One Song - Fall Out Boy's "Sugar, We're Going Down"

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Is “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” emo’s ultimate anthem? Diallo and LUXXURY dive into Fall Out Boy’s breakout hit, charting the band’s journey from Chicago hardcore kids to Hot Topic legends, all while untangling the genre enigma of “emo.” One Song Spotify Playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/40SIOpVROmrxTjOtH7Q1yw?si=a60088a41382402f Songs Discussed: “Sugar, We’re Going Down” - Fall Out Boy “Self Esteem” - The Offspring “All The Small Things” - blink-182 “Pressure” - Paramore “I Write Sings Not Tragedies” - Panic! At The Disco “I’m Not Okay (I Promise)” - My Chemical Romance “Before Christ, There Were Cowboys” - Arma Angelus “Locust Star” - Neurosis “Gabriel” - Roy Davis Jr. feat. Peven Everett “For Want Of” - Rites of Spring “Last Caress” - Misfits “My Hero” - Foo Fighters “Higher” - Creed “Rumble” - Link Wray “You Can’t Stop The Prophet” - Jeru The Damaja “3rd From the Sun” - Chrome “It Was There That I Saw You” - …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

And this is one song, it's a musical pot. We talk about musicians and singing. This song was number one with outsiders. So if you like it, subscribe and like us. Lectury today, we're talking about a song that has emerged as one of the ultimate pop punk, or some might call it emo, anthems of the early 2000s. That's right, Jollalo. This song took a bunch of scenester kids from the underground to the pop mainstream,

going multi-platinum and to number eight on the Billboard Hot 100. And in many ways, this band is one of the last bands, actual band bands, to cross over into the top 40. We're going to talk about all this and more. So go swoop your bangs, put on guy liner, and skinny jeans, because today we're getting ready to line the grass next to the mausoleum. We're talking one song, and that song is Sugar. We're Going Down by Fall Out Boy. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diallo Roe. And I'm producer, DJ and musicologist luxury, aka the guy who whispers, Interpolation.

And this is one song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve a one more lesson. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And by the way, you can watch one song on YouTube and Spotify while you're there. Please like and subscribe. So, y'all, when did Fallout Boy first come on your radar? Man, okay, so when Fallout Boy first came out, I was working A&R back at my old home of Hollywood Records.

And I was having this moment where I was realizing I was no longer the youngest person in the room. I never forget this. The generational shift. Yeah, this A&R guy was like, hey, are you really into? He asked me about some group that was like very popular with like teenagers, specifically teenagers. And I was like, I don't know if that's really mean. He's like, when did you graduate? And I told him my graduating year.

And he was like, oh, yeah, you're a little bit older. And I was only like 24. I think I was 25 years old at the time. So that was, that was very hurtful. But it occurred to me that like, oh, when you're 25, that's when things start changing. So Father Boy made you emotional, but maybe not because of the music. Maybe it's the era of early 2000s pop punk and emo band. we were transitioning away from like the offspring.

Link 182. In an earlier era of what we would have called pop punk at the time. Sure, exactly. And now you have groups like Paramour. Panic at the disco. I sign in with the having two people ever heard of. And my chemical romance. Fun fact, my wife, whenever my chemical romance performed Black Parade on award shows,

she was the girl in the gas mask. So she was brought out to all those performances. Fame to fame. Nice. She's done a lot more, but that was one of her claims of fame. All these artists were huge on MTV, especially on TRL, aka Total Request Live.

And Pete Wins credits the success of this song. Sugar were going down with the fact that MTV was playing this video a lot. Non-stop, on rotation, number one week after week. Let's take a look at the music video. It's funny as looking at that video 20 years later, I realized now, I used to feel like I was the band in the song. Now I feel closer in age to the disapproving father-finery. like you're looking out from the window,

and driving angrily in the car. We've got kind of the outsider concept literalized in the fact that the boy has antlers. I don't want to give away the like big ending, but like it's kind of poignant. It's very emotional. It really draws you in. You've got antlers.

It's like a scissor hand, had the scissors. Right. Could touch anybody. I guess that this is meant to literalize this idea of suburban alienation, which the music encapsulates so perfectly. I totally agree with you.

Luxury. When did Fall Out Boy come on your radar? So I had to admit that before we went into getting ready for this episode. They were in this sort of category of bands that, first of all, it wasn't really paying attention to. But if anything, I would put them in the same category. If you go back to our Killers episode, remember the Caldron of Envy. It's the same era. It's 2005, and I'm starting my own musical project. And therefore, they fall under the category of a band whose success, I'm like, what the hell? Why isn't this happening to me? And for many reasons.

You didn't have antlers on your head. Didn't have antlers on my head. But it wasn't until we were researching this episode that I really kind of dug my teeth. and found how much I really like this band. And the key that unlocked the door, I have to say, is the fact that they started as hardcore scenesters. These guys were on the Chicago hardcore punk scene, and the idea for this band, and we'll get into it a minute, sort of came out of the desire to do something else.

In other words, a side project that wasn't quite as hardcore. Can I say something right at the top of the episode? Because I think, like, so many people probably my age, either because you were like primarily into hip-hop and pop, or maybe because you were like into what a traditional, initially been called punk up into that point. Exactly. Less worth the Band-Aid off, as I like to say,

there are a lot of people who did not like this sound, thought it was very cheesy. It felt like pop punk was just the opposite of punk, and we used to pejoratively refer to it as mall music. I completely agree with you, and I think slightly unfairly, the genre name being retained over all of these layers, all these over like periods of time, does it a disservice to the previous generation that knew that name to mean something

else? So if you grew up with the Sex Pistols to, the Buzzcocks and the Ramones and the Misfits and whatever, sort of late 70s and the early 80s punk, you're already a little bit annoyed by the Blink 182 phenomenon. Oh, already. First time around, you're like, that freaking isn't punk, you know, right? And so like, here we are again. This is the next layer of that.

And you're doubly not, you know, connecting to what it really is. Listen, even at that time, I was working at the record label. I was going to shows and showcases with bands like this. But to me, it just sounded like, I'm at the mall. You know, it was like, what am I going to not buy a Brookstone? It actually felt a little bit like Spencer's Gifts. So you remember Spencer's Gifts? Absolutely.

