even elaborate u can pick up what i'm laying down!

~ heartbreak feels so good

i think this song is pretty light on petekey imagery but "light from a screen of messages unsent" kinda reminds me of "some nights it gets so bad i almost pick up the phone" in ginasfs but i could be reaching for Sure. let's be real that's all i do

~ hold me like a grudge

honestly i think this is one of the worst petekey offenders on the album. this one had me gawking at my screen as i read the lyrics. "thaw out my freezer burn feelings for twenty summers" ??? be SERIOUS pete... "part-time soulmate, full-time problem" yeah I GET IT I GET IT !!! the whole thing reeks of 2005 summertime fling

~ fake out

"do you laugh about me whenever i leave?" bonkers ass line,,this reminds me of pete's lj writing in those years after 2005,,,"my mood board is just pictures of you, but i'm not sad anymore" YEAH. this is SO pete holy fuck. that classic wentz obsession,,"we did for futures that never came and for pasts that we're never gonna change" this line's got me on the fuckin FLOOR. also classic pete!!! his perchance for nostalgia is just insane and he really feels it huh

~ heaven, iowa

i dont even know how to get into this one. "kiss my cheek, baby, please/would you read my eulogy?" SICK and TWISTED evil!!! evil!!! "i will never ask you for anything except to dream sweet of me" jesus h christ the melancholy is off the charts but holy fuck this song is so,,,tender? i dont know wht to say but i know this was written w summer of love intention. i know this in my heart. "scar-crossed lovers, forever" OKAY I KNOW !!! this song is DEVASTATING verse 2 is fucked UP and the bridge is too!!! "closed my eyes inside your darkness and found your glow"???? i cantr og on

~ so good right now

i can't really discern any particularly petekey lyrics in this one right away but the whole "i cut myself down to be whatever you need me to be" is pretty fucking wild

~ i am my own muse

there's some really sad lyrics in this one ab the whole future-not-going-as-planned thing that comes up so frequently in pete's writing but honestly the whole "let's twist the knife again, twist the knife again like we did last summer" thing made my head explode. every lover's got a lil dagger in their hands!!!

~ flu game

im not gonna sit here and type out ths whole fucking song but oh my GOD bro. this song to me is a really nice callback to pete's older style of lyricism but that comes with the self-deprecation and all the other really sad shit. it's beautiful! it's horrible! i love it!!! its about mikey i cant even pul out a few lyrics just LISTEN

~ baby annihilation

another fucked up one that literally anyone else in fob should have vetoed but OKAY?? "time is luck and i wish ours overlapped more or for longer" MAN SHUT UP. "self sabotage at best, under your spell/but you know what they say, if you want a job done right, you gotta do it yourself" ..........dude. if you're like me and you've poured over pete's oooold lj posts from the mid 2000s you already get it, but if you havent,,,go do it and get back to me bc this is TOO MUHC im unwell. "what is there between us if not a little annihilation?" i think i hauve covid

~ the kintsugi kid (ten years)

this song is really fucking sad actually. there's so much fear of being forgotten on this album and it's showcased really beautifully in this song,,,mayhaps not the most obviously petekey song but god damn

~ what a time to be alive

this song's about covid and quarantine n it's pretty easy on the whole suffering from a fling in 2005 thing! good job pete and fob

~ so much (for) stardust

this song is kinda suspicious but there's very few lines that really solidify it as a petekey song,,, altho "i think i've been going through it, and ive been putting your name through it" is a really interesting lyric. and OF COURSE, "in another life, you were my babe/in another life, you were the sunshine of my lifetime" happy xmas war is over

#petekey #had to do it to em #man what the FUCK goes on

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starvingnarcissistmusic · 16 days ago

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totally completely unrelated to my last message on Orchestra but any chance you could do a analysis/breakdown of We Sapient Stardust?

Alright so for the sake of not regurgitating things I've already said, I'm not going to go in depth about any of the songs in particular. I've already written loads about them on Genius so if anyone wants to know What's Up With [insert song here] they can go there. Instead, I'm gonna talk about what went into making the album as a whole.

