Fall Out Boy with Ashley Hamilton

0:06Hello and welcome to Sentimental Garbage, the podcast where we talk about the culture we love that society sometimes makes us feel ashamed of. My name is Caroline, and why don't you show me that little bit of spine you were saving for his metris? And she's wishing to be the friction in your genes. It's Ashley Hamilton. Oh my God, am I? Could that be one of the more disturbing lyrics of the 2000s? I feel like it's one of the sexiest. Okay, I'm really glad you feel this way, and I hope you're not being sarcastic, because I have no dial for that. but I don't know what it is about this band but I feel about this band the way that like other women feel about like the universe of Sarah J Maas or about like Twilight where it's like it's not something I can just like pick up and digest and see why it's fun I get like physically aroused by Fallout Boy.

0:57No it's weirdly horny and like they are sexual but I feel like they're not explicitly sexual in the way that like so many other bands of the genre are like they're they're like fucked up sexual do you know what i'm like i feel like they're sexy in a way where you're like you short kings are insecure it's okay okay i'm so glad that we're getting right into this because there's so many directions you could go with this band i predict there's going to be very little information about this band in this discussion of this band because like I I've been trying to figure out that exact thing like you and I share a playlist called the fallout boy hate fuck playlist yes and um I am getting the plays out of that and I have been ever since we were hanging out in like September and we've just been compiling our fallout boy list ever since then and um there's something about it where you know how there's like this way that we as women talk about art online and particularly men who make art where we're like oh I'm so sick of reading about just like men who hate women and who are just always thinking about their bodies and how much they want to hate fuck them and we're like oh I'm so done with it I'm so sick of how these men talk about us and every time I listen to fallout boy I'm like I'm not done at all with that actually I actually love hearing about this like angry little guy who's so angry about how turned on he is by a lady I guess it's because I don't think that they hate women I think they hate themselves and that's actually really arousing it's very sexy to like find someone with the amount of self-doubt that women have like reading their history I went I like read their whole Wikipedia today just to brush up.

2:45And I am like, okay, these people are, they are a true emo band, even though they don't even like being called an emo band, they are in constant turmoil. They really are. And it's, you know, I found as well when trying to research them today is that like for this podcast, I'm so used to researching female subjects, like, you know, whether it's Cher or Taylor Swift or whatever. And I think there's something about women performers, even if they're kind of fairly obscure women performers they're so used to having to explain themselves to the world that they're so camera ready and succinct and ready to tell the story of their career at the drop of a hat like you could like wake up in the middle of the night and they would be able to tell you their entire how we got here and who I am kind of thing something about like trying to follow the linear line of a male band you're like what are you talking about man what what is this what are you talking about?

3:38Because they've both, they've been both like overwhelmingly celebrated and overwhelmingly hated. I think in like for two things that make no sense, like neither end of the spectrum really makes sense to me. And they've experienced both. Like apparently Pete Wentz before he'd even joined a band because he was like part of the Chicago downtown, like hardcore scene. Apparently he was like on the cover of a local magazine before he was even in a band just because they thought he was so like cool and cute. They were like 18 when they formed Fall Out Boys. So like, how young was he then? I think he had been going downtown to hardcore shows since he was like 14 or 15 as the lore goes.

4:21And he was like kind of a scene celebrity because everyone was just like obsessed with him. I mean, yeah. I think he was in a bunch of random little bands downtown, but he was just kind of like a magnet where everyone was like, that's the guy. I can so see that I can so see I mean looking at it's not hard to see that when you're looking at like young pictures of Pete Wentz being like oh of course the world would go crazy for you you're like everything that MySpace promised men would be you know yeah exactly and so I feel like he you know I feel like they've had both ends of the spectrum where like you know they like struggled a little bit you know they tried to get signed they were putting out demos whatever but they had pretty early massive success and then they had pretty early massive hatred and you're just like but why and why like it was just like the pendulum swinging really hard and then they took a long time off and I feel like they became such a punchline in a way where I'm like well they're not Nickelback why yeah Nickelback I sometimes defend except for I think they've become kind of Republican but there's nothing that I don't know there's nothing offensive about Fall Out Boy they're having fun they're having fun they're great to listen to the lyrics are like incredibly complex for like they're there I think what's the kind of the beautiful surprise of listening to fallout boy even as like a you know a fully 35 year old woman is that like you're listening to this music that you want to like dance to and and like get hyped for and like generally when I'm on book tour this is that when I'm on book tour alone it's like the thing I listen to to get hyped up before I go out on stage and talk about my book for 45 minutes, even though the two activities shouldn't be linked.

6:09They do, they just like, you just get excited listening to this band. But then like lyrically speaking, they're incredibly like interesting and complex and like have very interesting rhyming structures. And like the way Patrick Stump delivers certain lyrics is kind of easy to make fun of because he's sort of like twisting someone else's words to fit into a rhyming scheme. And so that makes words like mattress, like sort of come out insane. But it's still, it's like always interesting. It's like not by the numbers pop punk. It's not like, it's not like guitar hero music. It's complicated music.

6:46Yeah. Yeah. And it's so interesting reading about them. I guess they had like a lot of like fights on their early albums about lyrics and music and whatever. And so then they kind of separated it and they said, okay, Pete does the lyrics. Patrick does the music. And that, I wonder if that's why some of it feels so preposterous because he is like backwards flipping these lyrics into his melodies. And, but then it creates something that's so fun to listen to because when, if everyone is just singing songs the way that words sound, like what's fun about doing karaoke to that? You know what I mean?

7:24Unless you're like mimicking how he says mattress, like why would that even be fun right it's like it's so right it's like um you know when you're it's like you know a supermodel's beauty mark or a supermodel having buck teeth or whatever it's like that's that point of sort of slight ugliness or difference or whatever or they they put in something foul into every expensive perfume to make it smell all the better it's like having having these little moments in every song they're like did he just fucking say that did he just want to be the friction in my jeans it like it turns something ordinary into something with like true like generational sticking power yeah and it all just like feels so like honest I don't know there's something about their music where I was listening to it and I was like it's so specific that it has to come from something real you're not sitting there being like what's a love song that'll resonate it's like the friction in your jeans that came from a place of watching someone hump

8:27and like there's some so I got back into this band first of all okay hang on no I want to still pause first because you are a millennial from Chicago yes so I would really like to go back to the beginning with you and fallout boy and if ideally I would like this conversation to have the energy of two girls who met on an emo chat room and then had to take the chat to MSN because the chat room was complaining that the emo girls were talking too much about Fallout Boy. Okay. Well, I am from Northbrook, Illinois. They, for the most part, are from Wilmette, Illinois, which is next door. So it was a really big deal for us.

9:07When I was in like middle school as their first albums were coming out, it was like a huge fucking deal that these guys from Wilmette had this like major label situation or they were on Fueled by Ramen at first, which at that time was like one of the coolest. It's like one of the indie labels that people knew of. And then they went over to Island Records. And so it was just like a huge, huge deal locally that this, I mean, obviously it was a huge deal everywhere because they were on a major label. And I think they debuted pretty well. But we were like, well, that's our thing. Like no one else has even, like I would go places and people would be like, oh yeah, I know Fall Out Boy.