They had everything. It was like Spencer's Hot Topic. Do they make it? We'll sell it. Like it just felt like it's hot topic. It's mall. It's my space. It's all of that sort of the aesthetics of like connected to the music but not the music itself.

But I will say just like you this week, been listening to a lot more fallout boy. And I knew that like a lot of my favorite rappers who are younger than me love this group. Listen to it this week. I do like you have an appreciation for what made this sound. in this era special. And again, the genre name does it a disservice to people that lived through it in a previous version of it. When you say genre name, you're talking about pop punk or emo?

I think it's just important to remember, and we talk about this on many episodes, that you have to separate with genres. Genres are trying to do too much work. There's sound, so punk rock sounds a certain way, historically to a degree. Crunchy guitars, faster tempos, you know, maybe lyrically speaking, it was political consciousness at one point. But then there is a separation because pop music. This Bush-era punk. Right. And pop music generally doesn't have anything to do with sound. It's just what is popular. Historically, pop music is what is popular. So when you merge those two words together, it's like, what does that even mean? What does that even mean? We're going to talk a little bit more about genre later in the show. But for right now, I think a lot of us, when we heard this music for the first time, we didn't know the backstory on the band. And I believe you just said that they had a hardcore band before they broke big. Exactly. So all the members of Fala Boy started life musically in various hard.

hardcore bands in the Chicago scene. Shout to Chicago. Let's hear a little bit of Pete's hardcore band out of Chicago. That's right. This is Pete Wentz's band, Armagh, Angeles, one of many hardcore or metalcore bands. This song is called Before Christ, there were cowboys. That is decidedly not what I think of when I think of pop.

No, it's not pop punk. But this is not a time of punk. It's not pop. That sounds pretty hardcore. That's pretty hardcore. Now it's not the time nor the place to get into all the various subdivisions and striations of hardcore and the scene. But what I will say is the quote unquote scene and scene sternness is extremely important because hardcore.

So punk kind of splits off and becomes geographically diverse into the early 80s. And locally, a lot of scenes emerge in small towns, often by young kids like with the DIY spirit of, hey, let's put on a show, put a band together. And let's play guitars really loud and scream really loud. And vocal natures. I can't even do it. It's teenage angst. And part of the meaning behind it is, I can't emphasize enough, the scene nature. of it. The fact that these are groups of kids

putting it together. It's a very DIY spirit. Yeah, and by the way, when I think of pop punk, I do think of a specific place. I think of Orange County. Like, to me, it was like K-rock punk, pop punk, like these had a very specific sound of which I don't think Fall Out Boy is very far from. But that, that, to me,

would not occur to me as a pop, you know, I'm going for record sales sound. Absolutely. And growing up, like, I knew about this scene because I would buy maximum rock and roll magazine. All of these, there's this whole network globally of underground loud music that sounds a bit like that, which has its lineage in punk and post-punk, and it is all about the opposite of the mainstream. Like these people are often the kids at school

who feel bullied or left out or just alienated for various reasons. And they find themselves and other kids in that town. And then they go on tours or they go from town to town. And the kids that are into that find each other. It's a really beautiful network. And that's one of the reasons why I love punk rock. So they move on from that hardcore sound. And then they form Fallout Boy, which takes its name from the sidekick to radioactive man. That's right. The Simpsons called everything. They form Fall Out Boy,

and it's the friendship basically between Pete and Joe Troman. That's right. What can you tell us about that friendship? There's this great story about how when Joe, one day, he's at Borders with his buddy, and they start talking about this. He was literally a Borders. He was at Borders Bookstore.

It makes so much sense. Let's keep going. He was at Borders Bookstore with his buddy, and they were talking about this band Neurosis, Hardcore band, late 80s into the 90s, kind of hardcore into metal. And then he hears this sort of like voice chiming in. This stranger comes up to him, this 17-ish-year-old boy called Patrick Stump, who's precociously, I think he knows who he is from the scene because Patrick's also in his own band,

but he's much younger. And he starts saying neurosis, you like neurosis? It's very precocious and sweet. And he's like, I think he pops up behind a shelf of books. Like neurosis, who's talking neurosis? And this is a moment where Joe and Patrick, they need each other, but they also really hit it off, apparently. That's great.

And very quickly become part of the band, and it's the three of them as the nucleus of the new band followed. And then they walked over and got a Wetzel pretzel. They visited the kiosk that always sells iPhone covers. So it sounds like they intentionally decided to form a pop punk group. And I want to talk about labels in genre real quick, because they often get lumped into this category of emo. And a lot of groups get lumped into the category of emo.

But what makes a band emo is the music, the lyric, there look. By the way, can I just say even the name emo sort of is ridiculous to me because it's short for emotional as if every other type of music was like craft work dry. Right. Of all emotion. Right. No feelings.

You know, even in, I think often about the term deep house, like a couple of different styles of dance music, fight over the term deep house. Some people say the deep house is basically that R&B style of house music that has like, you know, Pevin Everett and the song Gabriel

by Roy Davis Jr. Some people would call that deep house, but then other people would call like sort of almost like a minimal techno. It's like very, you know, subterarian. They would call that deep house. It's like nobody gets to own the name deep house. Nobody wants shallow house.

Nobody's going to come in and say, hey, I'm listening to Ineffectual House. That's more of the vibe I'm on right now. Like it's just like, I don't know if everybody should be able to claim the name emo. I often thought, why does soul get to claim soul? Like there are lots of soulful types of music. No, I completely agree.

Genre has been so many times on the show, because it's really important. It's a way of categorizing because, like, radio stations and record labels. Right. And when you go to a store, you've got to find a way to classify stuff so that you know roughly what you're going to buy or going to play or going to promote whatever it is. But the fact is on the inside, you'll very rarely find a band that's deeply satisfied with how they've been categorized. And we'll fly the flag for, like, we're an emo band. It's almost always cringe-inducing to call yourself the thing that it is. Absolutely.

And I do think that despite a lot of these bands looking different, there were some through lines of what made them emo. It was like a style of singing. Sometimes it was the lyrics. Sometimes it was just, are you that early 2000s, seamster with like the asymmetrical haircut? Yeah.

