Every Fall Out Boy album and song ranked (pt. 2— the song rankings)

If you didn’t read the first part of this post, you can do so here to see what this is all about. To summarize it very briefly: I’m ranking every Fall Out Boy song from their studio albums. A reminder of the criteria: is it (in my opinion) a good song?; does it have a hook or a lyric that has stuck with me or is especially poignant?; and, how well does it fit into the Fall Out Boy sound of its respective era? I also gave points for songs that did a particularly good job of showcasing the talent of one or more of the band members.

I listed the albums chronologically because as I mentioned in part one, I am not making comparisons between songs from different albums. Now let’s get into the good stuff.

Take This to Your Grave, ranked

1. Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy — the first Fall Out Boy song I ever heard, playing from my sister’s stereo in her room. She’d gotten it on a CD mix from a friend, and it changed my life.

2. Saturday — In many ways, I think this is a better song than “Grand Theft Autumn”. And from what I’ve read, the band feels the same way. But the chorus isn’t quite as sing-able, and the hook isn’t quite as catchy.

3. Calm Before the Storm — “He’s well hung / and I am hanging up”. Heh.

4. Chicago Is So Two Years Ago — “You want apologies? / Girl you might hold your breath / until your breathing stops forever.” I can’t remember the last time I was this angry at a person, but I can remember that this is exactly how I felt.

5. Dead on Arrival — “this is side one, flip me over / I know I’m not your favorite record” is the lyrical embodiment of fingerless gloves and eyeliner. Please watch the music video.

6. Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today — the intro sounds like the opening track of every 2000’s teen movie ever made. Can you picture the blonde, puka-shelled teens driving a convertible down a sunny California highway?

7. The Patron Saint of Liars and Fakes

8. Grenade Jumper

9. The Pros and Cons of Breathing

10. Sending Postcards from a Plane Crash (Wish You Were Here) — this is pretty much the exact point in the album where I start to lose track of where I am.

11. Roxanne — considering how punk the rest of this album was, including a bonus track that’s a cover of a classic rock song was unusual, and didn’t fit in with anything else they’d made yet.

12. Homesick at Space Camp

13. Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over — the drums are a little too chaotic. “Woah / can’t do it by myself” isn’t a very punk lyric. The punk thing to do is to not ask for help.

From Under the Cork Tree, ranked

1. XO — the guitar intro to this song screams final boss music. I still haven’t seen Fall Out Boy perform live, but I imagine during the From Under the Cork Tree tour “XO” was the final song they’d play and it would r o c k people’s worlds.

2. Sugar, We’re Going Down — I love it to pieces, but like with all megahits, I listened to it a lot. And, eventually, I got a little tired of it. It sounds fresh again now, but I’ll never forget that there was a time that I was tired of it.

3. Dance, Dance — this song was the basis of a lot of my feelings in my sophomore year of high school. Patrick Stump cuts deep as a spurned ex-lover as he’s practically shoving the words out of his mouth fast enough to hit the melody.

4. The Music or the Misery — “I got your love letters/corrected the grammar/and sent them back”. I now know that this is not an original idea, but you could never tell 15 year-old Jono that this wasn’t the most badass way you could reject a person.

5. Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying — the spoken word at the end is perfection, even if the “p” sounds are distorted from Pete speaking too closely to the mic.

6. A Little Less Sixteen Candles, a Little More “Touch Me” — a fantastically campy music video worth re/watching for a fantastically campy song.

7. Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner — I spent at least an hour in high school reading and practicing the lyrics to this song so I could sing along with it.

8. Our Lawyer Made Us Change The Name Of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued

9. 7 Minutes in Heaven (Atavan Halen) — until I looked up the lyrics for the first time and learned the context for this song, I basically ignored it. Now, when I hear “I’m not going home alone / ’cause I don’t do too well on my own”, I have to take a deep breath.

10. Snitches and Talkers Get Stitches and Walkers

11. Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year — yet another 2000’s teen movie soundtrack song. The problem is that it’s the sad, thoughtful song from the point in the movie where you think the nerd might not get the girl after all, and that song is never as memorable.

