Fall Out Boy

Fall Out Boy's emerged in the 2000s as one of pop-punk / emo's most successful bands. While many of the group's peers seem unhealthily fixated on adolescent crushes, FOB's Patrick Stump and Pete Wentz emerged as one of the genre's most diversified songwriting teams and preeminent torchbearers.

Formed in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette in 2001 Fall Out Boy's line-up consists of Stump (rhythm guitar and vocals), Wentz (bass), Andy Hurley (drums, ex of Racetraitor) and Joe Trohman (lead guitar) with connections to the area's hardcore scene. An earlier configuration of the band without Hurley played on the group's 2002 debut, Fall Out Boy's Evening With Your Girlfriend, a 9-song collection that displayed lyricist Wentz's love of wordy titles and pop-culture references, often on the same track, as with "Parker Lewis Can't Lose (But I'm Going To Give It My Best Shot)." A deal with Gainsville, FL-based indie Fueled By Ramen followed, resulting in Take This To Your Grave in 2003, and a follow-up acoustic EP, My Heart Will Always Be the B-Side to My Tongue (Number 153, 2004), both of which mostly stayed within the pop-punk formula, though with occasional flashes of wit and groove. That was enough to garner the attention of Island Records, which signed the group and released the multi-platinum From Under The Cork Tree (Number Nine, 2005), a commercial breakthrough that yielded three TRL-approved singles: "Dance, Dance," "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'" and the Top Ten hit "Sugar, We're Goin' Down."

Shortly after the release of Cork, Wentz became the most publicly visible member of the band: He confided to the press about an overdose of sleeping pills that might or might not have been a suicide attempt, and in 2006, nude pictures of a morose-looking Wentz were leaked from his cell-phone and quickly disseminated on the Internet. In 2007, he began dating pop singer Ashlee Simpson, cementing their status as a tabloid-magazine fixtures, and they married in the spring of 2008. He also formed his own label imprint, Decaydance, which signed successful upstarts Panic at The Disco, Gym Class Heroes, and the Academy Is....

Fall Out Boy's next album, Infinity On High (2007), debuted at Number One and featured an unlikely (and brief) cameo from then-Island/Def Jam honcho Jay-Z. Stump was heavily influenced by both1980s pop and 1990s punk during the making of the record, which lent a rock-soul edge to songs like "This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race" and the Babyface-produced "I'm Like a Lawyer with the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)."

In 2008 the band released the CD and DVD Live in Phoenix featuring 22-songs from the band's June 2007 Cricket Pavilion show in Phoenix, as well as all their Island Records videos and a studio recording of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" with a guitar solo from John Mayer.