Like the skinny jeans. Like they all had like these different things within the subgenre that sort of, some of which had been around since the 80s. In a sense, almost every genre today, every time we name a genre, like every single listener will have a slightly different version of what that's mean. they were wrong. Yeah, of course, because it's different. The word emo to me growing up meant

rights of spraying and Discord records in DC post-minor thread and, you know, kind of parallel to Fugazi. There's a scene, again, a local thing. The local thing is so important. It's so important. Especially before the internet. Totally. For me, originally, emo meant that scene. It meant that location. It meant some of these bands. But of course, in retrospect, you go back and when you hear some of those bands talk about them being lumped into that name, none of them liked it. No, and I feel like bands almost always recoil being lumped into any category. Absolutely. Gee, famously, we talked about this on the Lucid Dreams, Juice World episode, Guy from Fugazi and also

writes his spring. Famously, he was like, what the hell are you talking about emo? Like, what are you saying? Bad brains isn't emotional? Like, of course, emotion is part of music and art making. Why would you lump this category as emo, therefore implying everything else isn't emotional? So it's always a little bit absurd. And then it's also a generational thing.

But to give it a little bit of a through line, I think, in fairness, one thing that I think is relatively accurate is lyrically speaking, there tends to be from this earliest naming of emo through to Fallout Boy, one thing that is in common, is the lyricism, I would say, the sort of vulnerable, kind of almost like you're reading somebody's diary. And I think in Fallout Boy, you literally are reading a lot of Pete Wentz's live journals turned into songs. That is one through line, I would say, that is consistent. I think the sonics are different. And again, I think the idea that this is emo and therefore everything else isn't is absurd. I think you're right. And just for comparison saying, why don't we listen to

a little bit of Rights of Spring? This is for want of, by Rites of Spring. All right, I have to ask. Did somebody interpolate this? This sounds very similar to a song I know. Maybe. Give you drugs, give you pills, give you

everything, everything. I think that song came first. That's a drama-rama. Everything, everything. That song came out before this? I thought that song was like in the 2000s. It's 85, same year. Who heard who? Just marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me.

Good song for proposing all you guys out there. Guys, do you hear some similarities? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And it's so crazy, it's the same year. I don't know which came first. It's a little bit like, it's a little bit like bounce rock skate and good times. You're like, who heard who? This is a perfect example of what we were just talking about because musically speaking, they have a lot in common.

there's the guitar, there's the tempo, there's the rhythm, and to some degree the energy of the vocal, but the difference, I think the important difference in the distinction, is that the pop song, which is Dramarama's Everything, Everything, which was a relatively minor hit in the alternative community, it's direct, it's hooky, it's simpler. $100 bills! They're really hovering over just a handful of notes in the melody

and the directness and the repetition versus the rights of spring, which shies away from being that direct and that unambiguous. One seems to be. to have bigger ambitions maybe than the other. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I love it. Yeah, me too. I woke up with a piece of the past of my throat and I choked. Yeah, and listen, I mean, be drama less.

This is speculation, but like to me, I hear that and I see it kind of when you see the words on this page, it's like, that is such a journal entry that he stepped up to the mic and sang and shaped it a little bit melodically, but kind of not all the way. And when we get into the fallout boy song, there's actually a lot of parallels in my mind to how the origins of the lyrics. Yeah, I agree. And listen, a good actor, you're, you immediately relate to them. You know what I mean? Like, they make even the strangest or weirdest character relatable. And I think that these diary-like lyrics, they pull you in because as soon as I heard that, you know, the past got in my throat that I choked.

Like, I immediately thought there's somebody in my life right now, not anybody particularly close. But like, I think, I think we may not be getting along. And as a result, it's nagging me a little bit in the background. So I can really relate to that idea of, like, something getting in your throat. And now I choke. Yeah, and it's just, it's more poetic. I mean, there's no shade against Dramorama, but like, you know, give you have anything you want, $100 bills, the idea of like, you know,

marry me, marry me. It's amazing. It's great, but it's not quite the same level, I would say, poetry. Drama, Rama, debate us on that. That's our hot take. We're coming for you. Yeah, yeah. After listening to a lot of Fallopoy this week,

the other thing I just have to take it all the way back to is like, this is directly linked to the earliest punk rock. And I'll never forget the first time I heard the sex pistols. I'd heard about them. I knew what they were culturally, and I'd seen the pictures of Sid Vicious I'd seen the t-shirts. The first time I heard the sex pistols, I was like, oh, this is a rock and roll song.

It was a little surprising musically that it was just a song in a genre that I was somewhat familiar with. I think similarly, we forget that the Ramones, the Misfits, the Buzzcocks, all these punk rock bands were making pop songs. For example, here, one of my favorite all-time bands of the Misfits, this one of the great bands of all-time, led by the great Glendanzic. Listen to how he is singing and listen to the music. This is pop music, my friends. Last Caress. The misfits are admittedly one of my blind spots that I'm not proud of. You don't have to be ashamed of that.

I've said up any time on the show. To me, they were the scary T-shirt in the big of the record store. Of course. But I never actually listened to them. Sorry, guys. I've never listened to Danzig either. It's like Ozzy, the disconnect between, in many ways, the visuals and the shirts and the logos and the videos and the this and that that, the goreous and that. You're going to tell me that they were kind of like a happy go-lucky band?

No, but the misfits, the wonderful quote-unquote disconnect. I'd say the juxtaposition is a better one. word between how they look and how they sound. Because it's all, we got the devil lock hairstyles. We got the muscles and the skulls. I want your skulls. I need your schools. Every song,

horror business, and I turned into a Martian all these 50s horror movies, song titles. But the songs themselves are pop songs. This song was called Caress. That song is called Last Caress. I think that we probably did not play

some of the lyrics on the podcast itself. Some of these lyrics are not cool. Some of the not cool. But that chorus, that's a single. Go listen on your own time. Notice the sing-al-al-long chorus, though. I think a lot.