9:41And I'd be like, but how? They're from Wilmette. That's kind of for us. That's like our thing, I guess. How did you even know about it? and there was just like a lot of I feel like I have all of the same references because we grew up in a similar space like all of their like even in their most recent album Heaven or Iowa is one of the songs which is like a fault a Field of Dreams reference which like of course everyone has seen Field of Dreams but it feels so specific and so Midwestern and they've like hung on to that so hard like a lot of their early songs like homesick at space camp and um chicago is so two years ago and all of those felt so like i feel like i had a real fallout boy resurgence when i was like leaving illinois to like go to college in new york and then move to la where i was like i have to leave this small town to follow my dreams like fallout boy i love that so much like So then does that mean that in the wake of Fall Out Boy?

10:39So right there, I think most of them were born like 1982 to 1986 kind of thing. So they're not that much older than us. They just got famous incredibly young. So was there like a huge emo scene that like popped up around their success? Yeah, I feel I'm trying to think of like all of the bands that kind of like flooded into the zeitgeist in their wake. but I feel like it became a real, like that was, I think for my group of friends, at least like the key genre. It like started with fallout boy. And then we're listening to panic at the disco and we were listening to like all time low. And, um, I'm trying, like there was like a whole group of them that I feel like fallout boy was the gateway for, for me at least.

11:21And it was, it was like, all we listened to. I got, for me, it was dashboard confessional. Oh my God. Oh my God. like just I had never and again it's it's the genre that's incredibly good at longing like I remember listening to Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional for the first time and like that guy just screaming heartbrokenly saying hands down this is the best day I can ever remember and thinking like this you know that that that pain you feel like an ugly preteen that you're like no one will feel this way about me ever yeah but also if I listen to this song maybe I can make it happen over and over again yeah exactly I feel like it was such a I feel like the pop punk scene was so like primed for like me and my group of friends specifically because we were very like energetic but like that like the whole pop punk thing pop punk thing is like you're like jumping up and down and like screaming about how sad you are and how no one gets you yeah right yes Exactly.

12:27Like I want to be jumping up and down and singing with my friends, but it's because I'm, because no one gets me. It's so true. It's so like this, like one of my least favorite stock characters in any like TV show is like, you know, when they have like a random goth teen girl who's like miserable and she's like, oh God, I hate this or whatever. and she's such an unfun character to ever like like whatever jenna ortega is doing i have no time for but like like it just because to me it's like such a fundamental misunderstanding of girls who are like that like if you if you go into any like like high school or secondary school and see a girl who's like wearing black lace tights on her arms and like she's got a big black t-shirt over that and there's a tutu and whatever like she is gonna be the same girl who's like telling you she's so random and like how her and her friends have like their own language and they're just like you know stealing shopping trolleys and riding around in them like those are like the most high energy freaky little girls but they are also simultaneously upset about no one understanding them and changing their msn bios to like really upsetting lyrics every available opportunity it's So it's hard because I love them for that.

13:41But I also am like, what is happening here? You have to get a grip. Girl, you have to get a grip. My experience with the band is so that like, I feel like this is humiliating, but I've only really gotten into them as an adult. I don't think that's humiliating. They write complex lyrics for complex people. They do, and I'm one of them. But for me, it was like, when I was growing up so so Cork was um like a real metal town like there were like there's a there's a metal club in Cork from under a cork tree from under thank you thank you very much there's like there's like a strong goth and metal scene that ran through Cork in the kind of 90s and 2000s and so it was all about like kind of obviously metal bands that I work like but also kind of grunge bands like Alice in Chains and um everything was very heavy and the people I was hanging out with around the time that fallout boy like like managed to cross the atlantic and like wash up on our shores because it was like it was still a time where like things were arriving to us a bit later like i was probably 15 or 16 and the people i hung out with were like it's the pixies or it's nothing and so i was i was so afraid of even listening to fallout boy or my chemical romance because i knew how good it was and how catchy it was and that i might find myself liking it so it's that thing of being like trying to run as far as you can away from it just in case you might get infected by how good it is why I've never tried heroin right it's exactly that's exactly how I felt about emo music at the time that I will get addicted to it and then I'll have no friends anymore and have no way to support myself and then it was only like as an adult when I started writing YA I was like oh I need like a way to get into this sort of frame of mind of like that that specific thing and why I love writing fiction for young adults is because you when you're writing for children for like proper children I think you're writing about emotions that are happening for the first time so it's like you're feeling jealousy for the first time you're feeling anger you're feeling love you're feeling friendship that's for kind of the under 12s but when you're writing for teenagers you're experiencing about those emotions venn diagramming for the first time so you're like oh no i'm feeling jealousy but also lust i'm feeling lust but also you know feeling left feeling fomo i'm like it's like all these like a monstrous merging of emotions to create new sub emotions that is so well covered by emo as a genre and so it was like in my 20s i just started listening to all these bands again being like this fucking rocks that's amazing okay so one of the things that I'm interested in especially when I was really looking into fallout boy for this is like why is it so teenage you know what I mean because I feel like there is this kind of separation of like what people think of as like the cool metal punk bands and then there's the ones that are for teenagers specifically and and I feel like fallout boy really had to like fight and then embrace being like well I guess we're for teenagers and then like millennials who remember us from when they were teenagers and it's so okay so I remember from when I read Anthony Kiedis's memoir he was making fun of the who for being like old sellouts who now just do stadium tours were like the only people who can afford tickets are like boring old dentists and so true this book it's true but then the next year uh Red Hot Chili Peppers announced their reunion tour which was a big stadium tour with expensive tickets and I'm like well look who's performing for the dentists now and I feel like it's this thing where I'm like every like the pixies like all of these bands that like were cool bands like they all become a little bit corporate at some point for the most part except for like Fugazi and so then but like there's still the distinction that exists in our minds you know what I mean I feel like there are certain like like Alice in Chains if Alice in Chains went on tour with a band that was like considered like teenage nonsense back then like no one now would blink an eye because they'd be like I don't know they're all kind of from the same genre I guess like no one cares anymore or like yeah it's not real anymore but people still care in a way I don't know I keep wondering about this because it's something I I kept thinking about while I was reviewing their like you know early reviews and how much hate existed for this band at the time and it really struck me that in a way is there something kind of healthy about the music industry not like not healthy but you know I mean like where a world where people still cared about integrity so much that they were willing to hate on a band this much for being sort of you know on TRL for example because like Fall Out Boy their big break was that they were just like this you know little band from Chicago and then they kind of ended up on TRL and then Sugar We're Going Down goes huge and then you can literally see all these crazy these it just seems like from a different planet this this um kind of material where like it's fallout boy playing mtv spring break and it's like all these like hunky you know 17 year olds shirtless and blonde and they're just like holding their hands up to dance dance and like really going for it but it's like they're in florida and it's so it's outdoors and like Patrick Stump seems like he's dealing poorly with the humidity and like it's it's so strange warm climates not it's just not it's it's crazy that that band kind of band can exist in that kind of context in a way it just couldn't now you know yeah well it's so weird I feel like they were kind of like early in the genre bending kind of world where then they would get so much hate for it because I feel like now everything is everything.

19:43If that makes like, I don't know how to explain it. I feel like the internet has made it so that like everything is for whoever finds it. And then whoever finds it then like feels empowered to go online and be like, I didn't like this. And it's like, well, it literally wasn't for you. Why would you like it? You know what I mean? Like there's, I feel like there's music that I hear now that is being like blasted the fuck out. And I go, I don't even know how this ended up on my FYP. It's not for me, but there's no reason for me to like hate on it it's just not like when I hear Tate McRae I'm like stop showing me this it's not for me like it's but I have no problem someone tried to show me Tate McRae the other day my friend was showing me like her her big VMAs performance and I felt and obviously she's very skilled but like I I was just like so uncomfortable I was like I'm looking at a baby doing yeah like like I felt like how much a grown people must have felt when baby one more time came out.

