The Secret Soundtrack to My Life: Fall Out Boy

I am six years old when I hear "Sugar, We're Goin Down" played on the radio for the first time. I don't pay much attention then, too preoccupied in the backseat with my new pink Nintendo DS, but in the coming years, I will end up downloading it using YouTube to MP3. I'll also think it was written by the Red Hot Chili Peppers for much of the foreseeable future.

I am nine when I hear "Dance, Dance" for the first time, blasting from behind my best friend's older sister's room. Her sister is, hands down, the coolest person I've ever met. She dresses in black, wears a ton of eyeliner, and listens to loud, emotional music. She is everything I can't be. She is rebellious. I stand with my ear to her door, desperate to catch the song title, but my friend pulls me to the basement to play Sims before I can.

I am eleven when Fall Out Boy goes on hiatus. It does not change anything in my life. I listen to the Top 40, dress in exclusively American Eagle apparel, and sign up for sports. I am a carbon copy of every other sixth grader in my school, just as it should be. My time and energy is consumed trying to fit in, but when I get home, I think of my friend's sister and Google a melody I can't quite remember.

I am fifteen when Fall Out Boy drops "My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark" and they announce their return. Again, this changes nothing for me. I hear the song on the radio as I sweat to death in a lifeguard chair and smile, but that's the extent of it. "Centuries," "Uma Thurman," all of the American Beauty/American Psycho era, passes in much of the same way. It's there, the backing track to my life, but I never really hear it.

I am nineteen, in my sophomore year of college, when MANIA is released. I recognize the name by now, coming off an alarmingly strong Panic! At The Disco phase. After a particularly bad day, when the whole world seems to be falling apart, I hike to the gym, plug in my headphones, and run.

I have heard Fall Out Boy my entire life, but for the first time, I've listened.

I am twenty when I beg my roommate to fly to Ohio for a music festival that Fall Out Boy is headlining. She agrees and we trek all the way to Bunbury, waiting for hours in the rain for a band she barely knows. I know them though, and somehow, it feels like they know me too. I've never met these four men, but they managed to package my personal pain and put it in a song, time and time again. They know me, even if they don't.

I am standing at the barricade, metal impaling my hip bones as I lean forward, screaming the lyrics that have saved my life, more than once. I am surrounded by thousands of people doing the same, and in that moment, I realize how completely not alone I am. I am in awe of what seven studio albums and eighteen years can create.

I am a brand new college graduate seeing Fall Out Boy live for the first time. I am more than a little bit lost in life, but I'm wearing my favorite pair of converse and listening to music I love, not because it's what everyone else is into, but because I love it. I know who I am this time around. I'm a stitch away from making it and a scar away from falling apart. I am finally rebellious.

They end the set with "Saturday," as they always do, and the lyrics sound different than they do through my headphones. They sound different with me screaming over Patrick's voice, Joe's riffs, Andy's drums. They sound different with Pete standing on the barricade, singing with me and my thousands of new friends. They sound like a promise. They sound like I'll be okay.

Maybe I was years too late to the party, but the music hasn't changed. I have. Fall Out Boy wrote the songs I would need years before I could fully understand what they meant. And thank God they did.

I hope each and every one of you finds something you love, that speaks to you the way this music does. Send me a message so we can discuss! I'm always looking for music recommendations. Thanks for reading!