Go the Ramones, go Blitzkriebop. Hey-ho, let's go. I know Blitzkrie-Pob, and I know I want to be sedated. Those are fun times. Pop songs with sing-along choruses for the old crowd, which is not disconnected

from what Fall Out Boy is doing on the top of the pops. I will say that did feel like 70s rock. Yeah. And obviously punk didn't just grow out of the ground. Like, it came out of 70s rock. Correct. I understand what you're saying as far as punk.

I don't know that that necessarily sounds like pop. I'm so glad you're saying this. So pop music. historically is just what's popular, which means that it always sounds different all of the time. And it eats and absorbs other genres based on what's happening in that moment.

Just to separate the two things, the sound, pop music sound, almost doesn't matter because it will change over time. To me, pop just means, up until just the last 10 years, pop meant it can be played on radio. That's fair.

That's a fair point. I was just going to say that when makes something quote unquote pop, I think, to me, as like a consistent thread, like you'll mostly be right if you describe it this way. It's that it's verse course verse arrangement wise. Yeah. It's very direct and not terribly ambiguous, melodically and lyrically.

In other words, it's accessible. It's something that an eight-year-old kid might be into as much as an 80-year-old. Like it's difficult to pin down, but that's sort of the closest I have for a definition. Listen, we're talking genre. And in my definition of pop, I think radio was so dominant in terms of like being the way that people were exposed to new music. I can tell you, in Atlanta, I doubt that the misfits were ever played on our pop station.

And I think that... You're completely right. I think that over time, it wouldn't be hard to imagine them being played there. But in probably like 1979, or when did that song come out, roughly 80. 80. I was like... I would imagine that was probably like on our college stations. Of course, yeah.

And probably on the college radio shows, I was not... It might not even been there because they were not really very known until Metallica started wearing their shirts all the time. They're super underground. I think a shirt can go a long way. Absolutely. Those Misfit shirts were all over wax and facts. Shout out to Atlanta. Wax and facts and some of our like underground record stores. Glenn Danzig's whole career is because Kirk and I think Cliff wear Misfit shirts on Master of Puppets on the back cover. Seriously though. Because they're a local scene. They're from Lodi, New Jersey. And they press step 500 copies of their seven inches. They were very underground and unknown. But you're making a great point. And just to be clear, just to kind of add another layer of nuance to my pop music definition, which is tricky. When we say pop punk, When we talk about something like pop punk, when the word pop in that sentence, I would say is disconnected from whether or not it's on the radio.

When they said, let's start a pop punk band, I think they were saying, let's write big choruses with verse chorus, verse structures and the melodies that are relatively simple. And by the way, it happened to get on the radio. But I think that's what pop meant in that context when it's attached to the word pop punk like that. I think that's how we ended up with another very famous group that took a lot of its lessons from punk, Nirvana, because nowadays, I see all these kids walking around Nirvana shirts, and sometimes they don't know any songs by Nirvana other than smells like the Misfits Nirvana. The t-shirt can bring you a long way. It'd be fair to call Nirvana pop punk too.

I mean, like some of territorial pissing some of those faster songs. Absolutely. Those are pop punk songs. I like that. I think we're agreed. And we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to hear how Fallout Boy apply these punk roots with a pop songwriting aesthetic. On their breakout hit, sugar, we're going down right after this.

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If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor, free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. Welcome back to One Song Luxury. Let's kick it off with some drums played by Andy Hurley.

Let's do it. Those are some rock and roll drums, my friend. I mean, it's funny is when you take everything out but the drums, that could be like nine songs. It could be nine songs. And one thing important to point out is that this is a half-time song. So the song is technically, it's 81 BPM. You'll find it online.

People will say 161. It's not. Also, can I just say Food Fighters, My Hero? Like, can you play it real quick? Can you play those drums again? There's a couple sections that evoke that Dave Roll sound. And let's hear that one again and listen for My Hero on top. Watch.

All right. To alarm me down to talk about. Take your pictures and shake it out. Oh, just you wait till we get to this Tom section a little later. Here goes my hero. Watch him as he goes. Can I just admit, I heard that lyric eventually is walking out the door. And I was like, oh, his hero's giving up on it.

This song is deep. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. Why is his hero walking? out the door. Munda Green. It's a Mondegrine, my friend. That's a Mondegrine. I got tons. Before the internet, I just, apparently, I was making up all kinds of wrong stuff in here. Another song, by the way, that this makes me think of. Sure. Which is, I couldn't get this out of my head once I thought of the connection. Let me just play it. No, play it. And I mean no hate to Fall Out Boy fans, but it's a little bit like this.

Can you take me higher? You're not wrong. Those drums are very similar. It's very creed. It's very creed. It's very creed coded. That's a higher by Creed. How sad is that? I was like, is that Nickelbacker creed? Either way it's going to

that's reasonable. Every fallout boy fan out there. But there's no denying that there's, you know, it's the same tempo. It's the half-time drums.

It's roughly 80 B. PM. In the comments, tell us what song those drums remind you of. Because I'm sure you can think of a few. So creed-coded, though.

I never thought Creed would make it onto one song. That's kind of the only way it's going to happen. I never thought Creed would make it on to one song. Sorry, Scott Stap. My favorite Scott Stap story It doesn't even involves

It's your boy from Limbiscuit Fred I like that guy Durs who listens to the show Hey Fred Fred is on stage And he's mad at Scott And he's like

Why is he mad at They're in different bands I know Okay But that's sort of the point There were in some concert He got on stage He was like

To the lead singer Of Creed That guy's an ego maniac He's a fucking punk And he's backstage right now Acting like he's fucking Michael Jackson And I guess they had some like He had some diva moment with Scott

Back in back with Fred was running Cuba Yeah I just wish there was been a camera So we could know what they were arguing about But Fred took it to the stage They're so easy to pick on Creed Nickelback all those kind of bands You know what? We are so, we never, we don't punch

down on this show. We are, we are elevators on this show. Oh, those are bazillionaires. That's not punching down. That's not punching down. And that's no shade on Fallout Boy either. It's just like they're very similar. Hey, if you're hitting on Fallout Boy, maybe turn your attention to creed. All right. So just to, by the way, to finish the story of how the band came together from before, Andy Hurley was the fourth member, the drummer. They'd auditioned a bunch, but he really locked it in. Great quote from Joe. Andy made us better. His solid backbone drumming made me want to be a better band. And it's true because in terms of their instrument playing skills, they were into hardcore bands, but they weren't necessarily very technical players.