20:33I was like, this is wrong. This is illegal, surely. Surely. And so I see her and I'm like, but it's not for me to comment. Like, but now everyone thinks everything is for them, served directly to them. Like anything they see is someone asking them, like, do you have commentary on this? And it's like, no, no, no, no. You're not supposed to have commentary on everything. And so I feel like, you know what I mean? Like Tate McCree gets shown to me, but I don't have to think about her more often than I am right now right but this is okay this I find this interesting this has come up for me on this podcast before when I've done episodes on like Kylie Minogue or Robbie Williams like people who for the moment in time they were occupying they were being blasted from every tv and every radio and there was also because people didn't live in their headphones in the way they do now there was a more sense of like I cannot escape this person like now I think we get that maybe with Taylor Swift because she's managed to sort of jerry-rig the industry that she sort of is like part of the fabric in a way that actually we think of it as being a modern thing it's actually quite dated it was like that that that was happening more so in the 80s 90s and early 2000s where you turn on a tv there's there's Kylie Minogue you radio there's Kylie Minogue try and buy something it's a perfume by Kylie Minogue and like there was just fewer people and more of them going around so in a way I actually have sympathy for the amount of hate culture that exists around then because people were just so much more unavoidable and now if someone comes up my FYP enough if I just swipe past them enough times I'll never see them again you know what I mean yeah yeah I guess I will okay so the thing with Fall Out Boy that I keep on trying to figure out is like they were such an example to me of like well what are people supposed to do?

22:19Like not make money from their art or whatever. Cause like they did come up in the way that bands are supposed to come up. You know what I mean? Like they were a Chicago area, like, you know, hardcore band turned pop punk band. Like Fall Out Boy was their side project from doing more hardcore stuff. And then that's kind of what people resonated with. And I'm like, are people not supposed to be allowed to make money making music? They're not an industry plant. They were just like guys making music that people liked. Isn't that who's supposed to be successful in music? Right. And also it's like if you really try and locate the hate as well, I don't think people felt the same way about someone like Sum 41, like who had an enormous amount of success, had a similar kind of pop punk sound.

23:09But like when I talk to people now about Sum 41, there's a real feeling of like deep nostalgia and real fondness and especially a real fondness for that kind of silliness and that I was talking to my husband about fallout boy before this and he's generally so unsnobby about things and like is very like very much subscribes to the worldview of this podcast and he said to me he was like I think if fallout boy was your favorite band now something would be wrong with you I was I couldn't believe it I was like what why would you say that they get okay they are like such a punchline in a way that I really can't figure out and I I don't know what it is because I I feel like like think about blink 182 right I'm like they are goofball fucking weirdos with one guy who takes himself way too seriously and one guy who takes himself not seriously at all and one guy who thinks he saw aliens like why would fallout boy be the punchline when we have blink 22 but like they're so prolific like they really i was like they have so many albums they have so much music and they're constantly just like trying stuff and why is that bad i can't figure it out why is that bad oh god i know that we both read in advance of this um patrick stumps sort of it's quite old now it came out in 2012 but basically he wrote a long essay about how it feels to to be Patrick Stump essentially and at that point their I think their fifth album Follier De which is a great album and I'm sure we'll be talking about tracks from it in just a minute um how it was such a flop and how his solo project like fans of fallout boy would buy tickets just to come up to him afterwards and tell him that he sucked and that he had to rejoin the band and like how horrible that was and how he essentially was made to feel like he was a child star who wasn't cute anymore yeah yeah it's really sad I mean so at this point uh fallout boy had um from under a cork or they had what was the first album called take this to your grave from under a cork tree infinity on high and then fully a duh and that fully a duh I guess according to consensus bombed but it still went gold and now I feel is kind of beloved by fallout boy fans it's really weird because now when i see people talking about fallout boy they really like love folia dub but it apparently got like panned and everyone hated it and it was just like a massive failure and then i guess they all broke up or not broke up but like took a hiatus and patrick stump put out his own album and everyone was so mean to him why be mean to patrick stump like why be mean to patrick stump for what i sort of think one of the best lyrics ever and maybe sort of lines of prose is am I more than you bargained for yet because am I more than you bargained for sounds normal but the yet yeah like yet what's he gonna do they're constantly hedging their bets these guys they go how about now how about now how about now I just there's something about it like I tried to for one of my um teen books I tried to make that the epigraph am I more than you bargained for yet because it was about a girl who had like a curse placed on her and we couldn't afford it but the Patrick if you're listening the intention was there that's amazing it's so and it's it hits so hard as soon as that song comes on and he goes am I more than you bargained for you you're like okay I guess let's start I guess we're here Patrick I guess we're here.

26:51I've been dying to tell you. I mean, they're such a good karaoke band. Like, this is my karaoke song. Yes, good. It's like, it's good. Good. I think last time I saw you, I got so incredibly drunk that I tried to convince you to go back to your apartment and sing Fall Out Boy. And you rightly put me in a cab. what was i doing that day i think it was the day of the chicago bears oh my god wait that we saw i was really drunk it was so fun i made carol take a shot of malort you guys if you've never heard of it um google google it i guess you made me take a shot of malort so i could prove to everyone that i was from chicago because my favorite thing about going to a different country is pretending I'm from.

27:43Yeah. From a very specialized place, which is now Chicago. And apparently if you're from Chicago, you have to have Malor. And apparently Malor is made of like wood.

27:56It's like a byproduct. I don't know what it is, but it's a very specific liqueur from the region. Something I love about Sugar We're Going Down, and I think, I know we're both Taylor Swift fans. I think you're more of a pessimistic Swifty than I am, which is also fine. Listen, I was hanging on. I was hanging on to that branch and she kept shaking me. She kept shaking me like a leaf and finally I fell. But like there's something really interesting about viewing Fall Out Boy because she's said many times over the years that one of her greatest lyrical inspirations are Fall Out Boy. And so I like listening to their songs sometimes and like sort of pretending it's Taylor.

28:36And like she's, she's like referenced that, you know, the one of the moments she knew that she wanted to be a songwriter is when she heard the phrase, a loaded God complex, cock it and pull it. I was like, of course, that's what you hung on to Taylor Swift. Like it kind of means nothing, but it's also so evocative. Yeah. Yeah. And it means anything you want it to mean. And what it means is always going to be dramatic. Exactly. also who has more of a loaded god complex than taylor swift if that means anything it's taylor i'm also just like obsessed with the line um isn't it messed up how i'm just dying to be him like i love i feel like that is fallout boy to me in a nutshell is that they're all like so cockily insecure do you know what i mean they're like isn't it fucked up that i wish i was him and it's like because they think that they're the best one but they're also dying to be everyone else and you're like there's something because I read part of Joe Troman's memoir and I couldn't get through it because it was pissing me off.

29:40He's the guitarist right? Yeah. Yeah. And he has this real complex of like foul out boy exists because of him where he like thinks that he put the band together or like he held the band together during moments of strife basically. Oh. But then he feels like he's just kind of like the background characters for Patrick and Pete and I am like I mean, you kind of are like, it's a kind of pick me. I feel like sometimes you see people be like, Joe's my favorite. And you're like, yeah, fucking right. That's not true. Who's Joe? What are you talking about? Of course not. Of course it's, you're either like, obviously a Pete Wentz head because you were a teenage girl and you've seen him.

