A funny thing happened to Fall Out Boy on the road to Infinity on High: they got famous.
Before 2005's From Under the Cork Tree they were just another pop-punk unit from suburban Chicago happy to break even at shows with gas money.
Next thing anyone knew, they were headlining arenas and being heralded as the new face of pop-punk alongside their peers in My Chemical Romance.
It was a position that never seemed to rest easy with the guys, and because of this, Infinity on High seems a bit conflicted.
Fall Out Boy wants to charm everyone here.
They want to prove themselves to critics by moving past the confines of emo, allowing a love of all things pop to come right to the forefront.
Yet they also want to resonate directly with those day-one fans who may long for the intimate VFW shows of yesterday.
This disparity makes points of the record seem awkward, and for the first time, the band appears to over-think things.
Pete Wentz's lyrics are oftentimes resentful, full of fame-induced angst, and really emphasize his need to drive home his position that stardom has not changed the band.
So it's in weird contrast to these sentiments that Jay-Z is the one opening the album and calling out haters who said FOB would fail.
The glorification of their celebrity abruptly switches into Patrick Stump stating (pleading?) that the band is not buying into the hype -- nor do they even want it.
"Make us poster boys for your scene/But we are not making an acceptance speech" is defiant, and when his sweet voice asserts, "Crowds are won and lost and won again/But our hearts beat for the diehards," it's clear that FOB still holds their roots close.
But this is contradicted by the fact that the album's majority is far and away their poppiest material to date, more pop/rock than pop-punk, which inevitably means more interesting to those who know them just as that "Dance, Dance" band with the media-whoring bassist, Pete Wentz.
| Title/Composers | Performer | Listen | Time | Size | Size | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)Fall Out Boy, Andrew Hurley, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman, Pete Wentz | Fall Out Boy | Play | 03:31 | 8 MB | 27 MB |
| 3 mins | 8 MB | |||||
| 3 mins | 27 MB | |||||
| Artist | Job | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Leonard Cohen | Composer |
| 2 | Wesley Eisold | Composer |
| 3 | Fall Out Boy | Composer, Primary Artist |
| 4 | Andrew Hurley | Composer |
| 5 | Jay-Z | Guest Artist |
| 6 | Patrick Stump | Composer |
| 7 | Joe Trohman | Composer |
| 8 | Pete Wentz | Composer |
| Quality | Format | Encoding | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | MP3 | 320kps 44.1kHz | MP3 is an audio coding format which uses a form of lossy data compression. The highest bitrate of this format is 320kbps (kbit/s). MP3 Digital audio takes less amount of space (up to 90% reduction in size) and the quality is not as good as the original one. |