Fall Out Boy’s “MANIA” [Review]

Fall Out Boy is one of those bands that we all know and love, and if you’re like me, basically grew up with. It feels like the band has been around forever, which makes sense because they released their first album in 2003, and in a few weeks, they’ll be releasing their 8th studio album, “So Much (for) Stardust” on March 24, 2023. 5 years ago however, in 2018, after a bit of a delay, the band released their 7th album, “MANIA”.

Released with mixed reviews, Fall Out Boy’s “MANIA” debuted on January 19th, 2018, topping the Billboard 200 on release.

In an interview with Rocksound, bassist Pete Wentz describes the condition of “mania” as “…euphoria but then flips into a delusional thing. It starts getting violent and people aren’t sleeping and their ideas don’t make sense”. In a sense that’s what the album is all about as he goes on to say that the album “MANIA”, it’s more about “…this surging wave that you can’t control. It didn’t start like that, but that’s what it’s become.”.

Starting the album off is the song “Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea”. The song title itself is a reference to the two llamas that the band had been using in music videos and as promotion for the album as a whole, aptly named “Frosty” and “Royal-Tea”. The song itself is about celebrity culture and how it’s created a more manic feeling for the band itself. Where they’re the only ones in their way and perhaps coming to terms with the fact that they may just fade away. This manic feeling is something we’ll see a lot during this record and the instrumentals on this track are a great example of that where the bass guitar just bursts its way into the song and kind of overpowers the rest of the song. The drums and the rest of the instruments on this track definitely carry their weight while the guitars almost muddy it.

Up next is “The Last of the Real Ones”, a track that starts with a pretty delicate piano melody that keeps getting built upon. The bass guitar is stellar on this song and Patrick Stump’s vocals during the bridge shine through as the highlight on this one. It’s pretty obvious that this song is a love song with lyrics like “You are the sun and I am just the planets spinning around you”, but the narrator is exclaiming that their life is pretty much dedicated to their loved one in a very intense way. The music video for this one is pretty bizarre as Wentz says in an interview that it’s a continuation of “Young And Menace” and “a shot-for-shot remake of Kanye West’s ‘Flashing Lights’”.

“HOLD ME TIGHT OR DON’T” feels as if it’s almost a reggae song, as it features a steel drum throughout it. While it’s a welcome addition and it’s great to see the band branching out, it’s still a Fall Out Boy song with that heavy bass and Stump’s intoxicating vocals. This song, like the one before it, is a love song, but the protagonist is trying to prevent their partner from falling out of love with them. While the distance between them is growing, they wish for them to either just hold on tighter, or leave altogether. The music video for this one is great as it’s a love story between two lovers who are separated by life and death, all set during the day of the dead.

“Wilson (Expensive Mistakes)” is best explained in the bridge of the song with the lyric “I became such a strange shape… from trying to fit in”. Tying back into “Stay Frosty Royal Milk Tea”, the whole celebrity culture thing rears its head again where the band has been bending and breaking to try and fit the cookie-cutter shape that their fans wanted them to fit into. The instrumentals on this track are a bit more laid-back so there isn’t much to say about that. The music video for this one is really wild, starring the band on a home shopping channel up for sale along with a bunch of merch that references a lot of their older stuff. One thing to note about this track is that the title “Wilson” is actually a reference to the Tom Hanks film “Cast Away”.

The anthemic love song “Church” is up next, probably one of the best tracks on the album. The bass line is incredible and hearing the chanting of a choir, a church organ, as well as some church bells going off really ties the whole church theme together. The song itself uses these themes of religion as a metaphor for love. Treating someone as a divine being and worshiping them as such, confessing sins, and treating them as a sanctuary. The music video for this one is pretty cool as it takes place in a mausoleum and tells a modern Romeo and Juliet tale.

The themes of religion continue into the next track, “Heaven’s Gate”. The protagonist is singing about their love for their partner, and how they can’t get over them. They would follow their partner to the ends of the earth, but at the gate of heaven, they don’t feel as if they would be able to get in because of the things they’ve done in life. They’re pleading for their partner to help them overcome their shortcomings and reach out for help. This song is a really different sound for Fall Out Boy as it’s a ballad, something the band never really did before. It’s a lot slower than anything else on the record and it caught me off guard the first time I heard it.

Pete Wentz, the lyricist for Fall Out Boy, posted an image with the text “…champions aren’t born, they are forged” the day “Champion” was released. The song is about empowerment and getting through the worst of times, bettering yourself for the future. The music video for this one shows several people living their lives as someone else, ultimately ending with Jaden Smith realizing that it might be best to live your own life and forge your own path.

The reggae influences return in “Sunshine Riptide” and features Nigerian rapper Burna Boy. In the description of the music video of the next track, “Young And Menace”, Wentz wrote out “The gentle pull of a tide that rolls over and over again and by the sheer nature of its essence it becomes an indestructible will- ripping out sand- eroding what was before it- without a care… a transformational monster-becoming the madness and frenzy of a truly bulletproof wave. I’m not just here for your love, I’m here for all of the love. An overdose of dopamine- we are living inside of MANIA right now. the never sleeping, never blinking- caught forever in the sunshine riptide. -pw”. There really isn’t a better way to describe this song. The reggae bass line really carries this song and is worth a listen for just that groove.

The penultimate track on this record, and the first single to be released for this project “Young And Menace” features a lot of EDM influences and is probably the last thing you might expect from Fall Out Boy. The song is really all over the place and initially was a mess that only got put together by the producer, Jesse Shatkin. In an interview with Zach Sang, Wentz reveals that he’s felt like an outsider his entire life up until the point where he found punk-rock music. The music video for this track is pretty wild itself as it features a young girl who is a victim of domestic violence from her parents, escaping into a place where she doesn’t fit in and wishes to only be understood.

Closing out the album, “Bishops Knife Trick” slows things down, and what a way to close out the album. The whole theme of this album is the manic-depressive feeling that one experiences when dealing with mania. We’ve gone through many stages, from feeling unstoppable to falling way too deep in love with someone, and now ending things off with an extremely hard-hitting track of the protagonist experiencing the worst of their depressive thoughts.

Final Thoughts

“MANIA” is an eclectic mess of tracks, but that’s the point. It’s the manic thoughts of an individual experiencing life. While it really feels like a departure for the band, it does feel as if they are trying something different for themselves and really pouring everything they can into it.

References:
Rocksound: FALL OUT BOY’S PETE WENTZ ON NEW MUSIC, ‘MANIA’ AND MAKING AN ‘UNLISTENABLE’ SONG
The Charlotte Observer: Q&A: Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz talks tour, trippy videos and tennis. Yes, tennis!
Zach Sang Show: Pete Wentz | Fall Out Boy | Full Interview

Album Score: 8/10
Favorite Track: “Church”

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