30:26Or you were like someone who wanted to be a little bit different. and you're like, well, I like that Patrick has that voice or whatever. Like, I don't care. Yeah. Yeah, you're not a Joe head. It is very like, I mean, things like that always put me in mind of Ringo Starr getting the most fan mail. Yeah. Which I feel like, I think I've brought it up before, but like, it's like, that's so indicative of like teen girl behavior and teen girl arithmetic to me of like, well, Ringo, no one thinks he's the best looking, so he'll definitely want to fuck me. And so everyone tries to fuck Ringo. Um, okay.

31:01This actually goes into my theory of what has evolved into like all of our hotness metrics now where like the teen girl math is like low key. Who do I kind of have a shot with? And that's why it led us to a fucking, what's his name? Pete from SNL. Pete Davidson. Pete Davidson. Yes. Timothy Chalamet. Like look at all of these guys that are like suddenly our hottest, the hottest ones who've dated every hot girl in Hollywood. It's the ones that we are all like, okay, but I low-key have a shot with him. So then they become the number one guy. And you're like, no, no, no, no, no. You're the number one guy because we thought you were like the most attainable guy.

31:43And that is like the beauty standard for men is being like low-key attainable. Totally. It's Adam Driver. It's Mild Teller. It's all these people who were kind of got on our radars for being a little bit weird looking and now it turns out they treat they're like yes they respond to being cold they're hot the same as everybody does which is like they act like they're hot and above it you know exactly and now they're lost forever that's why I know I mean I'm not personally that interested in Travis Kelsey as like I find him like I'm not attracted to him but I do like the idea that the age of the thoughtful meatball is coming back you know what I mean like just like a big old hunk a guy who's sort of, you know, he's been taught to open a door for a lady.

32:25Yes. Remember when all of his tweets were going viral and he's like, I just saw squirrel smash bread. That was like the most I've ever found him endearing is him tweeting about squirrels and being like, and he spelled squirrel wrong. And I'm like, of course, why would you know how to spell squirrel? Why? Why would you? Yeah. Like, come on. You've got a high school football scholarship and you've had so many smacks to the head. It would be weird of us to expect you to spell squirrel, which if you think about it, kind of a difficult word. A lot of unexpected double letters, you know. Oh, my God.

32:58You know, there's like those, you know, you know, when you see like a little video on social media that like really tickles you and you go back to it. There was this one where they were trying to make French people say American words and one of them was squirrel and they like really couldn't figure it out. It is spelled so weird. They kept being like, squirrel. Squirella.

33:20exactly can't remember how we got here but exactly um isn't it messed up how i'm just dying to be him there's actually a great uh chris fleming bit because he went on an episode of punch up the jam about this song which is basically a podcast where they try and make hit songs better and he said something about isn't it messed up how i'm just dying to be him sort of sounds like the last kid awake at a sleepover. You know when you think everyone's asleep and then someone's voice just opens into the room? Isn't it messed up how I'm just dying? Like it is a line that you've just been sitting on. You're like, okay, I'm finally ready to talk about this.

34:01Like no one's asking, isn't it messed up? I love it. I love it. Oh wait, he's just a notch in your bedpost? but you're just a line in a song. Right. Okay. So this is also, I think the unique horniness of this band is that like, as you say, like they are, they are dirtbags who don't like themselves, but they're so full of lust. And like the idea of like notching your bedpost, lying in a song is so, is such a little dirt baggy. Like, no, fuck you. I don't even care that you're a pretty lady. Fuck you. I'm going to write my little song. I would fuck you. But if, but I don't want, I don't need to.

34:42you're just a notch in a bed post I guess as well because so much of like you know dating culture and romance culture I mean I have been out of the game for a long time but so much of it seems to be my most beautiful friends being like I cannot pay a guy to fuck me right now they are just not interested they will not text me back they will not meet up after the hinge thing it's so dark right now it is bad out here it is dark and I do blame the phones I do think people can only be horny if they're a little bit bored yeah and no one's a little bit bored anymore because everyone's a little bit interested in something on their phone all the time and so therefore the planet will die because no one will have sex um and so and so like every everyone I know is just trying to get some guy on hinge to meet up so maybe that she can get dicked maybe and the idea that like fallout boys are losing it They're like, oh, God, I just want to, God, I want to be with her.

35:43It's just like, oh, I'm so glad that there's still male longing out there. And that's what so many of these songs are about. I wish I was him. I would be the guy.

35:55It's so hot. It really. It's so hot. I was not like dating. I like went on a couple of dates with a guy who like I remember on our first date. he was talking about like taking naps or something in a way that like was deeply upsetting to me. Like, I don't know how to explain it. I just was so like, what do you mean you like are always taking naps? That's, I don't. That's so unerotic. It's so unerotic. And I, I'm like not a napper in general. So I feel like I'm a little bit biased, but I was like, I like, what do you do all day that you like woke up at fucking like 8 30 a.m and like need a nap at three like why are you this is so weird anyway so then like don't come to a date with your nap schedule that's crazy it was so weird and then I went out with him like two more times and then the last time that we were supposed to hang out we were supposed to hang out a fourth time because it is bad out there I can't be that picky and he like we were supposed to hang out and I texted him at like maybe like five being like what time do you want to meet up and he texted me at like eight being like sorry just woke up from a nap do you still want to hang out and I just never texted him back because I was like what do you mean you were napping from five to eight on a Saturday what's wrong with you I hate are you a baby are you like like like also why is it getting harder to believe that sorry go on I was gonna say and like then we had plans like why didn't you text me before your nap saying hey can we meet up at like nine I don't know like it's just one of those things where I'm like okay your life is ruled by taking naps and this is too pathetic for me you would never get that at Pete Wentz or Patrick Stump like they're very different men but wherever they are they are thinking about you and and like what they're gonna say when they see you yeah and if they were gonna have sex that night they wouldn't have fallen asleep and forgotten

37:57god that's so upsetting ashley i'm really sorry like i am so prepared for the men to be a bit worse if they can just want something you know care about anything other than sleeping more jesus fucking christ oh can i talk about another line that haunts me from fallout boy yeah it's from Thanks for the Memories, a song I love. And literally every time I leave an event that I didn't have a good time, but I know I'm going to gossip about it later. I'm just like, thanks for the memories, even though they weren't all that great. But it's like, I know I'm going to talk about this, though I didn't enjoy being here.

38:37But it's the line, he tastes like you, only sweeter. oh like just the idea of this lady hectoring pete went but this is also the interesting thing about so many of their lyrics and also about the kind of enduring appeal of mr brightside is that like men showing their sort of tipping their hand because like so so little we are such a no homo culture still when it comes to men and their desire and eventually they will like this This is why like cuckolding porn is such a huge category. Eventually all of them will admit in some way or another that a huge part of their erotic drive is imagining what other men think of them.