12. Of All The Gin Joints In All The World

13. I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me — I genuinely believe they wrote this about someone who slept with a member of the band. Based on the song, it wasn’t a great experience for anyone involved.

14. Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends

15. I’ve Got a Dark Alley and a Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth (Summer Song) — making Patrick Stump sing so low in the verses is criminal. You can hear his voice bottom out multiple times.

Infinity on High, ranked

1. The Take Over, the Breaks Over — this is one of my favourite FOB songs of all time. I enjoy listening to it as much now as I did when I was sixteen and downloading this album track-by-track from Limewire. The lyrics are at once meaningless and intensely relatable, and I think that’s what makes a perfect pop punk song.

2. The (After) Life of the Party — I couldn’t tell you what I felt the first time I heard this song, and I can’t quite tell you what I feel now, but it has nearly brought a tear to my eye on several occasions.

3. I’m Like a Lawyer with the Way I’m Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)

4. Thriller — they got Jay-Z to open their album! That level of a cross-over was a big deal in 2007.

5. Bang the Doldrums — the sea shanty “yo-ho-oh” alone puts this song in the top 5 of the album for me.

6. Hum Hallelujah

7. You’re Crashing, But You’re No Wave

8. The Carpal Tunnel of Love — my first glimpse of Infinity on High was the Happy Tree Friends music video for this lead single. It terrified and delighted me, like any other Happy Tree Friends video (google it if you wouldn’t mind watching the Care Bears be dismembered).

9. I’ve Got All This Ringing in My Ears and None on My Fingers — “You’re a canary / I’m a goldmine” is unforgettable. The title, unfortunately, isn’t.

10. Golden

11. This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race — Do I think the inclusion of teenage girls chanting the title is severely uncool? Yes. But the whole song was a study in how far the band could push their clout and new fame, and I admire them for having the gall to make it the second single.

12. Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am?

13. G.I.N.A.S.F.S

14. Thnks fr the Mmrs — Patrick’s vocal runs in this always annoyed me. But when he sings, “He tastes like you only sweeter” my heart still flutters. I can’t give it the bottom spot.

15. It’s Hard to Say I Do When I Don’t

16. Fame < Infamy

Folie a Deux, ranked

1. What a Catch, Donnie — FOB’s most ambitious song until that point in their career. Elvis Costello popping in after the bridge, even with only three lines, was mind-blowing. And then a further slew of featured artists paying tribute to the Fall Out Boy classics we’d fallen in love with over the years.

2. Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes

3. (Coffee’s for Closers) — if you look at my top three picks from this album, it’s pretty obvious what I enjoy and think they did well in Folie a Deux — bright, powerful songs with plenty of high notes, dramatic drum beats, and a chorus that’s easy to sing along to.

4. 20 Dollar Nose Bleed — listening to Brendon Urie croon, “permanent jetlag / please take me back” takes on new levels of meaning in a pandemic world, but even before 2020 this was a fun duet between the kings of 00’s pop punk.

5. Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown On A Bad Bet — this track is a musical journey. Absolutely nothing to complain about.

6. Pavlove

7. West Coast Smoker — it opens with alien alarm sounds following Pete Wentz’s spoken-word transition, and it stays unsettling for the next three minutes.

8. America’s Suitehearts — I’ve put this in the middle of the list because after all these years, I still don’t know if I love or hate it. I think it’s both.

9. Lullabye — the lyrics are pretty great for a lullaby — much better than the creepy ones we usually sing to our infants. However, it doesn’t particularly showcases anyone’s talents.

10. She’s My Winona

11. I Don’t Care — I remember listening to a leaked demo before the album was released, and being disappointed with how the production ended up. Listening back to it now, it’s fine.

12. Tiffany Blews

13. Beat It — another well-executed but out-of-place cover. Besides, we knew in 2008 that Michael Jackson was problematic and probably not the greatest artist to be glorifying like this.

14. The (Shipped) Gold Standard

15. 27

16. w.a.m.s. — the bluesy outro is a big redeeming factor, because I don’t love much about the main part.

Save Rock and Roll, ranked

1. Alone Together — this song is incredible from start to end. It showcases what makes each member of the group so great. “My heart is like a stallion / they love it more when it’s broken” makes me want to weep and rage. It’s the same energy that Grimes captured in her hit “California”, but Fall Out Boy captured it first.

