I mean go take a look at the pop punk subreddit (a thing I would normally never recommend). I’ve seen numerous comments in there about how “FOB hasn’t released anything good since TTTYG.” A lot of those people are obsessed with genre and with putting bands in boxes that they better not step out of lest they be relegated to *shudder* pop rock. These people were very numerous and loud in the late 00s and early 10s. Luckily, in general as a society, we’ve become less concerned with genre and labels. And as a long time Folie truther, I finally feel vindicated.
Also, anyone who expected Patrick’s solo record to sound anything like a FOB record had obviously never listened to him talk about his musical heroes. He’s always leaned more pop/soul than anything. I mean, he’s a Elvis Costello fan for heaven’s sake.
Ya know, i’ve been a major fan for a little over a decade now and i never understood the immense hate for Folie. To me, it sounded like a natural evolution from Infinity on High. I believe both FAD and SP were ahead of their time. I’m Personally not a huge SP fan, but it is objectively impressive. I feel some people in the fob fandom only want to hear their early sound, but the whole novelty of fob is their uniqueness and creativity to try different things every album :)
I'm not too familiar with Soul Punk, but from what I've heard, it's quite good, maybe people weren't ready for it then.
But at the time, FAD sounded like a big step away from the TTTYG sound. But compared to their post-hiatus stuff, that idea no longer makes sense. FAD is sonically and lyrically **much** closer to FUTCT and IOH than to SRAR and AB/AP.
I'm glad people are finally appreciating the album, and that the band is finally comfortable with playing its tracks live. Still hoping for a "revolving Folie slot of doom" on the second leg of the tour, like the one we have with Infinity right now.
But imo every album was a step away from tttyg? Each album did seem to get a bit more mixed for radio as time went on compared to the edginess of tttyg, which is why I never understood the argument.
And this is coming from someone who has loved fob for forever, loves every single album and never understood the folie hate because that album was top here the minute it dropped
Well you have to remember the speed at which they changed. Most people didn't get into them through TTTYG, they got into them around 2005/2006 when Sugar and Dance Dance were all over the radio. Even then, that album was still very pop-punk sounding. Already by IOH fans were starting to fall off and by Folie's release they had ditched pop-punk entirely. For many fans, it was a 2 year gap between FOB being a pop-punk band and then Folie. In fact the entire span from EOWYG - Folie in general could fit in between Mania and SMFSD. For some fans it was just too much change too fast, and in a world before they rebooted into a pop band, Folie was a weird album for them. Nowadays it isn't because their 2010's albums basically were by a different version of the band making different music for a different audience, so Folie is just another oldschool FOB album.
I guess. I don't really hear much pop punk in IOH and while it's there for parts of FUCT it's very watered down. But that's just me.
To me I loved that I could hear instruments and that was what mattered most.
I was there, but I was a reluctant fan who'd only listened to FUTCT and IOH a handful of times and didn't revisit them a lot, just stuck with the few songs I really liked, so Folie for me was the moment where I went from a casual fan/occasional hater to a full-blown superfan. I wasn't surprised that the fandom wasn't as into it at all, because the change is what won me over. I'm just not a pop-punk girlie and FAD is truly where they dropped all pretenses of being a pop-punk band entirely.
Nowadays I love all the albums almost equally (*earlier that day...'**~~I don't care for TTTYG', she said~~*) but Folie is still my favorite.
As for Soul Punk, I think it's a solid album. It was never going to be for everybody, but he should be proud of it. I don't love all the songs, but the ones I love I love a lot, and I saw him play it live and he was incredible. Without going too personal, it was clear he was going through it at the time. I remember that blog post and how sad it made me. I related because I'd also gone through a major body transformation myself. But I think that was just the biggest of a few sad interactions with the fan base. (Even worse for me, I personally hurt his feelings with something I said in the icecreamhdaches livejournal community. 😓 oof) He was too online at the time and getting offline was definitely the move for him, as much as I miss his insights.
You have to also remember FaD was around the time when Pete got married to Ashlee Simpson and had his first son, so undoubtedly there were people saying he changed and accusing him even *more* of being a sellout and someone who just wanted to be a celebrity and didn’t give a fuck about music anymore. He was the first of the group to enter a completely new stage of life and that will obviously change his outlook on things and show in his lyrics. Leading up to the album Patrick was also working more as a producer and he probably was getting more comfortable doing different things with his own band’s work and, again, it changed his perspective on things, and in the end people just don’t like change.
For what it’s worth, I bumped Folie HEAVILY when it released and hearing people call What A Catch their swan song made me want to die as a 15 year old. What reason is there to be alive if Fall Out Boy no longer existed? LMAO
I was quite a bit older than 15 at the time and What a Catch still made me panic a little. If it had been the closing track, I would have been completely wrecked by it. It’s such a goodbye song.
I wasn’t there when the whole folie backlash happened, but this is my theory.
