The week I found out about their hiatus I remember to be a very weepy one. No one else understood the hurt I was going through. I was and still am pretty much the only person living in my area that completely and irrevocably loves Fall Out Boy with all their heart. Sure, there are people around who like a few songs of Fall Out Boys, namely being Sugar We're Going Down, Thnks Fr Th Mmrs, Dance, Dance, etc, but I still have yet to find someone who lives in my vicinity that will forever love the band as a whole rather than their overblown singles or Pete Wentz.
But with all my talk, I'm not the biggest Fall Out Boy fan out there. There is no possible way. I can't recite the guys's birthdays, their favourite colours or prefered meals. I don't know what schools they went to as kids or what clubs they were involved in (I know Pete was in soccer and Patrick did a radio show, though), who their idols are, nor am I able to recite all bands and artists they have been involved in to date. I didn't even know Joe Trohman was engaged or that Pete Wentz was dating a model or someone until very recently. If you asked me about how any one of them are doing, I wouldn't know. I don't stalk any of them and I certainly can't tell you useless trivia about them other than the fact that Pete's first tattoo is one of an X on his ankle that he gave to himself one day.
I also don't own five hundred billion pieces of Fall Out Boy merchandise. The most I have is one ratty t-shirt from Hot Topic, their concert CD/DVD ****: Live in Phoenix, and their last official studio album, Folie a Deux, which I bought at Barnes and Noble months after it was released.No, I don't own every album they have ever released from the Split EP to Believers Never Die: Greatest Hits. I have never had the honour of being able to see and experience their music LIVE except through the speakers of my stereo as I played their concert CD. In fact, one of my fears is that I'll never be able to ever hear their music live before I depart this world. The most I could do posses their full discography, but Fall Out Boy merchandise of any kind is so difficult to find now that that they're so died out. So now I hang on to the hope that one day I will be able to see the four of them together as a band, even if that day comes when Pete (the oldest) is 40 years old and can't scream anymore.
And to be honest, I don't even know every single song they have ever played by heart. Often times an older song of theirs will pop up on my playlist and I have to look back at the screen to figure out which song it is. I still mumble at the parts of the songs I don't know the lyrics to (because I can almost never understand Patrick completely). Sometimes when I scroll through the Fall Out Boy tag on tumblr (yes, I got a tumblr if you haven't gotten the memo yet) someone will post lyrics and it will take me awhile to sing the tune of the song it came from. Heck, on some occasions I even have to Google the lyrics to figure out which song it's from.
That being said, I am in no possible way the biggest fan out there. My beginnings as a Fall Out Boy fan are much more humble than that of other fans. I haven't been with them since their beginnings and haven't had the joy of watching an underground band that I have discovered blossom into a worldwide phenom. My beginnings of a fan actually take root near the end of the band. I can't exactly remember why or how or what exactly happened, but I can only be positive that it happened around the beginning of middle school.
Of course, those weren't my first encounters with the band, I just didn't know it at the time. I actually remember singing Sugar We're Going Down in grade four every time I took my seat down from the table. But at the time, Sugar was just one of those songs that played on the radio so often that you catch on to the lyrics without ever knowing the band or the title. I also remember seeing the music video for A Little Less Sixteeen Candles, A Little More Touch Me playing on MTV and asking my sister why the title was so long. I forgot her answer, though. However, all these connection to Fall Out Boy when I was younger occurred without my knowledge of it ever being Fall Out Boy as the band behind all of them.
As far as middle school goes, I think I would hold Fall Out Boy as the main reason why I went from innocent JoBros fan who never swore worse than "stupid" to an angsty bitch who drew middle fingers and said "fuck" between every other word (that and online JoBros forums. The fan site kids were okay, but the forums were fucking ruthless). As a result, Fall Out Boy became a part of me. I couldn't just simply let them go like so many before me. It wasn't just a phase to me. My becoming a fan of their music was my transformation into who I am today. It's been four years, yet you will still often see me skipping past songs on my phone to get to the next Fall Out Boy song.That song I'm drumming to as you walk past me in the halls? Most likely one by Fall Out Boy. It has only been four years, yet through all the music obsessions I've gone through within that time, my Chicago-based beauties still remain a constant for me. I have never strayed from them and I honestly can't imagine not loving them.
In a way, I consider myself somewhat lucky to have started loving them so much later than everyone else. With this way, I have avoided all the nasty rumours and gossip that his led the fall of their fanbase since FUTCT came out. I can't accuse them of being sell outs because I have no idea what the hell they did to gain that title. I can't call Pete Wentz a fag while believing it 100% because I'm not sure why people call him this (other than the fact that his penis is all over the internet and I unfortunately have unintentionally seen). The way I see it, people just started calling them these names so they'd have a reason to get off the bandwagon. Change in a band is inevitable, but it doesn't make them a sell outs. But with so many people hopping on the bandwagon since their outbreak, former fans have taken to the mudslinging so they could finally jump off and breathe. Luckily for me, I got on just as everyone reached their last stop so I have plenty of room to breathe left for myself.
So no, I am no super fan. No, I am most certainly NOT going to throw some cliched crap about "how they've always been there for me" and how "I've gone through some tough times with them" because honestly they haven't. Whenever I'm feeling sad or angry or depressed I don't specifically crank out Fall Out Boy to feel better. I just put on music. Fall Out Boy happens to usually be the first band to pop up. Fall Out Boy has always just been there. They were and are always a constant in my life and no matter what kind of mood I'm in at the time, I never fail to rock out to their music.
Believers Never Die.
TWGS ♥
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