♡ fall out boy is for lovers ♡
I don't think my dad understands the implications when he says "I used to listen to this before you were born." when I play Fall Out Boy in the car, because quite frankly, he is the reason why I got into them in the first place. When I was young he would play two very important songs: Thunder by Boys Like Girls and It Ends Tonight by the All-American Rejects, and around the time I started getting into music he introduced Swing, Swing (also by the latter band). Those two bands? Peak pop punk, literally what you hear in your head when you imagine pop punk music. I also really into C'mon by fun. and Panic! Naturally, Spotify recommended more essential pop punk—importantly, three: Welcome to the Black Parade MCR, But It's Better If You Do Panic, and, crucially, Dance, Dance FOB.
Here I am now, I guess, the certified Fall Out Boy guy in every single friend group I'm in. And I'm owning it tee hee. How fucking amazing is it, that with every song I listen to, every obscure bit of history or dumb conspiracy about the extensive Decaydance polucule that I learn, I become closer to everyone else who was ever and who ever willl be a teen obsessing over these little guys with questionable fashion sense and sick tunes. Popular pop punk is so intersting because back in the 2000's it was the music for kids who didn fit in, and kids were weird and outcast for liking it. But over time, with the evolution of the general music scene and the styles of the bands and the people who made that music, it's become osrt of a relic of its era that will never truly be revived, while its nostalgia factor plus the fact that Fall Out Boy and Panic!, a decade after their original emo success, dropped pop hits that blasted them into an even bigger mainstream, making it "normal" to be into them. Still, with all its popularity, pop punk bands and bandom are far from the centre of pop culture.