FROM UNDER THE CORK TREE BY FALL OUT BOY (2005)
RATING: 8.5/10

At one point in time, believe it or not, my Spotify Wrapped told me that I was in the top 1% of all Fall Out Boy listeners for that year. I think it was maybe 2020 or 2021. Regardless, I’d be doing a disservice to anyone reading my blog if I didn’t review this album. It’s been literally 21 years since I bought this (on an actual CD! In real life!) and memorized every single word to every song. Being 13 that year really did prime me for emo fandom.

But I digress, From Under the Cork Tree is widely considered by fans of Fall Out Boy to be their best album. And for a good reason: it’s edgy, punchy, catchy, wistful, and self-referential at times. No self-deprecating lover of the emo genre would dare go without listening to at least a couple songs off this particular album. I’m sure there are emo purists out there waiting to send me angry comments about how Fall Out Boy will never be “real” emo like Sunny Day Real Estate or whatever. And to that I say, duh. But it’s also the first taste of emo most of us had in our young lives at the time. It would be unfair to completely disregard its effect on the emo community, past and present. What next, MCR not counting as goth? Cripes.

From Under the Cork Tree has so many golden moments, it’s kind of hard to pick a couple of songs off the whole thing to mention as favorites. Even on songs I’m not super into, there are lyric bombs that stick in your mind far beyond your time hearing the song. For instance, Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner… how could anyone ever forget the bridge where Patrick Stump violently (and eloquently) describes choking his lover to death with her necklace? Or, one of my favorite lyrics off the entire album from the song XO:

“To the love I left pressed between the pages
Of the Bible in the drawer
What did it ever do for me? I say”

Whew. If you’re religious or not, I think those three lines can accurately paint a picture of someone who is at their lowest and most miserable. Of course, lines like this meant it was damn near impossible to share this album with some of my little middle school friends back in 2005… if they had diligent parents reading the lyrics about sex, violence, religion, etc, they were totally forbidden to listen to Fall Out Boy at all. Luckily, I managed to convince my own to ignore all that and let me have this CD. Thank God.

So, as I mentioned before, it’s hard for me to pick favorites because I can easily sing this album out loud back to front. But for this blog’s sake, I’ll talk in depth about a couple.

The song 7 Minutes (Atavan Halen) is probably one of the most memorable of all the songs on the album in my opinion, if you somehow avoided the radio classics (Sugar We’re Goin’ Down, Dance Dance, or A Little Less Sixteen Candles). The fast paced thrumming of the guitars, the punky feel, and the utterly fun lyrics that speak to teenage love affairs make 7 Minutes easily in my top tier of Fall Out Boy songs. I love it. “I keep tellin’ myself I’m not the desperate type but you’ve got me lookin’ in through blinds”? Classic. Not to mention the rest of the song is clearly the anthem of all bruised and broken hearts sitting out on the sidelines while your prom date dances with the cool kids. A rejection anthem, if you will.

Obviously I’m going to mention at least one radio/MTV favorite. Sixteen Candles (I’m not typing out the full song, cry about it) is peak mopey emo underdog. You want the underdog to win, and he probably will, but in the meantime, you hear him frustrated at his own awkwardness. “I set my clocks early because I know I’m always late” is what I mean when I say Fall Out Boy drops lyrical bombs. You don’t even have to know anything about the band or the lead singer to know how much it sucks to constantly make the wrong move. Yet, the almost hopeful backing track with its catchy guitar riff keep you on the edge of your seat, rooting for this nerdy little ant-guy who can’t seem to get anything right. Also, an aside, but the music video for this song is absolutely insane… if you told me to guess what it would be about, never in a million years would I say “vampire street fight”, but yeah. That’s Fall Out Boy.

I want to write about every song on this album really, but frankly, I know most of the people reading this have listened to this album or at least the three main singles. They were on heavy radio repeat for several years and I’m pretty sure I saw the Sugar We’re Goin’ Down video on MTV about a million times in the span of a year. You already know Fall Out Boy is awesome, I’m just confirming it. And yeah, I know that in recent years, liking Fall Out Boy (especially their newer work) is almost too corny, but I refuse to accept that narrative. Fall Out Boy are clever, exciting, and self aware. They are one piece of a larger second wave emo movement that my generation is still reveling in. I’m glad I got a chance to listen to them at their peak… it was a formative moment in my personality. Go listen to this album in its entirety if you haven’t already.