Every Fall Out Boy album and song ranked (pt. 1 — the album rankings)

I like pop punk, and I’m not ashamed to admit that in 2021. Angst was a big part of my adolescent identity, and among all the hair-straightened and eye-lined bands that were singing the words I couldn’t say myself, Fall Out Boy especially captured my heart. I think it was partially because my blossoming homosexual mind could so easily put a queer reading to a lot of their lyrics. For all the tracks he wrote about losing girlfriends, Pete Wentz didn’t seem to use third-person pronouns a whole lot. And in “Sugar We’re Going Down”, I’m sure that I’m not the only one who intentionally misheard Patrick Stump as singing, “isn’t it messed up/how I’m just dying to be her”. Aside from that, Fall Out Boy was, for a short time, a boundary-pushing act for mainstream audiences. Their origins were in the Chicago hardcore punk scene! They made a music video about a heartsick teen with deer antlers! The bassist and main lyricist (Wentz) said he was bi “above the waist”! We didn’t see a whole lot of groups like that in 2004. But with each successive album they strayed further from their punk rock roots. Remember when they teasingly called themselves sellouts in the music video for “The Take Over, the Breaks Over” because… they weren’t screaming as much? Now they’re regularly getting songs featured in commercials and feature film promos. Regardless, I’ve loved the band for over half my life, and I think it’s about time I did what any self-respecting fan does — spend a large amount of time ranking and comparing all the material they’ve ever released.

After five minutes of trying to put everything into one giant list, I realized comparing early and late Fall Out Boy tracks was going to be too difficult for me. “Dance, Dance” came to me at a very different time in my life — and in a very different music context- than “Uma Thurman” did. Further, my relationship to an individual track is different from my relationship to its album. While I feel able to compare the albums to each other as a whole, it doesn’t seem right to compare tracks across albums. So, I finally settled on two ranking systems.

I first ranked the albums themselves. My album criteria were: how meaningful the album was to me at the time I first encountered it; how well I think it holds up today, sonically and lyrically; and how cohesive it is as a complete work. I also spent a fair amount of time re-listening to them all recently, so I took into account how enjoyable it is to listen to the whole album through in one sitting.

Then, I ranked the albums by song. My criteria here were: 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 don’t mean that a more experimental or retro-sounding track necessarily does worse, but a song that ranks highly is one that captures the essence of what FOB was at that time.

I included bonus tracks from deluxe editions, but I didn’t include any EPs, because apart from a couple songs, I didn’t really follow them as they were released. I might do a future revised list and include those (spoiler alert — the acoustic version of “Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner” is probably my all-time favourite FOB song). But without further ado, here they are.

The album rankings

7. Folie a deux — based on all the other rankings I’ve read online, this feels like an uncontroversial choice for last place. It was apparently a challenging album for all four members to create (guitarist Joe Trohman and drummer Andy Hurley started getting more creative input with this album), and they made a lot of interesting choices like featuring their rival Brendon Urie in two tracks, playing with long transitions, and constant jumps in mood between songs. But more importantly, I was starting university when this album came out, and Fall Out Boy was feeling like a high school kind of thing at a time when I was quickly shedding my old identity. I’ll never forget the heartbreak I felt when I first heard the news of their indefinite hiatus in 2009. I think that memory is going to forever stain this album for me. Every other album has led me excitedly into the next, but with this one, I thought it was game over.

6. Take This to Your Grave — some people might say I have no respect for the band for placing this album so low, or that I’m not a true pop punk fan if I put it below Mania. But this is a rough, low-budget album written by some boys in a garage. I think it’s great for what it is, and I’m not saying I dislike it. But there’s a lot of untapped potential in this album that was drawn out in the next two, and by the second half, sounds start to get a little repetitive. The big hits that this album spawned — “Saturday”, “Grand Theft Autumn”, “Dead on Arrival” — are timeless, but there’s a lot of chaff following them. I spent a week re-listening to it, and after a verse + chorus I still can’t confidently tell you whether I’m listening to “Sending Postcards from a Plane Crash” or “Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over”. Regardless, we all have to start somewhere, and this was a sincere work with great reverence for irreverence.

5. Mania — I have only recently listened to this album in its entirety, so I’m reluctant to form too strong of an opinion on it. I really like some tracks, and I really don’t like others, so I know I can’t place it very high on the list. Pete Wentz in an interview once called American Beauty/American Psycho a kind-of sequel to Save Rock and Roll, which makes this the band’s first venture out into new musical territory in half a decade. I think it relies a little too heavily on Patrick Stump’s soul voice — putting “Church” and “Heaven’s Gate” back-to-back makes them both lose their punch — and their most melancholy track “Sunshine Riptide” doesn’t have the same gravitas that their earlier ballads do. It’s probably because they’re all rich and in committed relationships now, so they don’t have the same things to be blue about anymore. The shift to a more electronic sound in most of the tracks comes across as a suitable adaptation to the kind of music people are making now, though it doesn’t reinvent any genres.

