While Barack Obama was shattering racial barriers as the first African American president and the Swine flu epidemic took the world by surprise, songs like “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race,” “Thanks For the Memories” and “Sugar We’re Going Down” seemed to be the background music of the action-packed year. After that eventful 2009, however, alternative rock band Fall Out Boy fell completely out and off the radar—until now, that is.
After countless rumors circulated the social media spheres about a possible reunion of the Illinois-based band of four, the music world’s worst kept secret was confirmed this Monday. Perhaps motivated by Destiny Child’s reunion performance at the Super Bowl, Fall Out Boy announced a series of reunion tours scheduled for this month, which kicked off on February 4th in their hometown of Chicago.
Finally out of their “Indefinite Hiatus”, as bassist Pete Wentz described the extended interlude in a 2009 MTV interview, the band broadcasted that a new album entitled Save Rock and Roll is set to hit the shelves on May 7th. To satisfy their following four years deprived of new music, Fall out Boy released a track called “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” off their new album Save Rock and Roll.
As for the reason the band decided to reunite now, the band released the following statement on their website (www.falloutboyrock.com).
“When we were kids the only thing that got us through most days was music. It’s why we started Fall Out Boy in the first place. This isn’t a reunion because we never broke up. We needed to plug back in and make some music that matters to us. The future of Fall Out Boy starts now….”
But what have members Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman, and Andy Hurley been up to these last four years? Wentz became the leading spokesperson of Unicef’s TAP project that brings clean drinking water to underprivileged areas around the globe and formed an electropop/ska band called ‘The Black Cards,’ while Stump released his first solo album called Soul Punk in 2011. Trohman and Hurley teamed up with members of bands ‘Every Time I Die’ and ‘Anthrax’ to form a heavy metal super group called ‘The Damned Things.’
For the band members, the die hard fans, and dabblers simply nostalgic for the hits alike, news of Fall Out Boy’s return struck the right chord after years of Fall Out Boy silence Until Save Rock and Roll is dropped this May, the music world will be eagerly anticipating and its innovative songs, and of course, the infamously mile-long song titles.