Lately, my eyelids have craved smudged black eyeliner, the kind only achieved through a half-sharpened black pencil and frustrated fingers. I’ve been trapped in my room for days, and “the sounds of this small town make my ears hurt.” My time is spent deciding whether to “give in or just give up,” and even if I’m still writing through the bleakness, sending out these articles feels like “mailing letters to addresses in a ghost town.”
I’ve regressed back to my eighth-grade emo self, and all I can do about it is weep in the dark under a pile of blankets and hiss at my mother when she turns my lights on. She asks me what’s wrong, and I tell her I feel sore, like “my back has been breaking from this heavy heart.” To appease the tweenaged demon inhabiting my body, I must turn on the speakers in my room and listen to them squeal a moment before connecting the aux.
My eighth-grade self only allows me to listen to one band—the band whose lyrics are so ingrained in my emo head that I’ve subconsciously filled these paragraphs with their angsty sentiments. Maybe it will help me exorcise this demon to rank her favorite band’s studio albums, worst to best. Or maybe it won’t.
Let’s start with the worst studio album. Fall Out Boy’s 2018 album Mania is by far the least emo, most pop-sounding album of the band’s discography. “Young and Menace” and “The Last of the Real Ones” have a nearly inexplicable teeth-grinding quality to them, maybe it’s the lyrical choices or the backtrack that doesn’t do it for me. There’s a phoniness to this album. I’m not suggesting that I don’t listen to it when I have no better ideas, but it doesn’t sound as gut-wrenchingly sympathetic to my misery as earlier albums do.
My inner demon reluctantly ranks 2003’s Take this to your Grave as the second worst Fall Out Boy album, despite its punk sound. The song “Grand Theft Autumn/Where is your Boy” is on this album, and—without reluctance or hesitation— I can say that this is my all-time favorite Fall Out Boy jam. The rest of the album is less impressive lyrically and tonally, despite the anger that I appreciate in its sound.
American Beauty/American Psycho, which was released in 2015, is ranked fifth out of seven on my personal emo charts. There’s no doubt that this album soothes the soul, but it does so with largely melancholy themes. When I’m in an emo mood, I need some anger to make me feel complete again. Songs like “Jet Pack Blues” and “The Kids Aren’t Alright” have lovely melodies, but they’re too mellow to stream while you sob into your pillow.
The album full of features—the hiatus-ending Save Rock and Roll from 2013—moves to a higher spot on the list for its quantity of banger tracks. Apart from “Young Volcanoes,” which may just rub me the wrong way because I’ve heard it so many times, I love every song on this album. The influence of pop and other artists on this album is the only reason it isn’t higher on the list. When featuring other artists, Fall Out Boy just doesn’t feel the same.
Now for the top three. I was almost forced deeper into my emo depression’s vortex by being forced to choose between my three favorite Fall Out Boy albums; each has its hooks in my heart. I eventually decided that 2008’s Folie à Deux, though a spectacularly emo assortment of songs, should come in third place to the others for the album’s trend toward an ostentatious sound without the sharper edges of earlier music.
Though the songs “Disloyal Order of Water Buffaloes” and “Headfirst Slide into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet” are two lyrical masterpieces that somehow also bop harder than any other songs in the history of music, the work on Folie à Deux is less consistent than that of this list’s remaining albums.
The slight differences between my enjoyment of either 2007’s Infinity on High and the band’s sophomore album From Under the Cork Tree—released in 2005—are truthfully related to song quality and, because I thoroughly enjoy every song on From Under the Cork Tree, this album qualifies as my favorite of the entire Fall Out Boy discography.
The runner up, Infinity on High, contains such gems as “‘The Take Over, The Break’s Over’” and “This Ain’t a Scene, it’s an Arms Race” which are good enough songs to merit the album its second-place position on my list. “I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always trying to Get You Off (Me & You)” is the perfect blend of heartache, bitterness and self-hatred for your emo listening pleasure. Highly recommend.
If you’ve never listened to From Under the Cork Tree all the way through, today is the day to do that. Start at the beginning, with “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of this Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued,” and crank up your volume. This album is, without a doubt, the most emo Fall Out Boy album and it’s the one I’ve been listening to daily during my time in quarantine.
“Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying (Do Your Part to Save The Scene and Stop Going to Shows)” is my current favorite off this album, but I change my mind depending on the day. There’s nothing like the lead singer Patrick Stump’s angry, angelic voice in your ears to redeem your sanity.
It is with this song’s immortal words that I’ll leave you to go be emo under your own blanket forts. “This has been said so many times that I’m not sure if it matters,” but Fall Out Boy is the ultimate emo band. Listen to them instead of getting down on yourself for the state of the world. Also, try some of that smudged black eyeliner—it’s a real mood-booster.