How My Life Was Changed

2014

I remember seeing something very late in 2013 or early 2014 about them going on tour some time during the summer of 2014, I can't remember exactly when it was, it was almost 6 years ago. But I saw that they were touring with Paramore who I briefly listened to at the time (Ain't It Fun and Still Into You were their big songs at the time and I loved both of them).

They were coming to Tampa on the Monumentour on July 26th, 2014. I told my mom about it but it was too last minute and we ended up going to Disney that day, which I really can't complain too much about. After that I didn't think too much about them again.

I had a friend around this time of my life who unfortunately turned out to be toxic who absolutely loved Fall Out Boy and she saw that I was a very casual fan at this point and decided to show me their game "Fall Out Bird" which was a spin-off of Flappy Bird. This is how I heard Young Volcanoes for the first time among other songs even though their album "Save Rock and Roll" had been out for nearly a year by now. She also showed me one of their older songs, Sugar We're Goin Down. This made me realize that they're not a newer band... they'd been releasing songs since 2003.

Fast forward to a few weeks later. I was at the movies with my friend to see Maleficent, I believe. I saw a trailer for what would be a new Disney movie to be released in November of that year which featured My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark in the trailer. I started to realize it was like they were following me. I told my friend we had to go see that movie when it came out.

Fast forward to a very eventful November 2014.

I had been planing on seeing Big Hero 6 on the day it came out, 11/7/14. I had an accident at school where I badly sprained my ankle. It was so bad I couldn't walk for a week, I didn't end up completely breaking it, shockingly enough. I couldn't see it until a week after. That's when I first heard Immortals for the first time, and also around the same time their song "Centuries" was getting really big on the radio. So these were two MORE songs I heard by them that I really enjoyed. But then after seeing Big Hero 6 THREE TIMES in the movie theater, I went another two or so weeks without thinking too much about them again. I listened to Immortals along with other songs from the movie here and there and I listened to Centuries when it came on the radio but other than that, not much.

I went on a trip to New York at the end of November of 2014 to the first week of December. There was a lot of driving involved when we went up there so I played on my phone a lot. I used to play Smule Piano like it was the only app to ever exist. I had so many songs unlocked on there. I saw numerous Fall Out Boy songs come up in my recommended. "Thnks Fr Th Mmrs" was the first one I saw. We were on a drive from Albany to Gloversville which was about an hour and a half so I unlocked that song and of course there's no vocals when you play it on there but it sounded really familiar. I looked it up on YouTube and sure enough... it was an old Fall Out Boy song that I had heard before I was even properly introduced to the band. For years I had no clue who was behind that song, I just knew that it was a good song.

After that, I saw Sugar, then Dance Dance which I unlocked both of.

During this trip to New York, we took a side trip for a few days to New York City.

We took a train which took about 2 hours to get from Albany to NYC, so that meant I could listen to their previous album, so I did.

This photo easily captures what I was staring at for 2 hours while listening to the entirety of Save Rock and Roll.

We went all over NYC. The Disney store, the giant McDonald's, the huge Toys 'R' Us, you name it, we probably went there. They had a huge section of the Disney store devoted to Big Hero 6 which had just came out, and they even played Immortals in the store.

That evening, we went to a little pub in Queens for dinner where they were showing different games on the screens, one I remember most fondly, that night's Rangers game. It was like any other sports bar you've been in, except this place was one of those hole-in-the-wall places, which I really loved.

Midway through our dinner, among the other songs that were playing in the restaurant, I happened to hear Centuries. I remember telling my mom in that moment "hey mom they're playing that band I really like."

On the last night of our trip, we spent the night in a hotel near the Albany airport. I remember having my earbuds in before I went to bed just YouTube searching their biggest songs such as "Sugar We're Goin Down", "Dance, Dance", "This Ain't a Scene". I was almost addicted at this point.

Upon coming home from the trip, I didn't think about them much until about a week after we got back. It was December 15th, 2014 when I found out they were releasing another album, and also over my winter break that year was when I discovered the Youngblood Chronicles.

I remember after seeing all 11 parts of that, I had ZERO thoughts except for "what the hell did I just watch". I went to my friend's house one night close to New Years, note that this friend likes kind of the same kind of music and also is into watching music videos. We got on the topic of strange music videos and I showed her the Save Rock and Roll music video. Needless to say, she had the same reaction I did.