But the drumming, when you listen to this song, listen to the drumming. Andy's really locking it in. He has a big metal and hardcore background to his favorite drummer is Lombardo from Slayer. And every time I like read up about who these guys were when they made this band, I just like love them even more. So we should mention that the producer on this song, Neil Avron, worked with a lot of pop punk bands at that time. We're talking about Switchfoot, Yellow Card, Newfound Glouin. In fact, Neil really helped shape the verse on this song. The original, the verse was a lot slower, apparently, and he told Andy to try a four on the floor beat to keep the energy up.

Can we hear a bit of those drums, the four on the floor? So this is verse one. Opening up without a high hat slowly but surely. So I'll just say this. As you listen to the song, what's kind of fun, stepping back for a second, we talked about how pop, part of what makes it pop maybe is arrangements. There's a very strict arrangement structure that I think,

Neil Avron helped contribute. When across the song, every eight bars, something changes. So when you, as I've done, I've chopped it up and I'm kind of looking visually at it, you can really see that the drum beat, every eight bars, he does something a little bit different. It's really cool. So we just went from that opening kind of Creed meets Foo Fighter type thing into that high hat kick drum for on the floor thing.

And just now at the tail end of it, before I started talking, we got into this next beat. Yeah. Which was about to go for eight bars. Yeah. Can I just say it sounds like fast disco. It's like, doom, doom, doom, doom. It actually reminded me just hearing it in isolation, a panic at the disco's big song, I write sins, not tragedies.

Not tragedies. No, you don't do that. Who does that? Let's talk about Pete Wins. Peter Lewis Kingston, Wins, the third. His father's Jamaican. Yes, he is. Kingston.

Kingston. Right there. Who knew that he was half black? This is like a theme on the show. Yeah. We've seen this before. So in this band, Pete Wins, he's half black, and he's feeding lyrics and ideas to Patrick Stump. I can think of another band that does that right.

Depeche Mode. Right. Martin Gore, who. who's haplack is feeding all his ideas to David Gayan. Exactly. This just seems to be a way. It's a way. It seems to happen accidentally over and over and over again.

Absolutely right, D'all. We're going to talk about their dynamic and that phenomenon of the lyricist and the singer being different. Yes, it's different. A little bit later when we get into the vocals. For now, let's listen to Pete on the bass. I love these baselines. And one thing to pay attention to is, again, like the drums, the theme and variation, like every eight bars, he's doing something different.

Pete's doing that as well. And I believe that Neil Avron have a lot to do with that choice, because he believed a lot in the pre-production process. He helped them figure out structurally how to make this a pop song with this pop type of craftsmanship. All right, so here's Pete in the chorus. Just a dirty, disgusting distorted bass line sounds big, huge, nasty rock and roll. I love it.

I'm not a guitarist, as you know. Is that called courting when you're just do-dur-d-d-dur-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- I mean. What is that called? You'd call that peddling. I guess you'd call that peddling when you're kind of just writing a note, that could be one way of saying it, but he's playing 16th notes. And also one thing to point out, because this is the groundwork for it, the song's chord changes are super simple. We're really just hearing one, four, six, four in the verses and in the

choruses, and that's broken up a couple times by a bit of a build. But quarterly, harmonically speaking, it's pretty simple. Again, these are the building blocks of the pop part of the pop punk going on here. But now in the second half of the course, he does something different. Yeah, he's doing the theme and variation thing. So here's what he plays in the second half of the chorus. And then I'll give you some context. Harkening back to our Olivia episode, it starts with some harmonics. Olivia Rodriguez.

Olivia Rodriguez. It's that signifier that you're hearing a live player. It goes, Tid, do, do, do. Now I hear is, can you take me? You can't take the Scott Stapp out of this once you've heard the Scott Stapp. It's into you. Can't get him out.

Got that Stap hooks in you. The Stap hooks. Sounds like a disease. He's like a wine stain. after three days. Rhythmically, at the end of the song, they do go to double time. No, you're absolutely right.

Patrick Stemt tells the story that a friend of his was listening to the song and he was like, it's a little slow. So at the very end, they decided to go double time from the halftime, I guess, as it were. So it's just kind of the regular rock beat, but it's only for the final eight bars of the song.

And that sounds like this. So it's sort of satisfying. It's like it's been building up the whole time. The tension is building with the halftime. Because the halftime's kind of tense. It's like, it's like with, holding something and you finally get that fully released rock energy, but only for eight bars and the

song ends. Kind of a cruel tease. Yes. I think the individual sections of the song are greatly defined by what the drums are doing. Yeah. I mean, like, because there is that tension in one part that gets released when he goes to double time. Exactly. Like, you know, they really do define what the song is trying to get out of us.

And just for fun, because we like to remix the tunes on the show, what if we swapped out that beat? Then we use a famous breakbeat like this one. Amen, brother? I love this. I love this kind of stuff. What's funny is I would have probably listened to that version. That would have been sick. That's sick.

If you ever wondered what the Prodigy remix would have sounded like, that is the Prodigy remix. How freaking cool is that, actually? I'm the fallout boy. The instigator while we're here, can you just play the vocals over those drums? Nothing else? Nothing would give me more pleasure. Drum and bass mix. Jungle!

Jungo! Jummo! And bass. Sick! That was so fun. It was so fucking fun. Pete, you leaving money on the table, bro. Swap it out beats is the best.

Do the drum and bass remix now. Swap it out beats is always the best. And then, like, what if instead of Andy Hurley on drums, you had, like, I don't know, Lars Ulrich. I wish you hadn't said it was Lars because if you had, if you just played those drums, I would have thought Primus. Yeah. I would have thought maybe like early blink or something. Like it's like very. No, that's Lars from Fifeer with Fire.