39:20Yes. Like, right? Okay. There are so, I mean, male beauty standards are invented by men. Like they, everyone liked Andy from Parks and Rec more than they like Chris Pratt. But Chris Pratt currently is like a hotter man to men. crazy you're so right you're so right he like they leave us do you know i mean yes as soon like when a man gets deemed hot like it's by women it's it's like a one that they think is attainable and like won't hurt their feelings when a man is deemed hot by men he becomes an action star but women are like pretty freaked out by you so and like there's this kind of um this kind of hunk to action star trajectory where like for example we sort of had matthew mcconaughey in this sort of like stable or this finishing school for like approachable sort of interesting kind of funny quirky men who have nice bone structure but also just seem like a good hang and then he just sort of went back through the barn door to action star and sort of not action star but also like oscar baity sort of like i'm a toxic man in a suit in an office movie and i'm wolf of wall street banging my chest, drinking my cum kind of thing.

40:37And it's then they become so uninteresting to us. And I think it's why we talk about this in the Barbie episode. It's why we love Ryan Gosling so much is because he always comes back for us. Yes, he does always come back for us. He cares about us. He wants to take us on the adventure, you know, and we want to come. I'm there. Yeah. But like all is to say like so much of like the eroticism in songs on Under the Cork Tree and in what's it called that third album? Infinity on High. It does seem to be about like what are other men doing with the woman I want to have sex with and how can I think about them?

41:17And like I think about this all the time with Mr. Brightside. It's all about like touching his chest now and like oh God. Like it's like all about watching from a secret place in your mind. Yes. You know? It's all, yeah, I really think what resonates is like the belief. I feel like they're that exact like teenage angst of like, I could be him. I'm just not. And so I'm watching you guys together. But like, why not me? Why not me? Like, it's like that cockiness of like, it could be me. And it's not. And I noticed that. But why isn't it? Which is also like such the, that observation is the entry point for so much of incel culture.

41:59of like that whole idea of like, I'm a nice guy. Incels used to make art.

42:07Incels used to join bands and make art and then just all get over it together and go out with Ashley Simpson, you know? Okay, can I say that actually is true. I do feel like there was like a whole era where joining a band was because you like couldn't get laid and wanted to get laid. And we're like, if I am on stage playing a guitar, someone will now, like, it doesn't matter what a fucking weirdo I am. someone will have sex with me and now they're in chat rooms instead of learning how to play the goddamn guitar oh like it's so I think I think we're all kind of really begging for this the romantic period of the band like you know the idea of bands as being the biggest acts in the world and which is why it's so like if like a band like fallout boy came around now and they enjoyed the same level of success as they did in 2005 I would I think the whole world would be so charmed that a band was being famous at all playing rock music you know we'd be like wow the kids are listening to rock music again that's amazing literally and I think like the something that's like you know a band that's obviously doing huge right now is kneecap which I'm sure you know all about in the you you guys know about that in the states right that's all oh yeah my favorite terrorist

43:20And I just keep thinking about like, if you, you know, compare, I mean, there's almost nothing in common for these two to compare them. But in terms of like being politically outspoken, like Chapel Roan to Nika, right? Bear with me, I'm cooking. And I remember like Chaperone said some stuff about the Democrats on TikTok about a year and a half ago. And she got so criticized en masse so quickly that she kind of sort of logged on and was like very sheepishly like, oh, you know, I'm learning too, guys, whatever. Bye. And then sort of canceled a bunch of dates and clearly was having a very hard time with being a star and expressing herself and expressing her beliefs.

44:05and trying to find an equilibrium with that. The thing about kneecap is there are a bunch of guys who've known each other forever and they all know what the other person believes in. And so they know that no matter what they say or do, that all their friends are going to be like, yeah, that's what we stand for. And so there's never a moment where they have to like disappear into their phone in the dressing room and wonder if they've cost their entire fortune because they just go and see the other guys and they're like, go you, man, we love you. And that's what we stand for. I imagine. I'm sure there's like other problems in kneecap.

44:33But do you know what I mean? the idea a band is so much harder to destroy than an individual and that is so romantic to me yes it really I mean me and Claire talk about it all the time how grateful we are to like have each other and to be doing this together because even with like touring or something we've talked about this touring can get very like lonely and we don't even tour that extensively but like having someone there even for like a solo act like like Chapel Rhone is obviously touring with a group of people she has her band she has her like backup people roadies whatever but like it's a power imbalance because she's the star so it's not like she's in community with the people like she she can have friends on tour with her I'm sure but it's not the same as like having a partner on tour with you and so then I feel like it is so different having a band where you can like just kind of like spiral or uplift each other or like I feel like me and Claire always talk about how like when one of us is like melting down the other one is like usually pretty good about being like let me steady this tell me a lyric that you love okay I guess I love fallout boy depressed which unfortunately listen I know they struggle with mental health issues but it's really good um they go in this ain't a scene it's an arms race he writes um I wrote the gospel of on giving up I wrote the gospel on giving up yeah I wrote the gospel what gets you about that it's just so I'm like what are you it's so dramatic I wrote the gospel on giving up you look pretty sinking but the real bombshells have already sunk and then he says at night we're painting your trash gold while you sleep i remember thinking about this lyric so much while he like when it came out at night we're painting your trash gold while you sleep crashing not like hips or cars no more like parties and i'm like what the fuck are you even talking about this is nonsense and i love it it's but it's like it functions like poetry in that you almost have to look at it with one eye closed yeah like yeah we're painting your trash gold while you sleep it's It's like one of those things.

46:48It's like a loaded God complex cock and pull it. You're like, it means everything yet specifically, like literally nothing. Like we're painting your trash gold while you sleep. Like prima donnas of the gutter. I feel like it's so, like I feel like when I was a teenager being like, I'm so complicated. Like I'm just like a piece of shit, a prima donna of the gutter. Like I'm fancy, but I'm a piece of shit. But also the like fancy, but I'm a piece of shit. Like the, it's the translation as well from lyric to delivery that like, again, as we said, like it's Pete Wentz's job to write a bunch of lyrics.

47:25And then it's Patrick Stump's job to sort of cram those lyrics into a rhyming scheme. And because of that, you sometimes get these really surprising kind of stanzas, like lines will end and then bleed into the next line. Yes. like there's this bit from Grand Theft Autumn I'm obsessed with where he's like Someday I'll appreciate and value Get off my ass and call you In the meantime I'll Sport like brand new fashion Of waking up with pants on It's just like the way that a line will carry on into the next verse or into the next with a stanza or whatever like it's it just really speaks to somebody who's like cramming cramming too much water into too small a jug and that makes it really exciting yes and it like I feel like it's so melodramatic like it really is this thing of being like I feel like it really speaks to the like teenage angst of being like I'm such a piece of shit but I'm like up here and dancing and the music itself like speaks to that where you're just like i'm a piece of shit but i'm still performing like i'm still like out here showing up and doing stuff do you know like the the lyrics themselves are so just like i i hear how it's annoying but it's so good it's so good there yeah they seem to be it seems like so much of the lyrical content of fallout boy across like however many albums is either um this girl doesn't like me enough or doesn't like me at all um which is great which is just like an endless because you get to be whenever you're listening to it you get to be the girl you get to be the girl who who does not deign to have sex with pete wentz and like that puts you as the listener in this position of power which i think is what like is the rocket fuel behind this band's fan base you know yes wait i just found one that i feel like you're gonna go crazy over.

49:26So one of my favorites is the song Dead on Arrival off their first album. Yes. A rivalry goes so deep between me and this loss of sleep over you. Over me? I am like, what do you like? It's so funny to be like, this is like, we're in a huge fight. Not me and you, me and me not being able to sleep because of you. That song has one of the best choruses ever. Like, this is side one, flip me over. Flip me over. I know I'm not your favorite record, but the songs that you grow to like never stick at first, so I'm writing you a chorus and here is your verse. Psycho. Psycho, but so smart and such, it's so Taylor as well.