4. American Beauty/American Psycho — I really enjoyed Save Rock and Roll, and I really didn’t enjoy the lead single “Centuries” off this album. Both of those factors pre-disposed me to poo-poo this album before I even listened to it, and the edgy cover art didn’t do much to change my mind for the better. However, as their next two singles dropped, I slowly came around to the new sounds. In some ways AB/AP feels more like a rock album than Save Rock and Roll did. Andy Hurley actually shines as a drummer in quite a few songs. Lyrically and sonically it feels like an overall angrier collection of songs, but preserves a softer side in “Favorite Record” and “The Kids Aren’t Alright” to give me that sweet emotional depth. It might not have broken the new ground that its predecessor did, but as a follow-up album it did a great job of cementing the band’s identity and songwriting. By this point in their career, they had figured out how to create an album with peaks and valleys, so AB/AP makes for a great listening session.

3. From Under the Cork Tree — I’m so torn between this album and its successor, but I ended up putting Cork Tree next because of my own music journey. I came across this album through its singles, and slowly put the pieces of it together. The tracks didn’t really strike me as a collection of something bigger and whole until I was a little older, but I’ll never forget the album art and the particular feeling it gave me. And the breakout hit that this album produced is a mainstay not only in pop punk music, but in all music to come from the first decade of the new millennium. Most people could never understand the lyrics to “Sugar, We’re Going Down”, but that didn’t stopped anyone from trying to sing along. As I listen to the album a decade and a half later, I realize that part of the second half hits the same pitfall that Take This to Your Grave does. It exhausts their punk sound repertoire. Unlike Take This, however, the final three tracks are a strong, distinct finish that rewards you for making it to the end of the album with sentence-long song titles. It’s unapologetically, quintessentially Fall Out Boy from beginning to end, even if it wasn’t their boldest work yet.

2. Infinity on High — Infinity on High was the first Fall Out Boy album that I appreciated as a whole work from its release — unlike the piecemeal listening experience I had with Cork Tree. I was in the middle of my teenage infatuation with emo, though my own style was boy-next-door. So, hearing that so-called hardcore fans of the band were suddenly alienated by their change in musical direction made my ears perk up a little. I was a middle-class semi-closeted white boy in the suburbs, and a softer punk sound was exactly what my sensibilities craved. No one can say Fall Out Boy isn’t punk on this album, though. In “The Carpal Tunnel of Love” there are 30 uninterrupted seconds of scream-singing. But with their third studio album, it eventually came time for the band to realize that if they wanted to keep making interesting music, they’d have to diversify and experiment a bit. Listening back on this album as an adult, the tracks that feel the most timeless are the ones that embrace punk sound, but aren’t entirely confined to it. “The (After) Life of the Party” and “Golden” explore the sad emotional range of the band, and that new sincerity makes it feel like the boys were finally growing up when they wrote this. Now press repeat.

1. Save Rock and Roll — In 2013 I was frustrated and ready to rage against a world I couldn’t control, and along came a freshly-reunited punk-turned-rock band from a time in my life I could finally feel nostalgic about. I don’t think any of my top 3 favourite Fall Out Boy songs are on this album, but overall Save Rock and Roll is their most successful work to-date. The timing was impressive — they came out of a hiatus right before the world was going to forget them, and with a sound that in many ways unified all of their previous albums. It closes with a stunning power anthem, features angry spoken word (from Courtney Love, no less!), and a hell of a lot of sad boy lyrics about feelings set over pounding drums and strumming guitars. All their experimental flourishes felt like exactly the right new touches to add to their shifting sound and image. By the time Save Rock and Roll came out, people were prepared to expect anything from Fall Out Boy, and they really didn’t disappoint. Not counting the little cameos on “What a Catch, Donnie”, the amount and diversity of featured artists was unprecedented for the group, and has not been matched since. It gives us the impression that Fall Out Boy was serious about this album, and they wanted to make something for everyone in it. I remember waiting impatiently for each part of the visual album to come out on YouTube, and trying to piece together the gaps in the storyline Plus, Patrick Stump suddenly became a sex symbol? How could I place this album in any other spot?

That’s the list! In part 2, I’ll go through each album and rank them track-by-track. And perhaps I’ll do a little something special at the end.