Joe Trohman - Blog Posts
ITS HERE!!! SO MUCH (FOR) STARDUST IS HERE!!!!! AND MY CD IS HERE AND NOW IM GONNA SPEND THE ENTIRE WEEKEND IN MY ROOM LISTENING TO THIS!!!! SO GLAD MY PARENTS ARE GOING TO MY MUMS COUSINS WEDDING AND THAT I DONT HAVE TO GO!!!!!
My Japanese mother was talking about the Summer Sonic Festival in Japan and was like, "Yeah, the line-up has throwbacks like Alicia Keys and the Fall Out Boys."
I did immediately correct her to be like, "Mom, it's Fall Out Boy."
But anyway the way she referred to Fall Out Boy like they're some really old band actually felt like a stab in the chest for me.
I do have this slightly skewed thought process where my definition for "old" means anything before 1995 (this is how 7 year old me tried to defend Pokemon from being old, which I'm realizing now is like, almost 30 years old. Damn. I wasn't even existing when it came out and that fucking hurts).
But Mom. It's Fall Out Boy. They're not that old. What do you mean the 2000s weren't like 10 years ago. The passing of time is a crisis
Sometimes I sit and wonder how the part of the Phandom that is particularly in the emo trinity trenches ever recovered from the fact that DAN AND PHIL HAVE MET FOB MORE THAN ONCE LIKE WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK LIKE THEY WERE ON A SCREEN TOGETHER AND TALKING AND INTERACTING
But seriously how is this not talked about more. I was recently reminded of this while losing braincells on the internet and started shaking like what the actual fuck.
Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz the III wants me to have emotional pain.
He is succeeding.
That little bitch is the reason I'm not straight.
I can't cope.
Hold me tight or don't - Fall Out Boy
As a long time fan of both MCR and Fall Out Boy, which one hurt worse;
When Love From the Other Side (first track) says “you were the sunshine of my lifetime what would you trade the pain for?” and So Much (for) Stardust (final track) says “in another life you were the sunshine of my lifetime what would you trade the pain for?”
\ \ Forever a Lake Effect Kid \ \
don't steal
if I had a dollar for every time Fall Out Boy expressed their love for Chicago I could go to every single one of their concerts with a VIP Pass
well no wonder i like them so much, they too are emo as fuck. thank you spotify for this
2018
Just saying 2018 has actually been off to a great start. No one has severely fucked up and we emos got hydrated. BVB released an album, FOB released an album, MCR’s YouTube page posted vids, Waterparks released an album and Thirty Seconds To Mars released a single. Hydration levels are up kids.
the thing is that i can still remember the way it felt.
end of november, 2022, suddenly every feed lights up. they're doing something. people are posting images of the chicago tribune, a full page ad that has this bicolored logo, a face both happy and sad, black and white, and it simply says: FOB8.
"is this real?" quite a few people were skeptical after the years-long pause between mania and now. "i'm not convinced."
"it's a full-page ad in a single chicago newspaper out of nowhere, right after joe got finished doing a whole book tour where he insisted they had no new music to speak of," i answered. "of fucking course it's real. it has fall out boy all over it."
i remember so vividly the sense of wonder that arrived on christmas morning of that same year, when i woke up at the exact right moment to learn that fall out boy did something again. an eerie, playful, earnest, weird claymation video with a haunting soundtrack, featuring a little black and brown dog. it was mystifying and bizarre and striking - a sprinkling of stardust on the dog's muzzle that prompted it to sneeze - and the adrenaline rush i got from the snippet of heart-pounding drums and guitar was the best gift i'd received all year.
so much (for) stardust. i've said it before and i'll say it again - it's a damn near perfect title. it's a play on words, it has multiple meanings nested into one another. given enough time, we all fall apart like so much dust, like so much stardust because that's where we came from. we are made of and from stardust. for stardust. so much for stardust. so much for the cosmic clay that shaped us. so much for this life, so much for the very foundational fucking firmament from which we we all sprang, so much for this whole strange weird existence. it's exhaustion and anger and spite and frustration and, at the same time - it's wonder. it's love. it's a doberman frozen in an instant of elated play, snapping at bubbles. it's a dog breed conventionally associated with danger captured in a moment of buoyant delight. it's an oil painting, surrounded by words shaped from sparkling clay.
it's love.
it's a record full to bursting with love. it's in the very first song they sent to us, sending us their love from the other side of the apocalypse. it's a record that says yes, the world is a mess and it feels insurmountable. maybe existence is meaningless. maybe it's all fucking pointless and we're all gonna die anyway. but like hell that means i'm not going to love life with all that i am. like hell i am going to let that stifle me. if nothing matters, then love is what matters.
and they committed to it, too. if there's one thing we can take away from so much for (tour)dust, it's that fall out boy loves us the way we love them. they'd have to, right? they could have called it quits years ago. hell, they could've packed it up after the hiatus and just never come back. they'd have to really love doing this to want to keep at it, years later, and look at that. they have.
fall out boy, at the end of the day, is propelled by love. they have to really love what they do to keep doing it. they have to love each other, love the music, love the fans, to keep doing what they do. this is something they've repeatedly asserted over the course of this tour and record cycle: the sheer, shared joy, the positive feedback loop of creative energy that comes from sharing something you made with the world and seeing the world respond in turn.
the world is a wreck and it feels, at times, like nothing you do matters or changes anything. so much (for) stardust is the antithesis to that kind of existential apathy. look, it says. look at what your love has changed. because as desolate and nightmarish and inescapable as the pitfalls of this strange, oftentimes terrifying existence can be - we have laughter, we have good friends, we have good music, and we have the ability to not let our own ennui defeat us. there are things in this world worth living for. there are things in this world worth loving. you have to love one another. you have to laugh and do whatever silly, inane thing makes you feel alive. you have to hug your friends and sing with them, cry with them, and savor every drop of this life that we get. prioritize love. be seriously unserious.
a week before this record came out, i spent some 6-7 hours in a car driving to a record store to hear it with a bunch of people, many of them strangers. i heard so much (for) stardust in its entirety in a record store with one of my favorite people, surrounded by awed chatter as we all drank it in. we didn't catch all the words, but the ones we heard sank into us and took root. i almost couldn't bear to wait for to hear the record properly.
a year later, it's sunk into the recesses of my soul. i'm not sure it'll ever come unstuck there. i don't think i want it to.
thanks for the stardust, fall out boy.
we love you back.