had a very deep discussion last night with my bff, and we came to the conclusion of why mania (and fob’s career in general but mania especially) wasn’t received particularly well.
mania is a masterpiece inside and out–it is carefully woven to be a representation of bipolar disorder with occasional double meanings about the industry, and contains some of pete’s most intricate lyrics of all time. fob has always been an artistic outlet, especially for pete, and mania is, by far, the most abstract. this is why so many consider it to be the weakest post-hiatus album. obviously, nothing is everyone’s thing, but mania was made especially personally. fob truly made it for themselves and no one else. we think they knew what they were doing when they made young and menace the leading single instead of last of the real ones. if tlotro had been the lead single, the album as a whole would have been received better, but the meaning of it would have ended up watered down. i think the scrapped mania album was more palatable, and what we ended up with was the more personal work of art.
the problem with it is not anything with the album itself. the album is a piece of abstract art. it’s the fact that you have to be willing to dig deeper to enjoy it, and most listeners won’t invest their time or thoughts the way it’s needed to appreciate such an abstract album.
we ended up talking about cobra starship in the middle of this. they made silly dance pop, and everything they did was satirical and involved commentary. but you didn’t need to even think about the satire to still enjoy the music. the fact that it was dance pop was part of the satire, but even at face value, people still liked it, because it was something you could dance to.
fall out boy have sort of been the same for a long time. infinity on high, my personal favorite album of all time, was an era-defining classic that HEAVILY criticized the industry and expressed some of pete’s deepest, darkest feelings about his mental illness. it was also emo pop punk, which was popular in 2007, and for that reason, people ate it up. arms race is probably the song that is most critical of the industry, and it blew up for the reason of people liking the beat and thinking it was funny how they couldn’t understand what patrick was saying, which is a metaphor for most of their fucking career, imo. but either way, it could be enjoyed both with and without looking harder into it.
and that’s the problem with mania. it isn’t something that can be enjoyed by both casual listeners who just want a fun song AND people who look deeper. it’s impossible to take at surface level. sunshine riptide is easily one of the most disliked fall out boy songs, especially by casual listeners, and lyrically it is one of pete’s most clever and intricate works ever. that’s because the sound of the album represented his bipolar disorder too, and it wouldn’t have worked as well if it was a style of music more widely enjoyed.
it’s sort of impossible to tackle this without sounding self-righteous or egotistical, really. and i am trying as best i can to avoid implying “blah blah blah, if you don’t like it you just don’t get it.” just hear me out. aforementioned best friend also mentioned to me a while back that she’ll be scrolling through tumblr and see a giant ass wall of text such as this one and immediately know it’s probably a fall out boy blog, because fall out boy fans can fucking read. i think it’s the reason being a fall out boy fan feels different from being a fan of any other band. we, as fans, look past surface level and are willing to open our minds to what we’ve been given. fall out boy are so clever, and as a fan of about eight years, i am still constantly figuring out stuff they’ve done and what they meant by it. there’s endless possibility to discover more, because they are just so clever.
nothing fall out boy have ever done has been meant to be taken at face value. the album title “save rock and roll” being taken at face value and making people mad proved the exact point they were trying to make with it. there are countless other examples. and to enjoy this sort of thing is wonderful because it means you’re willing to learn. i’m definitely rambling, but i’m almost done.
stepping out of your comfort zone does not necessarily mean doing things that make you uncomfortable. it can mean the willingness to learn.
i think someone who finds deeper meanings in everything, even things that weren’t intended to have them, is easily a more tolerable person to be around than a “the curtains were fucking blue” person who refuses to look into anything at all and clowns people who do, saying it isn’t that deep.
i absolutely rambled. but tl;dr, sometimes to enjoy abstract art, you need to be willing to look deeper and learn more, and mania (2018) is abstract art. for that reason, it was purely for fob and the fans.
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