On this day in 2007, Fall Out Boy released their third studio album Infinity On High. The album was an incredibly strong follow up to the mainstream success of their sophomore album From Under The Cork Tree two years before.
It's also the album that made me hate Fall Out Boy for about a year and a half.
I first discovered FOB through my cousin over Christmas 2003. I remember seeing the album for Take This To Your Grave and she was talking about how much she liked the band, but I can't remember for certain if she played it or not. Jump to 2005 and "Sugar We're Going Down" is all over the radio and MTV and I realized that this was the same band I heard about previously. I started listening to the singles as they were released and I absolutely loved their sound, but the following year I went off to college, got busy with classes, meeting new people, and listening to The Black Parade while gazing out my dorm window on the cemetery across the street. Then I came back for my second semester with a new roommate and was stoked to hear that the new FOB album was about to drop.My new roommate was a huge FOB fan as well, and picked up the album the day it came out and the lyrics We only want to sing you to sleep in your bedroom speakers were never more true.
Literally every single night she played Infinity On High. At first I didn't mind, I really love IOH as its an incredible album, but when its literally the only thing you have to listen to, never on shuffle, never with her listening with headphones, every single night as we went to sleep, it starts to wear on you.
To say I cannot remember anything I learned that semester of school, but I do know every single word to that album is not an exaggeration.
There have been days where I have listened to Danger Days by My Chemical Romance on repeat all day. I've logged entire road trips just listening to Taking Back Sunday, but if there was some kind of Spotify statistics about the number of hours I've spent listening to Fall Out Boy either voluntarily, or in that dorm room, I bet that band would be hours ahead of anyone else just because of February through May 2007.
After that major burnout period, I avoided listening to FOB until I saw them live for the first time when they opened for Blink 182 in the summer of 2009. The irony being that as I was just getting over my Fall Out Boy burnout, they were, as a band, just reaching their's and shortly after went on hiatus. But they had pulled me right back in and I waited patiently for their eventual return February 2013. It has been smooth sailing ever since.
Two pieces of advice I'd like to impart before I close out this post: just because the last line of an album says "now press repeat", you don't have to press repeat. And don't be afraid to ask your roommate to maybe mix up the playlist occasionally.
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