50:16It's a little bit Taylor. Like, it's very good. I really feel like Taylor could never hit this level of self-deprecating. I'm not your favorite record, but these songs grow, like these songs you go to like never stick at first. That's, it's so true. Yeah, no, you're dead right. It's not something that you could write now because like that joke about, I'm a music critic made about love story is that she's so like toxically positive that she rewrites Romeo and Juliet to be like a happy story and whatever. And like Ophelia is about a girl who doesn't kill herself or whatever. Um, like if, if this were a Taylor Swift line, it might have the same structure, but it would be like, I am your favorite record.

50:56Flip me over. Listen again. Yes. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. It would be like, this is a side one. Flip me over because it's your favorite record and you're going to keep listening and listening and listening and listening. And I love her for that. But I need both. I feel like it is such the teenage experience to be like, I need, it's a love story baby, just say yes. And I need, I'm not your favorite record, but maybe I'll grow on you.

51:25oh my god another one that i find so we either have like deeply erotic and of all those songs one of the ones i enjoy the most is of all the gin joints in all the world yeah just the idea of someone saying to you turn off the lights and turn off the shyness makes me feel 15 like oh oh my god because all our moves make up for the silence oh my god the way your makeup stains my pillowcase like these are lyrics that don't sound that impressive when you're saying them to your friend over a zoom call but like when you have patrick stum sort of like like he's like incredible soul voice like he does sound like a soul singer so much of the time soul punk exactly and he's the way he stretches his vowels and you're like the way makeup's dead my pillowcase it's like what is this one of the jackson five singing to me i love it god i wonder how different fallout boy would be if any of them were over like 5 10

52:33in a positive way i do feel like in the same way that i wish incels would pick up a fucking guitar i wish that short kings who took out their anger on like all of these guys need to just learn music and it's fine. Just learn music, guys. But once again, you have to be a little bit bored to want to have sex and you have to be really bored to learn the guitar. Like we are just, I just don't think we're going to get another great artistic moment until we all just let ourselves be bored for longer. And I include myself in that. It's so true. I need to delete social media from my phone so that I can make art.

53:09You're going to be saying that until you're 60 years old do you know that exactly and you know what what if i make a rule that i can never increase the text size on my phone so when i can no longer see it i have to just go make art

53:23that could work but the other the other genre okay there's the um uh un unsort of satisfied lust and and mild hatred for the person who won't have sex with you which as we've established we fine hot um uh and there's but there's also the other bucket of fallout boy lyrics is i'm not sure how i feel about being a rock star and i know that all rock bands have a genre of song that's i'm not sure how i feel about being a rock star but i think they're very good at it yeah oh they're so good at it because they're all these guys who are just so like i feel like they hit such a weird genre of rock star where they like were not accepted they were accepted by like pop industry like they were doing trl they were doing all these things but i feel like they never were like a part of any sort of like circuit of rock stars do you know what i don't know yeah yeah no i totally right that i think i think they were part of the um the emo circuit for sure i I mean, from Panic at the Disco and Any Given Sunday or whatever.

54:29Although, it's not Any Given, Taking Back Sunday. Yeah. Different. They definitely toured with that. But I feel like because, I don't know if this makes sense or whether it rings true, but they were the first people to almost break the genre. So everybody who came up behind them was a little bit younger than them or they were newer to them. So could they kind of cut the sort of cut the line, the machete through the long grass in order to blaze this path for bands like Paramore? And I don't think Paramore got an easy time of it either. But they also had people to look up to who were doing it for a few more years than them, like Fall Out Boy.

55:05Whereas Fall Out Boy were kind of, there was no mentors for them, it seemed. Like it didn't seem that there was anybody who was like taking them on tour with them or like, I'm sure there was, but you know what I mean? Like mentoring them in a significant way. Yeah, it's hard to tell. Like, I guess they all just had like mental illness because they all, I mean, reading their Wikipedia, like before their second album, I think Pete had a bit of a breakdown and like attempted suicide in a Best Buy parking lot. Oh, God. And I think that was like a whole and then they've all had their kind of like public moments of discussing previous issues.

55:47and so I wonder if it is just one of those things where like I don't know I feel like they were kind of early to the conversation talking about the price that fame has do you know what I mean and then especially because people were like so mad at like they were also you know obviously part of the sellout conversation and so I feel like for like men to be talking about like the mental toll and then also having people like still bang down their door and be like well it's because you're sellout losers like that was really bad right right like they were kind of they weren't really getting sympathy from anywhere because their fan base were too young to really understand the the cost of what it was they were going through and the cost of touring from the age of 17 and never going to college but making music for dorm rooms must be such a strange thing.

56:40And then an aging through that. And like, I, what, what it must feel like to, you know, have to have conversations about the business that you now run when no one's taught you how to run a business. And also, yeah, you're kind of keeping this perpetual idea of youth alive. And these are all ideas that are far too complex for a audience of generally like 14 to 17 year olds, or, you know, people who are in college or whatever. And so it's very interesting when somebody's internal state can't really be matched by their own audience. But also they were getting nothing but shit from the industry, from the reviews being this like constant punchline of like a certain kind of music.

57:21And like and no one's even being specific about what they mean. It's just like and I guess actually what it comes back to is that it like it's it's the age old thing of it being music for girls. It's like the it's heavy rock music that has a melody and interesting, complex lyrics that therefore girls really glom on to. Girls cheapen the kind of artistic worth of something. And that's why we do this podcast. You know, it's like and like that. Yeah. And like that's and that's it. And therefore they can never be sort of accepted by any kind of musical standard. yeah like it is um like really sad looking at like that essay that Patrick Stump wrote where he's talking about being a 27 year old has been where he's like I just don't even really know like what I did wrong but I'm in this weird space where like my fans don't like me and my haters don't like me and I'm just kind of trying to keep making music but it's really hard when everyone like when the cool thing to do is hate you I how do you deal with that like how on earth can you deal with it especially because it's like if you're a child actor for example I imagine there's a like someone like Mara Wilson or whatever I imagine to some degree she's just like well like the industry has spoken for me and that I am not getting the roles anymore and it's time to sort of get on with the rest of my life but if you're a musician like it's a vocational thing Like you're going to be making music for the rest of your life.

58:48And if you've been touring for a fucking decade since the age of 17, they're really kind of, I guess you can start writing songs for other people, which I know Patrick did do, but like you don't really know how to do anything else. And people just keep screaming at you to stop. Like it's so violent. Like not only do you not want to know how to do anything else, but like why would you want to do anything else? Because you live your dream of being in a world famous rock band. And now you're supposed to be like, well, at least I have this computer degree to fall back. Like what, even if you had an ability to do something else, it's so weird to believe that you would be like, okay, rock band career is over.

59:27Now I'll go be a lawyer. Like I know some people do that, but it's obviously not something you would want to do. If you like, it's that weird push and pull of like, oh, my dreams mean that lots of people on the internet can just like say mean things to me constantly but also not doing my dreams like when your career is your art it's so weird to be like I'll just not right right and there's just like with something of someone of that stature like if they had a platinum record 15 years ago you and like he's very upfront about it where he's like yeah like I spent my nest egg self-producing my title album my solo album that nobody bought like he's very I'm sure he's doing fine now this was written quite a while ago but I mean, they've had a real resurgence.