We Sapient Stardust's """production""" began pretty much as soon as And That Means Everything finished. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had written most of Sleepless Friends before And That Means Everything even came out. After spending a whole year making an album about the past, I was really itching to write about how I felt in the present. And I felt.... bad. A friend has told me that We Sapient Stardust feels like "dealing with the condition of Being 17" and like. That's honestly exactly what it was. I was 17, limping over the high school finish line, feeling tired and sad and anxious about the future pretty much every day. The opening line of There Are Some Things I'd Rather Not Say was pretty much a summation of how I felt then. One year left till I fell apart.

Attached: Old cover idea/placeholder I had for Limbic System's Rag Doll. Was originally playing with the idea of it being part of the Burnout Series (Dysania, Anemia) but ultimately decided it didn't really fit in with those songs.

Initially, the album was a lot less existential. It was more just songs about how badly I felt, with most of them trailing off into angsty self-loathing. I had kind of made up my mind from the start that this was going to be the sad album, but at the beginning a lot of that sadness and misery was specifically centered on me. I felt really bad so I wrote a lot of songs about feeling really bad. At some point I leaned more into the existential themes, because honestly you can only spend so much of your free time writing songs about how much you don't like yourself before it feels just a little bit counter-intuitive to your mental health. Writing songs like that doesn't really feel like catharsis to me, it just feels like kicking myself while I'm down, and I didn't want my second album to feel like a thirty minute self hate session. Some artists can pull that off really well, I definitely can't.

Attached: The first demo of Sleepless Friends (at the time called Anarchist Cookbook), featuring slightly different lyrics and my (sickness afflicted) out of tune singing.

The cover started as just a test to try and make something in a collage style, I was really inspired by The Altogether's Silo EP cover art and wanted to make something in that vein. The oldest version of it on my PC I could find is from February 2nd 2024. It went through a few changes, at one point I had drawn a little figure in the sky in place of the plane, and at another point it had the album title and drawn-on stars like ATME, but eventually I just settled on using the collage as it was. It felt strong enough with to stand on its own. It was a little weird having something and knowing it would be the album cover, since for pretty much all of ATME's production I had convinced myself the cover was a placeholder.

Attached: collage album cover attempt.png, the first ever version. Kind of mostly the same, although the saturation was way down and it didn't have the outlines drawn in. These are how the photos looked when I took them, but then I realized the saturation made it look 1000% better.

The name was also a bit subject to change, as there was a lot of places I wanted to go with the album. I think at one point it was called "Songs For Scum". A few others include "Wish It Would Settle In", "Something About Drowning" (if I used this one the acronym wouldve been SAD which I think is funny), and "The Boy Who Cried Lonely". A lot of these names were made around the same time I was writing all of those self-loathing downer songs, so they were all vaguely angsty. Once I landed on We Sapient Stardust though, it was pretty much set in stone. Although, at one point there was going to be a companion EP called "Searching For Solace", filled with outtakes. I scrapped it mostly because I just didn't have enough scrapped material that I liked enough to release.

Attached: The moodboard I made for the album a month before it came out. The cat is the same one from the Blacktop Angels cover, because at the time Kafkaesque was Blacktop Angels Pt II. I didn't end up going with that though, so if I could remake it now I'd probably replace it with a dog instead. Fun fact: The cat was a stray at my high school, and my friend named it Chickpea.

Honestly between the two of them, We Sapient Stardust was a way harder album to make then And That Means Everything was, on pretty much all fronts. It's definitely my favorite between the two of them, but in my head, they're sister albums that are meant to go together. I'm incredibly proud of We Sapient Stardust, and I think I'll stay proud of it for a long time. I hope anyone who listened to it connected with it. That's really all I could hope for.

(And, as a final note, thanks to everyone who provided their voices for the group chant! That moment is probably my favorite thing I've ever made, and I couldn't have done it without them. All of their names are listed in the description of the YouTube video and in the Bandcamp page. Some of them even have their own music, so check them out!)

Anyways, hope that sufficed as enough rambling for a satisfying answer, haha

#ask

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2000sanimeop · 7 months ago

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I made myself an Astos playlist for fun last week and was compelled to make cover art for it, so here's that!