That's true double time. So that's actually four. From Metallica. That's from Metallica. That's from Metallica. from Metallica playing the drum break from Fy Fire with Fire. And that's technically four times as fast as the actual

drum beat on the song. It's double time doubled. So let's move on to the guitar. We have Patrick Stump, aka The Stump. I just made that up. But if Fallout Boy fans would have started calling him the Stump, I think that we should. Patrick Stump on rhythm guitar and Joe

Troman, I have no nicknames for him, on lead guitar. I'm curious to hear... I'm curious to hear how both guitar sound isolated. Can you play us a little bit of the verse? Let's do it. And this is a pretty crucial part of the song's creation because as Patrick tells the story, as they were trying to work the song out in pre-production, the moment that it kind of came together for him was when Joe started playing this on guitar in the verse. And here it is. And just to give you some context, so this is the first

verse. That's a little lick, little riff that Joe's playing. And that as Pat in the telling, Mr. Stump, says that inspired him to do a little volume flick. If you ever see him play live, every note he's playing is just a volume swell and then goes from zero to ten and back again basically and it sounds like this and then i'll play them together a volume swell rhythmic volume cuts if you will so it's like this turning the volume up just his hand is here and then he's hit one note and then he's fredding what sounds like an octave maybe he's going down uh uh uh uh i did not know that was a thing yeah can i just say as a dj there have been so many times when like there's like one last note and i take the rocker switch, I go,

eh, m m m m m m m m m m m m m m you know, that's like, DJN 101 and I did not know the guitar guitar players did that too. That's called trumolo. There's a pedal that does that so you can have your sound across,

you can play a chord. You play one chord. Yeah, it'll sound really swam. The volume is just being modified on and off essentially. I could have been one of the grates. It's a very swampy. You know what,

you know what song does that famously? Rumble by Link Ray. There's a little bit of wobble. It's very subtle, but the effect that does that on guitar is called a tremolo. And you can adjust it to be extreme or not. That's the way. That's cool. I didn't know that that was happening there.

Patrick's up is doing a little bit something similar, but he's... But he's going full out. And he's literally using the volume knob on his guitar to have the same effect. It's like the difference between auto tune on shares, do you believe and love, and then go in a T-Pain. Exactly. Same tool. Use differently. Use differently.

And then in the chorus, and I'm actually not sure which of the two guitar. players plays which part, but I will play the two main things isolated and then together. This is the chorus. And then the other part is and together they sound like this and then I'll bring in the other instruments. Who is that? I'm sorry, play that

that very last thing you took out again. Okay, so here's my comment about that. Both of these guitar parts put together leads to this general sort of like crunchy gringiness. I don't know what else to call it. And I noticed that was like a really big thing. basically from the late 90s all the way until sort of like,

I guess you'd have to say dance music starts taking over rock and roll around 2009 or something like that. But you don't really hear it on 80 songs. You don't really hear it on even like early grunge songs too much. But I do think it kind of came out of grunge and things just got crunchier and crunchier. You definitely hear when you're driving. I think as much as we're trying to be polite and not do too much creed and candle mass on this episode, it's really relevant that in the 90s on pop radio, you did hear these sounds.

And they laid and established a comfort level to the average listener ear on top 40 radio. And it would have 20 years earlier been like Aussie level. What is this? Yeah. Yeah, because it's an abrasive quote unquote. But then your ears and global ears get accustomed to it, the abrasiveness that would have been there 30 years earlier isn't there anymore. And I hear it in both of those, I hear it both in Joe's guitars and Patrick's guitars.

Right. But I don't mean to ask you about this because, again, it's not something that I've heard in the music before. And it's not really something you hear music too much now. Like, I feel like it's a, it's a super interesting point. I'm sort of thinking about it with you. Like, why? It might have been around for 15 solid years, but I don't, I feel like it's not really in any,

like, Imagine Dragons doesn't really do it. You know, I'm trying to think of like rock bands today. Yeah. Which, you know, is an effort in itself. The sounds have event, have gotten especially, even with this band. Like, if you listen to Fallout Boy after this song, the use of guitars gets more and more precise and pristine. And it's one of many other more different elements that are interplaying with vocal stacks and like more. This is maybe the end of a moment or maybe this album and maybe

the next one where they are more of a rock band that happens to sing. We're about to get into the singing. Yeah. Sing in such a way that it's pop. But after that, it's just pop. This band just becomes a pop band. But because they are playing live with four players, maybe that makes it. Their genre is still rock. Exactly. I think that's exactly right. Totally fair. Same thing happens. happened to Maroon 5. Yeah. By the way, buried in the mix, maybe next time you listen to the song, you might notice this really subtle thing.

I've labeled it Lindsay Buckingham-esque. And it's happening in the build. So this little subtle layer of swirly, yeah, swirly guitar basically blended together. There's probably like several layers of guitars in there. That's one of those classic things. I don't know that I ever noticed it, but I felt it. Exactly. It's definitely there for a good purpose.

It's helping with the build. Well, it wouldn't be a Fallout Boy episode without talking about The Stumps! Jesus Christ! The Stump's vocals. I'm going to keep saying the stump. I think that's a great nickname. We have The Edge.

We have a couple of guys in Rock specifically who are known as the something. So why not Patrick Stump? The nickname's right there, you guys. Patrick Martin Stumpf, originally born with an H at the end of his name, then modified to Patrick Von Stump. Not sure why the middle name went with it. He was like, not German enough. Stumpf, not German enough. Let's go for von Stumpf.

Why don't we start with just. the first. Let's start where the song begins. Vocally. Lying the grass next to the mausoleum. I'm just a notch in your bedpost, but you're just a lot in a song. Such a great line, by the way.

Oh, such a good line. Not in my bedpost, but you're just a line in a song. Ooh, cutting! Yes, and Taylor Swift has often said that Fall Out Boy was one of her biggest songwriting influence. You hear it in that line. That could easily be just a line. actually just a line on Taylor Swift's song. I think it also speaks to like the emotional vulnerability of this song

that like he's like, hey, you heard me, but now you're just a line of the song. Like it's a little bit of get bag, but it's also like he's putting himself out there as well. In the verses, there are really kind of just four notes the entire time. There's a fifth note one in one moment, but 85% roughly of the melodies of the notes you're hearing in the verses are three notes. And they're Do Remi, as in Do Remi Faso.

