In the early days of Fall Out Boy, Patrick Stump was a charming, youthful scrappy frontman. You'd see him playing friends' living rooms with the same energy as 100-person shows. He had a voice that'd reach across the room, and he was wholesome, but not like a rockstar.
His cynical yet optimistic lyrics weren't for everybody, but it's a credit to his writing that he could keep his emo roots while still being able to speak genuinely for the people who wanted to hear him. It's no coincidence that his words were a lot more nuanced than his peers', with less self-pity and more irony.
As Fall Out Boy's career developed, they embraced a broader range of music styles. They were one of the first bands to embrace electro-pop, pitched-up vocal clips and dance rhythms - even as they stuck to their rock sensibilities, putting a spin on genre tropes such as the Casablanca-referencing "Of All The Gin Joints In All The World" or the anxiety-riddled "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'."
Despite this shift in musical tastes, Fall Out Boy's music was always anchored in a deep sense of place: It took place in the suburbs of Chicago, where Stump lived with his parents and siblings. It was a place where he'd honed his chops on the bass.
During his hiatus, he released a number of solo albums, but it was Fall Out Boy's 2012 reunion that really cemented him as a rock legend. Folie a Deux was a triumphant return to form, but it didn't come without its own set of complications: It was the band's first album with Andy Hurley, and he wasn't quite ready for the spotlight.