Why Quiet Quitting? What is Stranger of Paradise about if not a dark elf quiet quitting their job for XXXXX years?

✧ Step into my twisted mind (for the tracklist/notes) ✧

✧ 9 to 5 ✧

They just use your mind / And they never give you credit

Dolly Parton

It's enough to drive you crazy if you let it

Note: One of my favorite Stranger of Paradise pastimes is thinking about Lufenia's TERRIBLE business practices. This was the last track added to the playlist.

✧ Never Recover ✧

The Cardigans

With a hero in the past / You hang on to history

Such a loss will always last / And there's no recovery

Note: The Cardigans have so much more to offer beyond Lovefool and the U.S. Gran Turismo 2 opening. A good flavor of upbeat misery. Side note: Gran Turismo's last track is titled Nil - It's all connected! 🤯

✧ Everyday Is The Worst Day Of My Life ✧

The Lemon Twigs

Everyday is the worst day of my life

Note: I had originally considered using They Don't Know How to Fall In Place (mostly on account of being more of a song and less of a shitpost) but this was too funny not to use. This is the only song on this playlist that isn't 20+ years old. Side note: this band capitalizes all of the prepositions/articles in their song titles, like a middle schooler titling an essay.

The worst day of my life

✧ The Good Life ✧

Weezer

I should have no feeling / 'Cause feeling is pain

As everything I need is denied me

And everything I want is taken away from me

Note: I felt some trepidation including this one—mostly due to preconceived notions on what I assumed the vibes of this playlist would be like. Happy to be incorrect and it's funnier to have Weezer and Brand New here than on Jack's list (I'd sooner give Jack The Sweater Song, anyway). Side note: this is much funnier, in retrospect, now that I have Jack's set figured out; the vibes of that list are incredible, is what I'm saying.

✧ Onde Sensuelle ✧

-M-

Mais comment t'atteindre? Onde sensuelle

Toi qui me donnes des ailes

Pourrais-je te rendre un jour éternelle

Pour nous lier jusqu'au ciel

How could I reach you? Sensual wave

You who lend me wings?

Will I manage one day to make you eternal

And bind us toward the skies?

Note: An entirely vibes-based selection! Fitting, as this is the *I'm vibing* track.💜 Auto-translated, sssorry!

✧ Positive Contact ✧

Deltron 3030

Light-years from watchful eyes while my thoughts provide

I'm bio-enhanced

Hiero advanced series, monstrous evolution

Headed, tooth and nail, scoop the trail

Super-sleuth, a new race / Mad creator, savage nature

World Wide Web, the ebb and flow

Objectives to ostracize pompous prophecies

Note: Upon actually committing to making this playlist, I hoped to god there'd be a Deltron track I could use, because it would be so funny for Astos. I would've first heard this album not long after the 2008 reissue. The transition between this and Onde Sensuelle feels real good.

Brand New

✧ Okay, I Believe You,

But My Tommy Gun Don't ✧

This is the grace only we can bestow

This is the price you pay for loss of control

This is the break in the bend / This is the closest of calls

This is the reason you're alone / This is the rise and the fall!

Note: I actually switched this between playlists a couple of times before settling with Astos, but idk what I was thinking otherwise with lines like My tongue's the only muscle that works harder than my heart, lol. I think it was due to Jack's playlist feeling a little too Soft, at the time; past-me was incorrect, of course.

✧ It's Too Late ✧

Carole King

Though we really did try to make it

But it's too late, baby, now it's too late

Somethin' inside has died / And I can't hide it

I just can't fake it

Note: The quintessential breakup song!

But that was long ago

✧ Stardust ✧

Billy Ward and his Dominoes

And now my consolation / Is in the stardust of a song

Note: this is the first song I added to this playlist, and I always had it right at the end. something about having a bittersweet oldie felt like a nice echo of My Way. I would've first heard this via the Goodfellas soundtrack, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Thanks for looking at whatever this is! While you're here, please be sure to check out @corvuscorona's excellent Astos playlist: SHADOW MONSTER.

#i usually listen to whole albums/discographies but this was fun! :] sorry for my boomer taste #stranger of paradise #my art #there's a jack playlist too but art is still in-progress so TBD

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