12 Years Strong: Fall Out Boy’s Save Rock and Roll

Image from Roger Stonehouse that later became licensed to be the album cover.

I’ve always loved music — mainly dad rock due to my dad’s influence — but I didn’t discover my own tastes until middle school. Fall Out Boy, a band from the suburbs of Chicago, was the first group I really listened to that became a key component of my music taste.

I was too young to remember the hiatus after Folie a Deux, and I’m just old enough to remember the release of Save Rock and Roll and American Beauty/American Psycho. However, SRAR turned 12 years old on April 12, and I want to commemorate this beautiful album on its last tween year.

Save Rock and Roll was an epic album for Fall Out Boy to return with, carrying themes of “apocalyptic hope” seen in the music videos and the album’s tracks. Featuring artists like Elton John, Big Sean, Courtney Love, and Foxes, this 11-track album was a passion project from start to finish. Many think of this album as “the one with ‘Light Em Up’ on it” but true fans know it as the one with the “Young Blood Chronicles” — a post-apocalyptic video series where the band members die and end up saving rock and roll with Elton John, or God, in the end. The videos themselves are gory, yet goofy, and represent everything Fall Out Boy has been known for throughout their 24-year career.

Listeners are introduced to the record by the aggressive strings and percussion of the opening track “The Phoenix.” The song is an excellent comeback from a group that previously quit because of the obsessive media attention they were getting. As a war anthem that defines the early 2010s, “The Phoenix” sets fans up for an intense listen with this new sound — something not overly produced but not just raw instrumentals either. The lyrics have Wentz’s recognizable touch, especially lines like, “So we can take the world back from a heart attack/One maniac at a time we will take it back” and “‘You broke our spirit,’ says the note we pass.” But instead of the unmistakable interpersonal pettiness found in early FOB albums, we get a new, rebellious energy against the unyielding world around us.

The next track, “My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light ‘Em Up)” is the most recognizable off the album, and arguably the third most popular Fall Out Boy song of all time. It played on radio stations everywhere for a good three to four years and still can be heard when the group is on tour or promoting a new album.

“Alone Together” opens with lead vocalist Patrick Stump’s strong vocals singing,  “I don’t know where you’re going/But do you got room for one more troubled soul?” which later closes the song, too. Stump’s raw vocals, paired with bassist Pete Wentz’s complex lyrics, define the group’s powerhouse status that makes them so iconic. “Alone Together” is one of those songs I had on repeat for five summers before I started getting sick of it, and even then, I still never skipped. 

We also got another powerful track in “Just One Yesterday.” With Patrick Stump’s lower register and vivid biblical imagery, the song offers a feeling of empowerment like no other. The storyteller in me gets a vibe of apocalyptic fiction through the steady bass drum with vocals that slowly rise as the song progresses along with the lyrics “If heaven’s grief brings hell’s rain / Then I’d trade all my tomorrows for just one yesterday” in the chorus. Every time I listen to this song, I get mental images of a Percy Jackson-esque apocalypse against a god and it’s hopecore before hopecore honestly.

“The Mighty Fall” is one of my favorite FOB songs of all time. The opening guitar and the harshness of Stump’s voice throughout the song are unforgettable, but I particularly love the resonant lyric, “But if you ask me two’s a whole lot lonelier than one / We should’ve left our love in the gutter where we found it.” Big Sean’s verse is one to be remembered and even gives a call-back to an old Simple Plan song with the lines “Hell yeah I’m a dick girl / I’m addicted to you.”

The next track, “Miss Missing You,” embodies 2013 pop music, matching artists like MGMT and Echosmith in style, though it could be said Fall Out Boy started this ahead of the game. The track is lyrically depressing, but the upbeat music changes the tone to something more bittersweet than we’re used to from the emo band. Many have theorized that this is an epic describing the group’s struggles with mental health and how it affected their friendships. 

At number nine is “Young Volcanoes,” a huge fan favorite from this album with its summer-camp energy and background giggles from Stump. Like “Miss Missing You,” the track’s heartbreaking lyrics (see “Make it easy / Say I never mattered”) are offset by sounds so fun and jumpy that it’s hard to think about just how depressing it is. Also in the general vein of the overall story the album tells, it paints a picture of temporary victory, giving us a reprieve between the rawness of “Death Valley” and the anger in “Rat A Tat.”

When “Rat A Tat” comes on, without fail, my dad will go, “Courtney Love isn’t a great person, you know.” But that honestly does not ruin the song. Another war anthem, Love’s opening is memorable and blends well with the rest of the album, reflecting its theme of apocalyptic hope. There are so many other parts of this song I can point out, but I think the biggest draw is the line, “I’m the lonelier version of you / I just don’t know where I went wrong.”

This last one is an absolute banger of a song. “Save Rock and Roll” is a slower ballad featuring Elton John. The song tops off the album and is everything a fan could’ve asked for to close it out. Giving us the iconic line “I will defend the faith / Going down swinging,” “Save Rock and Roll” feels like a hidden gem meant for those who believe in what the band stands for: making music you’re passionate about rather than trying to manufacture a radio hit. Like almost everything else they’ve produced —  this album proves that if you’re passionate about what you create, people will flock to it.

This album is a no-skip album for me, and I highly recommend listening to it from start to finish. From its features to its lyricism, it’s an excellent comeback after years of smaller projects and attempted solo careers.