2. Rat a Tat — why is Courtney Love talking about digital presentations in such detail? I don’t know if I would enjoy a whole album like this track, but I wouldn’t enjoy this album nearly as much without it.

3. Save Rock and Roll — the ethos to “Rat a Tat”’s pathos. Unlike the final boss energy of a lot of their other closing tracks, the band took a big step in the other direction, and gave us their anthem instead. If you have anything bad to say about Elton John here, you’re wrong.

4. Young Volcanoes — for a while, this was my favourite Fall Out Boy song. Then I listened to it too much. I still find it super catchy.

5. Miss Missing You

6. Just One Yesterday — in 2013 I was still listening to “Clarity” on repeat, along with a handful of other Foxes songs, so I was excited for this song when I saw she featured on it.

7. The Mighty Fall — the children’s chorus and tinkling bells are a weird way to start a song about hating on an ex, but Big Sean is great. “I’m either fucking or working / so the grind don’t stop” is the spiritual predecessor to Lil Nas X’s Montero line “I miss that jet lag from fuckin’ and flyin’”.

8. The Phoenix

9. My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light Em Up) — this goes a bit too far into camp for me. What are they trying to accomplish with that glam metal “fiyahhhhhh”?

10. Where Did the Party Go

11. Death Valley

American Beauty/American Psycho, ranked

1. Favorite Record — fittingly, this is my favorite record from the album. It creates a strong nostalgia for all the relationships I have and haven’t been in, and it makes me want to dance in a way few other FOB songs do.

2. Uma Thurman — the first time I heard “Agatha All Along”, I thought of this song. I know they are both heavily inspired by the same source material, but I still had this in my mind. Have you watched the video of this song dubbed to the 80’s aerobics championship video? You ought to.

3. The Kids Aren’t Alright

4. Jet Pack Blues

5. Twin Skeleton’s (Hotel In NYC) — like with “XO” in From Under the Cork Tree, this song gives big final boss energy.

6. American Beauty/American Psycho — the musical equivalent of a pelvic thrust.

7. Fourth of July — calling your love “my Versailles at night” is perhaps not the most geopolitically consistent image, but I’m sure it sounds much better than “my White House at night”.

8. Irresistible — after opening several of their previous albums with unconventional sound choices (a dial tone, camera snaps, Jay-Z, the London Symphony Orchestra), horns are a bit of a letdown.

9. Immortals

10. Centuries — like everyone else with a memory of this song being shoved into our ears, I got bored of it real fast.

11. Novacaine

Mania, ranked

1. Wilson (Expensive Mistakes) — I cannot wait for the day I can go to concerts again and dance to a live performance of “I’ll stop wearing black when they make a darker color”. I know it’s a Wednesday Addams reference, but it feels just as badass coming from Patrick Stump.

2. Young and Menace — my only complaint is that they didn’t push this song far enough. I love the dips and peaks. I live for the hard drum and synth.

3. Church

4. Hold Me Tight or Don’t

5. Champions — when I first heard this song and saw the music video, I was nervous for how similar it felt to “Centuries”. I gave it a proper chance, though, and now I think it’s different enough to give the middle spot on this list.

6. The Last of the Real Ones

7. Heaven’s Gate — it’s a little too similar to “Church”, yet doesn’t quite fit with the rest of the songs on the album. It might be the nostalgic rock & roll melody, or maybe the earnestness of the lyrics.

8. Bishops Knife Trick — if I was to compare this to their other closing tracks, I’d say this is more “cutscene after the final boss/end credits” rather than a proper final boss track. I still really enjoy it.

9. Sunshine Riptide — the obligatory mellow, melancholy track of the album. I’m not familiar with Burna Boy, but his verse is my favourite part.

10. Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea

And that’s the ranking! As I mentioned in part one, I saved a little (or big) bonus for anyone who’s made it to the end. My director’s cut, unedited, long-form notes for each song. Feeling adamant that I messed up the proper order? Passionately agree with one of my choices, and want to see more? Take a peek here to see the version of this list I assumed casual readers wouldn’t have the motivation to finish. But you aren’t a casual reader… are you?