Which is it?
[Video]
[4.00]
Dan MacRae: Fall Out Boy’s swinging for the fences isn’t something to be discouraged. I like these goobers going big Big BIG in theory, but there’s no guts, heart or blood in this gangly monstrosity. When classmates My Chemical Romance decided to up the dial from “mega” to “colossal,” they had the decency to make you feel like they were pouring themselves into their unapologetically dorky creations. Patrick Stump leaning hard into his vocals can’t drown out the sound of a band trying to make something epic out of half-formed idea chunklets. This ain’t a scene — it’s the trimmed out portion of an arms race.
[3]
Will Adams: The garish saturation on literally everything works surprisingly well. With the knobs turned to eleven and the tempo dialed up, there’s less time to ruminate on whatever half-clever lines are being doled out. Instead, I’m left with glossy pop-punk that sounds like a roller coaster about to careen off the rails.
[7]
Tara Hillegeist: Uh, it’s a passable Cobra Starship single?
[1]
Anthony Easton: Oh, this is turgid and pretentious, but in that sixteen-year-old clever anarchist way. Full points for knowing audience.
[7]
Alfred Soto: Fun for a couple of minutes, but then like mixing Nyquil and Xanax.
[4]
Micha Cavaseno: I have lived to the point that Fall Out Boy are making Murderdolls/Graves-era Misfits/dope songs. I never thought a band that while always so overdrunk with pseudo-poetics would just regress into shock shlock rock theater of the likes that Gerard Way would even be self-conscious of stooping to. I mean, this is sub-Panic! At The Disco’s recycling half the Chuck Palahlniuk bibliography for lyrics writing. Wes Eisold, if you’re out there, be charitable and help these kids write because look at them in their dire need!
[0]
Thomas Inskeep: Great title, empty song with weirdly dubstep-ish wub web sonics. I suppose the Hot Topic kids will still lap it up, but for the life of me I don’t get its appeal. (Also, the tone of Patrick Stump’s voice is the epitome of nails-on-a-chalkboard for my ears.)
[2]
David Sheffieck: I haven’t felt this conflicted about a Fall Out Boy song ever: on one hand, the thing sounds weirdly shrill and compressed, on the other that approach works to amplify the sense of tension and aggression in the lyric and vocal. On one hand, “We were only meant/ To make you live again;” on the other, “I wish I dreamt in the shape of your mouth/ But it’s your thread count I really care about.” Ultimately it’s the “ooh ooh”s of the pre-chorus that settle it, an incongruous flashback to doo-wop/sunshine pop/”White Lines” that could only come from FOB, slotting into the song beautifully in a way that shouldn’t make sense but does. It’s a pretty solid synecdoche for the song, in that way.
[7]
Scott Mildenhall: When Justice decided to become a rock band, this would have been an interesting path to take – certainly more interesting than the one they did – but it would actually have led somewhere. Like all of Fall Out Boy’s best singles, the absurdity is fun, but it has nothing to hold it together, playful harmonies not covering ungraspable aimlessness.
[5]