So they're the corner. of like basic nursery rhyme-esque. And by the way, Patrick Stump says that he consciously did that on purpose. Like it's a way to counter the complexity of the lyrics and the absence of rhyme is by making those melodies super simple, but varying them slightly. So it's really interesting when you listen to the whole of the verse and pre-chorus. You're not getting that many different notes. You're just getting variety of those same notes with a very solid emphasis on that third note,

the Doree Me, which is the major third. and that's important because like the happiness and upbeatness and popness of this is really underscored and emphasized I think by the use of that. So I don't know, I don't usually like to go too deep into melody deconstruction. But this one, it's really relevant because that's what he's doing on top of this bed of like rock and roll, basically. You say they're basically just dore me's throughout the verse.

But then we hit that pre-chorus. Yeah. And it sounds like they bring in a new note. You totally nailed it. That da-da-da-da-da is a new note, which your ears like, oh, cool, I got something new. I got this leading tone. Totally.

So let's listen to that. Drop a heart and break a name. Who is Sippy in the Sipi for the role team. God, his voice is so clear. He's got a little trim. So clear. I don't know what that. It waves.

Such a strong emotional voice. And it didn't surprise me to find out that these guys were apparently huge Elias Smith fans because he too was sort of like really, vulnerable and like you know it's just like it's like your heart it's like putting all of your heart onto that track and just like leaving it there that's the emo that's the email that's the email right there one of the things that i think makes fallout boy unique is the fact that there is this combination of poetic lyrics and it doesn't always rhyme you know like we we did our fun parody which is definitely going to go down in the pan you won't be able to go to that concert without

hearing our version of this song right but i i always kind of like when lyrics don't always rhyme it's just like it's the melody and it's the emotion and you're not constrained by having to make every line. Yeah, that's part of what makes Fall Out Boy unique is that there are rhymes in their music and across the song handful of times, but there's also a lot of non-parallel, non-typical pop, like you would expect a melody and a rhyme scheme to, especially in a verse, happen in a certain way. There's some variations of that format, but there really isn't much of a pattern in this song for those two things, for melody or for rhyme. I want to throw a little bit of hip-hop in the mix, one of my favorite songs of all time is J. Rue, the damages, can't stop the profit.

And he goes basically almost the entire first verse without one rhyme, which in hip hop, is unheard of. That's amazing. The black profit one day I got struck by knowledge of self-figure for super scientific powers. Love J-Rue. And love the dynamic within Fall Out Boy. I love the fact that we're using Pete Wince's, you know, almost diary-like lyrics. Totally. Literally diary-like. Literally diary lyrics.

Literally diary lyrics. And also Patrick Stumps like vocal prowess. Yeah. So just really in brief about this Patrick and Pete process because Pete Wentz is the ostensible lyricist and Patrick takes those lyrics and structures them into what he sings. And he's the main melodicist. And between the two of them, they craft what Patrick is singing, which as we talked about earlier, so interesting.

Yeah, that's not really his lyrics. Yeah, that's right. They're really Pete's lyrics. at the end of the day. But it is definitely a collaboration. And for my understanding from Patrick's telling and description of how the process works, Pete will give him a lot of content, a lot of phrases, a lot of fragments. Every now and then there's a complete song. But a lot of Patrick's job is to sort of weave through and find sort of mix and match like a story. Or if there already is a story, make it singable and find a melody for it. That's interesting. So it's not just, you know,

it's not just Pete just handing him the song and say, sing this Patrick? It's It's actually him giving them a lot of stuff, and Patrick started picking and choosing. Which speaks to, like, we were talking before about, like, Depeche Mode, right? There are lots of other situations where the person you hear singing isn't necessarily the lyricist, but Bernie Topin writes lyrics, and then Elton John composes a melody and chords and everything else to these lyrics that he had nothing to do with. This seems like it's a little more involved because Bernie Topin famously slips them under the door.

It's like, use this, here's the song. I'm sure, according to legend, at least. I'm sure there's more to the process than that. So Patrick sat with Pete's lyrics, and he was trying to piece them together. He was saying there's lots of run-on sentences and nothing was rhyming. And when he got to the chorus, Pete originally, apparently, his lyrics were, quote, were going down in the earlier rounds. And apparently Patrick was really kind of stumped by that. No pun intended.

Poor guy. He gets that all the time. It didn't really sing right. So he took a syllable out. But then he was worried that Pete would be frustrated with his change or transformation to the lyric, which is why. Like when I try to change the script of the. show. Right, exactly, which is why when you listen to what I'm about to play, which is the chorus,

it's slightly mumbled. And he's a little famous for the song's chorus being a little bit mumbled because he was trying to kind of put it over to not necessarily have his change be noticed by Pete. Totally. Totally. And sugar wood, I'll be a number. Great. I feel like if he's in the booth and you hear that, you have to kind of think,

ooh, this feels like a hit. Patrick Stump has an incredible voice. It must be said. This guy belts with clarity and power and precision. And it's very pleasant to listen to. That's kind of an X factor that I'm not sure has you can deconstruct very easily. But it's really direct and instant and it's charming. He's sort of a charming singer just with the voice.

What a charming Chicago land. He's a charming guy. All right. So we've heard the song. Luxury, can you tell us how this song breaks down in terms of the splits? Even Stephen, baby. This is a song. That always works.

This is a song, 25, 25, 25. And this is important because Joe has written a book and talks a lot. This is a moment where this is his band originally. Remember, Joe and Pete, but his involvement in, he's not the front man. He's not the lyricist. He didn't really write the music ostensibly from all the stories. He's not the primary guy. But as a band, they're splitting it equally.

And the band stayed together this whole time. They've had moments of breakup and they've returned. But it says a lot about longevity when you have splits that are even Stephen. even if somebody maybe didn't pull their weight for one song to the next. Totally. So I'm a big fan of the choice to make it 25, 25, 25. Every time you say even Stephen, I'm just like, ah, there's justice. It feels good.

It feels like justice. Even though I mean like you can make the case that like you said, like Pete's definitely bringing, you know, the lyricism that we appreciate. Patrick's belting his part out. But you know, like you said, Joe was originally there. No, but it's really poignant from me. When I read some of the excerpts from his book, he talks very vulnerability about it. And in this moment, he found himself feeling like he was losing his own band.