1:00:11I saw them at Forest Hills like two years ago. And that was, I think, sold out. And that's like a pretty big venue. Yay. That's nice. Because when you look at their career, this – so the irony of that piece is that according to Wikipedia, that is what reconnect – like him and Pete were never like fully out of touch. But that piece, when he published it, is what made Pete call him and be like, I'm in a bad place too. Let's kind of like feel it out together. And then they started making music together again. And then the back half of their career kind of came from that kind of meeting. And they've put out, I think, like four albums since then, some of which have done better than others.

1:00:54And some of which I've like paid attention to more than others. But like there is a whole second half of their career that like the first part was 2001 to like 2010 maybe. And then there was a whole nother chunk that was like 2014 to now. So they are and like they are actively producing music still. They just this week came out with a Christmas song that is a cover of the Muppets Christmas Carol. It's in the singing of a street girl a choir. That one like which is like it's nice. And then a couple of years ago they did like a cover of We Didn't Start the Fire. But just like with modern, you know, modern news things.

1:01:33which is like I mean I know it's like like funny but it's it's like it's nice that they're having fun do you know what I mean yeah it feels like they're entering in that kind of blink-182 kind of goofball stage where they're not as self-conscious about what they're doing and how it's being taken and that can only spell good things for any artist yeah and I feel like it takes so long to get like they had to break up or not break up hiatus to get there because I feel like when you're so caught up in your own lore it can be so hard to like move on right like I I am continuously surprised by in my like rinky dinky little media career how like when I do something that's like like a little bit more successful than the other things I've done how hard I find moving on from it you know what I mean like I still find it hard moving on from having done a Sex and the City podcast during COVID.

1:02:24Like, there's so... That's crazy. But you must feel the same about the memoirs, right? Yeah, I mean, constant, like it, I mean, and obviously we've only been moved on from it for like two months, but I feel like there are still, you know, we've still covered like a memoir or two since we stopped covering memoirs and it's only been two months. And so people will like still send us constantly memoirs and some of them I'm like, oh my god no the reason we stopped specifically covering memoirs is that i didn't have to cover the ones that i like truly i don't even know who this person is like what are you talking about and obviously we still every day get messages from people saying like go back to memoirs go back to memoirs and i'm like no i like okay so for context for listeners who don't know haven't figured this out yet ashley and her partner claire parker used to do a podcast called celebrity memoir book club and now they do a wonderful podcast called good noticings where basically one of them was about memoirs.

1:03:22The other one is closer to like a high-low structure where it's like a magazine show about like what's happening in pop culture. Both podcasts, great. But like, yeah, like it's so strange to me. I have never sent an email to a creator in my life suggesting they do anything. But the amount that I receive and that I know you receive is boggling to me. I was like, wow, star signs really must exist because people are just so comfortable telling you want to do and I would just never do that like what star sign is that that everyone's under that makes them say they can just fucking message you and say do this it's so weird the way that people I guess like even when we were doing celebrity memoir book club and like now there's a little bit more like space for suggestions because we cover so many topics per episode but the one that really used to upset me is when people would um just say do this memoir I don't know what it was but like the demand yeah like getting a message saying oh my god do you think you guys are going to cover this one wouldn't bother me but when people would send me a message and say do this one do this one next i would go i'm i'm totally with you it's it's so about the tone it's so about the like it's like someone who's like ordering something at a restaurant and it's like you know you don't pay me at all like you don't like i don't even have a patreon you don't pay me at all why are you acting like so authoritatively over me it's so rude it really drove me insane and I like don't think that they really meant anything by it but like it was the way that it just like was so flippant and demanding I was like how fucking dare you and right right like this is us with again our rinky dinky media careers we will never be invited to the grammys we are never going on TRL and like it drives us crazy these were teenage boys that were put in front of the world.

1:05:14It really like, I don't know how they deal with it. Like every time I think about the way that celebrities go through stuff, the way that like the messages I get, I'm like, if this was times even six, I would lose my mind and they're getting times a billion. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Times a billion. Yeah, exactly. It's funny. It's funny how, how little of a career you need to have in the public eye in order to start relating to Celebrity. As a celebrity myself, let me tell you. As a celebrity myself. I want to talk about some of their I hate being famous and I don't know what to do about it lyrics because I really think their best fucking song is 27, A Follier Deux.

1:05:58And the chorus goes like this. My mind is a safe and if I keep it in, we'll all get rich. My body is an orphanage. We take everyone in. doing lines of dust and sweat off of last night's stage just to feel like you wow doing lines of dust and sweat off last night's stage just to feel like you just to feel like like looking out at your audience and being like if I could feel as good playing these songs as these people do hearing these songs I'd have it made but now I just have to do lines of dust and sweat of the stuff. It's so good. Oh my God. I love your note. This is the life of a showgirl.

1:06:41Honestly, 27 is the life of a showgirl. Like, and then the, the kind of the bridge is I got a lot of friends who are stars, but some are just black holes. God damn. Wow. Good. It blows my hair back that song it's i listen to the treadmill all the time i'm gonna listen to our playlist on my run today i like can't believe i don't some of it is just so like intense and then the musicality is like it hits so hard and so i am like what do you mean like pop punk bullshit it's so good like people who dismiss this band don't know a fucking thing about the man um god what a catch donnie is such an insane song it's so just like i i mean you really hear the origins of soul punk yeah and then like the constant references back to their own work i feel like when people thought that that was going to be like the curtain call for the band and i was like yeah it sounds like it It sounds like one, because what a catch, Donnie, it starts with Patrick Stump, like on a piano, doing this very soul thing.

1:08:00I've got, you know, I've got self-esteem. Was it the line again? I've got? I've got troubled thoughts and the self-esteem to match. just him and the piano and then it kind of slowly builds it's kind of their I feel like emo bands really like playing with that Les Miserables one day more structure of just having all these voices coming in and gathering and it feels like the end of act one of a musical I love that too I love that too fucking My Chemical Romance I'm Not Okay or Welcome to the Black Parade so good and you have all these emo singers who are throughout What a Catch Donnie taking all these like famous lines from Fallout Boy's career, from Dance Dance, from Sugar We're Going Down, from, yeah, from so many of them, singing them in this kind of slow funereal way.

1:08:58And then I only found out today that the Donnie that the title refers to is Donnie Hathaway, who was a soul singer who worked with Roberta Flack and who jumped to his death from a balcony. And like, so to invoke a story like that and a singer like that at the end of this album and then have all these emo artists who you have toured with and who you've come up with, plus Elvis Costello for some reason, like singing your, like it does sound like that you're singing your own funeral dirge in a way. Mm-hmm. And I feel like they think they were and then for that album to have flopped so hard. And again, it didn't even flop that hard.

1:09:39It just comparatively to Infinity on High kind of ate shit and got really negative reviews. Like imagine what that must have felt like to put your heart on a track like this and then have people like hate it. God, I hadn't even thought of that. Like to end your big album with this like real accomplishment and you're really invoking a very like a very specific person, a very specific frame of mind. the thing that like Pete Wentz has said about this song he said I really wrote this song thinking about Patrick I was like okay so you've invoked this famous soul singer with for your bandmate who has this famously soul voice and this guy jumped off a balcony in New York City like what are you trying to tell us about Patrick Pete like and like I think that's also something that's just so magical about the band that you have this like sexy guy who who kind of is very bad at expressing himself in interviews.