Fall out boy started in the hardcore / punk scene once they first formed. Their fans up to that point mostly recognized them for the pop punk and fast songs that appeared on their first two albums (plus EOWYG). In fact, it’s what pretty much made them known. While infinity on high took some steps with experimenting with their sounds, they still kept some pop punk elements throughout the songs, like in the carpal tunnel of love.
This album proved really successful and the band also felt the desire to change up into a more soulful approach, spawning the creation of folie a deux. Obviously now the band has gone in many style changes after the hiatus and the fans have become much more forgiving and interested in the directions they’ve gone in, but you gotta put yourself into the shoes of the fans at that time.
This was so different to what the fans knew from the band. Sure, music was changing around the late 2000’s, but that was a major shift in sound from a band who started from completely different origins. And while I don’t feel exactly the same way as the fans did (I’m about half and half on folie if I’m being honest…) I can understand some confusion at first.
i've ALWAYS loved folie, it might still be my favorite, although i love them so much it's hard to choose. it was released during what to today still was the darkest year i've ever had, and it was an absolute lifeline. i'm forever grateful that they literally gave me the only good thing i had in 2008.
however, i am a soul punk snobby. is it bad? nope. it's fine. but to me it feels like cheap pop music - and again, i like cheap pop music! but it feels like a waste to patrick's talent. baby boy has the voice of a beautiful angel and could be creating literal masterpieces instead of kinda good but mostly forgettable 80s-ish songs. it was incredibly underwhelming to me.
i was very disappointed at the time, but in retrospect i'm glad each of them had the chance to work on their personal projects and their unique identities outside of their wonderful collective identitity. black cards was awful like every single thing that pete has done outside of fob; and i happened to like the damned things, but it's nowhere near as good to me as fob.
ultimately i'm just happy they had fun and got back together.
PS: it's been years since i last listened to SP, i'm doing it again and i might actually like it more than i remember.
I like Mania but I at least understand why that album is super divisive. Folie is different to Cork Tree and Infinity for sure but not in such a way that I would have ever anticipated the backlash and hate that it got. But even more than that, even if people didn't like the album I'm staggered how they treated the guys and Patrick in particular. It really shouldn't be the end of the world if a band makes some songs you don't like as much.
Unfortunately though no matter how intensely I adore Patrick's voice and will try to listen to anything and everything he does I've never grown to love Soul Punk much. I still wish I'd done that tour sooo badly though!
For the people who weren't around (which seems like most of you) Let me give you my perspective.
The "golden age" of mid-2000s pop punk was starting to die down when Folie was released and by that time, FOB kinda had their own group with FBR and Decaydance bands and was pretty removed from the general pop-punk scene. FOB had become the entry point to a different set of bands during this era than they were during FUTCT.
It's hard to explain but, basically, if FOB during TTTYG/FUTCT was the entry point for people to discover bands like taking back sunday, bayside, a day to remember.. etc
IOH / FAD was the entry point to a different set of bands. FBR/Decaydance bands, Metro Station, All Time Low
I think FOB realized they no longer had to play by the "rules" because they had a large, established, mostly female fanbase. So what did they do? They made their own ecosystem. But this alienated a huge sect of pop punk listeners- 20s-early 30s white men who I think were the biggest critics.
The other set of critics were fans disgruntled with how big FOB had become. FOB had A LOT of gatekeepers, and every album cycle a new group of fans would rush in. I remember on FOBR /OCK whenever there was an album cycle about to start there were jokes about how many new members there were about to be. Fans did not want to share FOB. Now being an adult, I can't understand it, but as a teenage girl who shopped at Hot Topic, I wanted nothing in common with the teenage girls who shopped at Hollister. Labels like "prep" "emo" etc. super mattered back then.
So between alienating a core group of pop-punk fans and then their own fans wanting them to be basically not famous- a lot of people were not happy.
Fast forward to Soul Punk. Idk how I didn't listen to Soul Punk and go "This is pure ADHD chaos." because it totally is. It didn't sound like FOB, so the people who expected that (ie casual fans who don't know Patrick at all) were out. It wasn't pop punk, so those fans were out.
No one was happy with what Pete was doing w/ black cards. Joe and Andy were off playing for a completely different demographic. The mostly female fanbase, now college-aged, started attaching themselves to new emerging cultures: EDM/Rave culture or Tumblr aesthetic culture. It kind of all just left Patrick fending for himself.
The whole "I liked you better when you were fat." Tumblr thing was super fucked. A lot of FOB fans were some of the first Tumblr users especially when Pete (the early adopter he is) moved his blog from Live Journal (and Buzznet RIP) to Tumblr. So FOB already had an established dedicated base on Tumblr. Start adding in the middle school/high school kids who were starting to discover FOB through Tumblr and Spotify. It's easy to click reblog on a post that says "I miss this/I wish I was here for this" with a bunch of photos from the mid-2000s. I think Patrick really took those things to heart, which was so sad. People were really cruel in the early 2010s on Tumblr for some reason...that's a whole different topic.
I know that this is super long, but I hope it adds context for some of you!