Yeah. Because he was really receding from the head. Not to make it personal, but like, didn't you say one time you were on tour and the other guys of the band were sort of like, make you feel like, hey, wait, I started this band. Yeah. Yeah. I know the feeling firsthand of like, guys, everything that's happening is because of me. I'm not trying to be a jerk about it.

But like, there wouldn't be anything. Right. And you can be generous and also be a dormat. And you don't want to. That's the line that you're always kind of treading as. the leader. It's challenging stuff. So props to Joe, props to all of these guys for keeping it together. Keeping it together and keeping the band together. Yeah. They're still a band. They are still a band. They are still a band. Even Stephen will keep the band together. Lester, what do you think is the legacy of sugar we're going down and Fall Out Boy?

The fact that Fall Out Boy starts as a band of scenesters from the underground, the DIY, like, I know that world. I've been a part of that. It's like, and then they did this is, I love it. I love it. It's sort of like local boys make good in a way. You don't feel like they sold out the underground scene in Chicago. I'm sure that that feeling happened. I'm sure as soon as they left. People on the scene probably felt that way. People on the scene in Chicago also famously, like, you know, there's the Liz Fair, goodbye to Guyville is all about the Chicago scene being really like backbiting and vicious, you know, against each other.

Anyone who dares to be a tall weed gets chopped down. So props to them, I think, for aim for swinging for the fences. And the songwriting is undeniable. And the other thing I want to say is that it's interesting because they did it in a moment where the idea of scenes prior to the Internet, prior to MySpace, were purely geographical. I mean, there's tape trading. There's all kinds of stuff maybe before that. But once there's the Internet, a scene can be global and can be worldwide so much more easily and so much more quickly. So they really benefited timing-wise by 2005 being this MySpace moment, by being this LiveJournal moment, by being all of these new tools and means of communicating and growing a fan base. And of course, TRL didn't hurt. What about you, Diallo? What do you think the legacy of all that boy is? Oh, man. You know, if you'd ask me this before we did this episode, the first thing that came to mind might have been, you know, the shoutouts from people like Post Malone, the TMZ articles back then, the Ashley Simpson years, all that. But I think what it's done is it's giving me appreciation of the fact that what they did was musically kind of cool, you know, especially if you're approaching it from sort of a pop sensibility instead of like a punk purist. That's the way to do it.

But more importantly, I think that, you know, this is a group that actually paved the way for so many of the groups that we think of as emo. They, you know, they came before Panic at the Disco and My Chemical Romance. And even later groups such as Krober Starship, Jim Class Heroes, even, you can make the case, sort of came out of this scene and then took it even further into the realm of pop. Yeah. But I think that they were good at making rock music as sort of like a last wave of rock music. And I think that, you know, you have to recognize it. I totally agree. And like I really, it is a genuine question I have.

Maybe it's a one song nation. Maybe to the musicians out there. It does feel like the environment to be a band now is extraordinarily different. Like I think a window closed or a door shut or many windows and many doors shut right around this time, Fala Boy and all the bands that we've been talking about in Paramour and all the ones that My Chemical Romance, it might have been the last moment that you could become global rock stars in the same way that we've been used to global rock stars, meaning bands and instruments and that whole process, there's still global stars and there's still rock.

But I don't know, I mean, I hope turnstile gets big. I hope Amel and the Sniffer's and, you know, all these bands, idols. Like, there's still a lot of great rock bands and music being made with instruments, but it's a really different environment. I think it's far harder to tour. It's really expensive. The opportunities are fewer. Being in a band also, it's like, why go through the hassle?

You could just write the song yourself and hire people. So it's a different world now. I know a seven-year-old that just recently said, he wants to make EDM. You know, I think it's interesting that, like, he understands EDM more than like, hey, I want to play the bass and, like, start a band with my friends. Like, no, he knows what a drum pad looks like, and he wants to start beating on that. Right.

Maybe that's great, you know. I just wonder, though, if the door has closed for a certain type of band and maybe Fallout Boy in their cohort, maybe they are the last kind of band that may see global success at the top 40 level. We shall see. We shall see. Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share it.

deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the one song nation and with each other. Luxury. Why don't you go first? All right. Well, I'm going to start with a really awesome post-punk band called Chrome from the Bay Area. The song is third from the sun. Helios Creed, Damon Edge. Let's hear what you got for us.

So good. Doom, sludge, psych. It's everything. It's everything. I love that. I feel like that's you before I met you. It could be. What about you, Mr. D. Ler-Riddle?

Since we were talking about 2000s, Ron, during this episode. I thought about what were some of my favorite rock bands during this period and one of the absolute favorite of mine

was this group. The name of the song is it was there that I saw you and the name of the group is and you will know us by the Trail of Dead. A man out of Austin I really love that song

and I really love that album for those who are not initiated source tags and codes was the album. It's a great album. I guarantee you'll put it on. You'll fall in love. That's part of the same.

same legacy too. It's like punk rock kind of splintered into so many forums. That's got their roots. Both of the songs actually have roots in punk rock, I would say. Even though there's more heaviness and metal and psych in Chrome. And there's maybe an indie kind of tinge to and Trail of Dead. I was probably a little more indie, maybe punk than I was metal. But that group used to do it for me. Yeah. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, DM us. You can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DIA, L-L-L-O. That's it, at Dialla. And on TikTok at Dialla Riddell.

And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at LuxuryX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at One-Song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One-Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. Also be sure to check out the One-Song Spotify playlist for all of the songs we discussed in our episodes. You can find a link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, you're officially part of the One-Song name.

So salute yourself. Show us some love, give us five stars, leave a review, and send this episode to a fellow music nerd. It really helps keep the show going. I'm demonstrating showing the show to another. No? I like it. Good space work.

I was just going to say my improv. My improv career was very short. But it's not over yet. Luxury, help me in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes... DJ! We're so roo-y.

And this is one song. We will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duanez. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo, mixing by Michael Harmon and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production supervision by Razak Boykin. Additional production support from Z. Taylor.

The show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.