How My Life Was Changed

2015

Their upcoming album which was American Beauty/American Psycho came out on 1/16/15. It was about a week and a half before it's scheduled release day and I decided to go roller skating with the same friend I previously mentioned. Within that 4 hour skating session, they played Centuries, My Songs, AND Immortals. Which got me on the topic of fangirling to her over how excited I was for AB/AP. She mentioned to me how she had a friend who was also super excited for it. This was shortly after Uma Thurman was released as a single. She mentioned to me how she heard the song on the radio that morning, and I responded with "I haven't heard it yet." I guess I decided to wait until the album came out to listen to the rest of the songs.

Or did I have to wait...

Late that night, I checked YouTube and all the songs were leaked on there by the band's channel. I decided to only stream the songs that were already out and save the rest for the official album release day.

A week later the album was officially out in the world. I had just started my second semester of 8th grade so I was on my way home that chilly Friday on the bus listening to the album. My school was pretty close so I only got to Jet Pack Blues. Out of those songs, my favorite songs were The Kids Aren't Alright IMMEDIATELY and Jet Pack Blues. I remember being actually somewhat scared of the title track because I felt "it didn't sound like them". If you compared a 14 year old's views on the song to a 19 year old's views, they are, needless to say, very different. It only took a few more listens for me to understand that the song was absolutely amazing and Patrick Stump's aggressive vocals are unmatched. I couldn't stop listening to these 7 songs... but there are 11 songs on the album. The following 4 of Novocaine, Fourth of July, Favorite Record, and Twin Skeleton's (Hotel In NYC) I didn't listen to until around May of that year.

I remember very vaguely seeing the announcement for the Boyz of Zummer Tour with Wiz Khalifa that took place that summer but the second I saw that the closest they were coming was Atlanta, GA, I said forget it.

Another thing I should add is the first hockey related thing I ever watched was the 2015 All Star Game in Columbus, OH because Fall Out Boy performed both Centuries and My Songs on there that year. A few weeks later I watched the live stream of the 2015 Super Bowl Blitz concert show where they also performed.

During the course of the spring, it became tennis season at school (when I was still playing). I had a friend on the team who was a grade younger than me but had a pretty awesome music taste. He came to me and my other friends on the team and said "hey, we should have a walk up song anyone got ideas?" His idea just happened to be Novocaine by Fall Out Boy. We ended up playing that song on our way to every match for the rest of the season.

In late spring to early summer of that year, I became an overly obsessed hockey fan. My local team, the Tampa Bay Lightning, made it to the Stanley Cup Final that year and the main song that NBC was using to show highlights with was Centuries so I found that pretty awesome. It's 2019 and I'm still the crazy hockey fan I was then.

This lead to me getting a twitter account which I started on July 5th, 2015. I started out as an all hockey account even though I was also very into Fall Out Boy at this point. I had many "mutuals" who lived in the Tampa area who loved the Lightning and I had about 200 followers by the end of the year which I thought was unbelievable.

Vine was very huge at the time so I started seeing all the FOB edits that people made and I tweeted those a lot.

Then... I started to not think about them all that much again. I still listened to them a lot but I wasn't watching anything they were performing at or on or any interviews they did. I was back to being... a casual fan, you could call it.

From then to the rest of the year, I was a pretty big hockey fan and I would go crazy whenever I heard a FOB song play at a game.

It wasn't until the end of 2015 when I found out they were going on tour again. I thought I had another chance at seeing them.