Fallout Boy: Want to call us emo? Go ahead.

God

Super Moderator

The past year has seen Fall Out Boy reach ultra-heavy rotation on MTV and make a jarring leap from packed nightclubs to headlining large arenas.

At this point, it's pretty safe to call Fall Out Boy the reigning kings of emo -- but don't tell that to singer/guitarist Patrick Stump, who not only questioned that kind of pigeonholing, but also addressed the up and down sides of the band's rise during his recent phone interview with SHNS.com.


Here's part of the chat with Stump.

SHNS: Do you find you're getting mobbed by people and recognized more when you go out?

Patrick Stump: Definitely. When you're on TV, people start noticing you. Funniest thing, we're in New York and Pete's walking around Toys 'R' Us or something. And he got recognized by a group of Japanese tourists that were in town. And they're just yelling at him (exuberantly), "Punk'd! Punk'd!" They recognized him just from TV. So it's weird. Like, I'll walk around and get that sometimes. It's just a weird thing to think that someone somewhere is watching my band on TV. (Chuckle.) That's just totally strange to me.

A recent Spin magazine poll says something about the crossroads of fame you have reached. "Dance Dance" was voted as one of best songs, yet you were voted worst new band.

Anybody's gonna get that. That's cool. It's one of those things where it's so easy to have a scapegoat... It's just part of the territory, I guess.

At the same time, do you take it personally on any level?

It would be easy to, definitely. But ... if you read that you're the best band or whatever and you buy into it, then you also have to buy into all the stuff that says you're ruining music, you're formulaic and you're the most generic band that's ever walked the face of the planet, or whatever it is. Whatever negative thing anyone has to say about you, you have to buy into it, because it's coming from an equally credible source.

In general I don't pay attention to any of it. Who wants to really deal with any of that stuff? It's not too healthy to get really absorbed in either.

There's also the news of Pete's photos winding up on the Internet. When did you guys find out, and how did Pete take the news initially?

I was in the studio. I had been producing for a couple of months. I was doing a record for this band, the Hush Sound. I was having a very busy and tiring week. The label called me, and I was like, "Whaddaya got? What more could you possibly have? There's nothing more you could do to ruin my week." And they told me. And I was like, "Cool. I'm going back to work." Who cares? Not my business. That was pretty much it.

You guys have pretty much been crowned the new reigning kings of emo. How would you describe your music, and what's your feeling on the term emo?

Honestly, it's for the press to decide what they wanna call you. And if someone wants to call us emo, awesome. Go for it. You can scream it from the mountaintops. But the reality is we're not gonna do anything to be more or less emo. And we don't really care. And I prefer that if somebody doesn't like us that they not like us because they hate our music and not because they hate that name that's been put on our music.

Along those lines, I came across the term "emoverkill" in some magazine, citing you guys because of the song titles with 50 words in 'em. Where does that come from?

We've been doing that since the beginning... Pete as a lyricist has always been more influenced by literature. And in literature it's not so weird to have a name that long for anything.

Also, we come from the hard-core scene. We used to be a hard-core band. In the hard-core scene, everybody does that. So kind of collectively that's just kind of what happened.

There's all sorts of things we do that people criticize us for and say we're some sort linchpin for some sort of emo (movement). I need glasses. I gotta wear 'em to see. (Chuckles.) I don't wear 'em to look more emo.

Jodes

i really don't like them at all. but thanks for posting this daren