An Album a Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday
So Fall Out Boy released a new single. This is the second single for their album to be released later this year, M A N I A. This will be their first new album since 2015’s American Beauty/American Psycho and reportedly is going to draw heavily on EDM influences. The first single Young and Menace featured the three years behind current trends sound of dubstep mixed with contemporary pop influences. So with the background out of the way, let’s see how Champion tackles EDM.
To start, this song does at least appear to have guitars somewhere in the mix and does bring in a little bit of Fall Out Boy’s older sound. The issue this track has right off the bat for me is that the production doesn’t sound like Fall Out Boy; it’s crisp with that dull echoey feel that all pop music has these days. On top of this, even with the guitar in the background the opening of this song wouldn’t sound out of place as the hook on a Future or Drake track, with such a drowsy and low delivery. Also their heavy use of purple in all the marketing keeps making me think Patrick Stump was sipping lean before some of these vocal takes.
Throughout the majority of the song Stump’s vocals are strong as ever, just like on Young and Menace, but there are a few drowsy segments that kill all of the momentum of this track. And while this track attempts to use the huge sounding drum sounds from their last album to add power, even the drums sound tired. I don’t want to be overly negative, because I hate people who throw a fit every time a band changes their sound, but there are changes that work and changes that don’t and this change does not work at all.
Fall Out Boy’s change from pop punk mixed with emo to a more commercial arena rock sound on their last two records worked because it expanded the sound of the band and made them sound like a bigger version of themselves. This shift to a EDM influenced pop sound does the exact opposite, making it sound more and more like Patrick Stump’s solo career ghost written by Pete Wentz. Seriously, on both of the singles from Mania how many musical elements can you pick out? On Young and Menace I hear a lot of synths, a snare drum, a very slight piano once in awhile and I think a guitar buried under everything else on the drop. On Champion, there’s a guitar line, a few synths and drums; that's it.
I find the same issue here I found with Heavy by Linkin Park when I first heard it; where is the rest of the band? Fall Out Boy feature two guitarists, a bass player and a drummer along with a vocalist; at least when Linkin Park fill an entire song with pro tools and keyboard they have the excuse of having a DJ and a keyboard player in the band. Continuing with the comparison to Linkin Park, I actually think this is worse than One More light because Linkin Park at least went all in on a pop sound and had some songs that worked as pop music. Conversely, Fall Out Boy's half pop half rock sound just makes these tracks sound confused and I personally don’t think Young and Menace or Champion work even as pop songs.
Overall, I’m worried that Mania could be to Fall Out Boy what One More Light has been to Linkin Park. The little bit of hope I have left is that they have not fully committed to the EDM pop sound just yet, as elements of their rock sound keep bleeding through. This means that there’s a chance that a few tracks on Mania will be legitimate rock songs. We will all have our answers soon enough as the album drops in September.
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