1:10:34Like if you listen to a Pete Wentz interview, it is a waste of your time. Like you just cannot fucking throw a sentence together. And he's writing all this music to be sung through this kind of, like with great respect, this kind of homely guy, like who, it's not that you would like not date him or anything. It's just that compared to one of the most beautiful men of his generation, you know, they had to put him in hats, you know? pete wentz is just like so cute he was just so cute and there's nothing you could do about it but think how hard that must have been for patrick i know and it is so hard because i kind of feel like no matter what pete wentz would have been the star because of the thing that we're talking about where like girl math is not picking the lead singer yeah it kind of didn't matter where he plays to the band like that's basically what one of the main conflicts of fucking almost famous is about is that like sure russell hammond is like sexier than the lead singer guy but like not by a mile like not like not by that far but he just isn't the lead singer so he's dark and mysterious and so the fact that like pete once i do think like listen obviously he's hotter than Patrick Stump but the fact that he is like not front and center and is writing all these like soulful lyrics right you're just like it's just hotter no matter what it is just hotter no matter what you're dead right yeah because like you're getting this tunnel to the beautiful boy's soul through the other boy yeah which I guess is also why so many of their their songs seem to lean in this place of like you know of of there being two boys plus a girl right yeah fun sexy sexy i love it sexy you got any more um okay the last thing i want to talk about is the way they name songs which i actually think has been deeply influential to me personally go on so for those of you who don't know my own personal history my first podcast was called hold on one second we're talking about Britney Spears.

1:12:41The next one was called We're in a Fight with Claire and Ashley. Like I do. Claire always makes fun of the way that I name things because I do have such a tendency to like attempt to make it a full sentence literally all the time. Like when we were naming our website, like everything we've done, I always come up with these names that are lengthy sentences. And she's always like, stop it. Stop doing that. And so if you look like our, the names of our podcasts have gotten shorter and shorter over time. Every single time we launch a new one and the name gets shorter but like my instinct is always to make them as long as humanly possible and over the years I really do think it's extremely fallout boy inspired oh that's so true okay give me some of the names of fallout boy songs that are particularly long because there are so many good ones over that uh one of them is called I'm like a lawyer with the way I'm always trying to get you off okay love okay love um sending postcards from a plane crash Wish you were here.

1:13:38I've got all this ringing in my ears and none on my fingers. Right. I've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says you should shut your mouth. Okay, that's my favorite. I've got a dark alley and a bad idea that says that you should shut your mouth. Sophomore slump or comeback of the year. I mean, some of these are just so like a sentence that they had planned. And then you're like, okay, I guess that's the title of a song. But also it's like the confidence of a bunch of teenagers to just be like, no, this is how we're naming our songs, you know? Yeah. oh god I when I was going through my phase of um you know not trying heroin and not listening to to fall out boy I remember going into the like like virgin and you know picking up from under the cork tree and and looking at all those song titles like yeah I've got a dark alley and a bad idea or like nobody puts baby in the corner of all the gin joints in all the world like champagne for my real friends real pain for my sham friends a little less 16 candles a little more touch me touch me touch me like it's so cool it's so cool to do that in a world where like so many songs are just called like dreams or whatever you know what i mean or like generic fucking song titles and like for a bunch of teenagers to be like no this is what we're calling them is so cool to me head first slide into cooperstown on a bad bet it's like okay yeah why not why not so those are all baseball references which I feel like is a very U.S.

1:15:17they have a lot of baseball like I think they're big baseball guys because there's a lot of like baseball adjacent long lyrics oh wow okay so that obviously went right over my head it is all these things where I'm like why not why not make that I love I've got all this ringing in my ears and none on my fingers I feel like it's we'll never stop having that conversation we'll never stop be the that song right now that's huge I would like a ring I would like a diamond ring on my wedding finger I would like a big and shiny diamond but I also just love like how um referential all of it is as well and like I think now that's a lot cooler than it it was like now I feel like you know any sort of pop star will have just like a random reference to Mean Girls in her music video for no reason or whatever and like the idea of being extremely pop culture referential is kind of it's almost the least that we demand from our pop culture characters now but Fall Out Boy the idea that like the band itself is named after kind of a niche Simpsons reference and then like you know referencing 16 Candles like referencing it's like references on like it's such a long entry on tv tropes.com of just fallout boy references um from like like like even that um lyric i quoted earlier on that he tastes like you only sweeter is a reference from closer you remember that movie with julia roberts and natalie portman about cheating that's a line from that movie like why why that film there's so much and like i don't know how much of it i like overly read into being from the midwest but so much of it is so midwest because like pretty in pink is a john hughes movie and john hughes was from my same suburb and so like it's all not all but like so much of it is like in this like midwestern zeitgeist that like obviously everyone has seen but i feel like there's layers on it for the midwest kids to be like this is kind of our stuff that's so nice though that that feeling that this is kind of our stuff I remember only having that feeling really when um once became the Oscar winning movie of that year and like Glenn Hansard is such like a character of Ireland that like the idea that Americans would enjoy it on any level was just so delightful and perplexing and now I kind of have that with Ireland and everything now like the way like everything Irish is just way more famous than it used to be is perplexing Irish stuff is really popping off I know I keep hoping that the bottom doesn't fall out before my thing comes out you know I think you have time there better be at least like three years left in this so that when my TV show comes out it's still like interesting to like Irish things I think it will be I think it's going to be huge in fact I think people are starving for it I think you already need to hear that Ashley do you have anything else more to say about Fall Out Boy?

1:18:17I feel like in some ways the excitement I feel about them has been totally communicated but the depth of feeling I have when I'm walking around in my headphones listening to this band hasn't been and I don't know how to unite those two things yeah that's I feel there is like a plunging into my soul of fallout boy that like is hard to explain because it's not like they already said it through their songs yeah and like but they they really do make me feel like 14 again where you're just like taking any excuse to write down the lyrics that you're hearing that and like put them on your msn bio or like put them in a chat room or just like put them in an interesting font just so you can see how special and magical the words are when they are written down and like it's that that feeling is just so the fact that you can still have it in your 30s is lovely i want to start putting um like an away message with lyrics again oh my god what if we made a decision as a generation that all of our out of offices were now just lyrics.

1:19:19It's like, Ashley Hamilton, sorry, I'm away from my desk until Thursday the 25th or whatever. This ain't a scene, it's a goddamn arms race. Why not? Why not? Why wouldn't we do that? We're the generation to do it. We invented it. Oh, wait, hold on. Wait, I pulled up this other one from Homesick at Space Camp where he goes, tonight the headphones will deliver you the words that I can't say. Tonight I'm writing you a million miles away. So what if I change my out of office to tonight this bounce back will deliver you the words that I can't say? So good. I mean, I think this could be a thing actually.

1:20:01Oh my God. Well. We're here at the precipice of the birth of a new thing and I couldn't be more excited. I can't wait. Okay. Everyone change your out of office to Fall Out Boy lyrics and listen to this band. And also I'm going to share our playlist in the episode notes because everyone deserves to get a hold of this thing. I couldn't agree more. Ashley, do you want to promote your podcast that we love? Yeah, it's called Good Noticings and I hope you like it. I like it. Yay, thank you. Thanks, Ash.

1:20:45Thank you.