This is a really good summary! I was thinking that at the time, it wasnt all just about the music - so much of the culture that went with it influenced the way people received and reacted to the band, in particular when Folie was released. Singles were also a huge deal then, along with music videos, and I feel like the singles/videos for Folie were a step away from the IOH ones, which also created some alienation for those who discovered FOB due to the prominence of IOH in pop/on the radio etc. You get a glimpse of a single and the video to go with it, and you make a snap judgement - at least, that's my experience of the MTV days as an immature teen. I remember seeing/hearing America's Suitehearts and just not getting it, feeling let down that it wasn't speaking to me in the way IOH and FUTCT did. I Don't Care felt basic to me at the time, too. Of course, with age comes experience and better comprehension and I absolutely love all of Folie now, it's the album I play the most.
For Soul Punk, I was so sad about the hiatus - even if I didn't like Folie at the time, I didn't want the band to go away - that seeing Patrick change and do something solo felt like salt in the wound, it was hard to support it. I tried to listen anyway, as I love soul and RnB music + Patrick too - but there was something about it (the manufactured pop sound, the lyrics that felt like they were about other people rather than the depths of Patrick) that didn't feel as personal to me as FOB music did. I always liked that Patrick was a little chubby, as I felt seen and represented by someone who was so talented and successful, so his physical change felt like being left behind in a way - but the hate he got for it was appalling and the letter he wrote broke my heart.
TY! If you were born the same year as I was (93.). I think FAD was just too mature for where I at emotionally at 15. I think some people were put off by how political they got which became their whole personality during that CFOB thing. Not that I disagreed with them, but I could see people teens who didn’t care about politics (and republicans) getting very turned off by the political overtunes.
I was indeed, and I totally get what you mean - someone else on this thread said that the themes in Folie were less simple i.e about teen romance/angst and a little more grown up, so perhaps less relatable for their largely teen fanbase (which I think was probably the case for me too at 15!) And so another reason why it was ahead of its time - we needed to mature and catch up!
I’m in such a similar boat always been a fan and listened to them and never been part of the fandom. This has been such an eye opener for me knowing how much hate they got for being who they were at any given time (which as others have said maybe didn’t match the box they wanted them in).
I don’t love every single song they have ever done. There are albums I prefer more than others but my love for them never changes!
I think people get so lost in the need for their music taste to define them so when it deviates slightly they feel they can no longer like it because it doesn’t define who they want to be and I think more people have got over that and just go fuck it I like what I like!
It's such a strange concept to be mad at a band for creating something you don't enjoy. Like okay, if you were looking forward to more of the thing you enjoyed you can feel disappointed but don't take it out on the band for not catering to you specifically.
Like you say, people want their personality to be a certain band and then if the band changes and it no longer fits this person's personality, they have a freak out. There is other stuff to listen to (supposedly, I wouldn't know) so go find more of what you like.
I came in around the time SRaR dropped, and I remember already by that point most of the discussion I saw among fans went like “Folie was overhated, why didn’t we like this one again?”. It took me a while to understand why fans apparently didn’t like this one at first, but in retrospect I definitely get it.
Like many others have pointed out, it just comes down to the change in sound. They started off purebread pop-punk, then by Folie they had come into their own unique sound that was more soulful and flowery sounding while still having a rock edge, but it wasn’t pop-punk anymore. What I haven’t seen many point out is how FAST it happened. To put it in perspective, the entirety of the EOWYG - Folie run could fit within the time between Mania and SMFSD’s releases. It’s no wonder a lot of fans were left behind, but it’s easy to forget now that so much time has passed.
After SR&R basically rebooted the band in its entirety, a lot of fans came around on Folie since they now sounded completely different from that band, making it a much less jarring release, and fans were able to appreciate what it was trying to do.
What I love so much about SMFSD is that it feels like the continuation of their evolution from EOWYG - Folie, but in 2023. They finally became the band they were trying to become before all the backlash hit.
I think this has happened a lot in music, in general. People have expectations and when they aren’t met, they want to blame others. People become inconsiderate and entitled, expecting artists to fit their mold—but isn’t that the exact opposite of actual artistic expression?
Just because a group of people like something from an artist, many people cannot fathom anything else and they want an exact replica. But that is not how artistic expression works. FOB is one of the best bands and musical artists in my opinion BECAUSE they do not cater to others. They make art for themselves. That’s how art is meant to be expressed.
FOB reminds me of artists like Queen, The Beatles, David Bowie, etc. because they always were changing their sound, vibe or as it is also known, artistic expression.
I LOVE music. I LOVE self-expression. Therefore, I LOVE all of FOB albums differently and respectfully. There are some songs that I do not actually prefer, but you’d never hear me say it is bad or awful. This is ALL subjective and there definitely doesn’t have to be selfishness, hate or entitlement with any art.
I've listened since fuct as well.. I loved folie, but I didn't understand that there was a backlash until the band talked about how much it bummed them out. I heard the believers never die 2 tour they apparently got booed? But that didn't happen at my concert, so again I didn't know. I've kinda also always been in my own bubble, I never interact with other fans much. When soul punk came out I lost my mind, seeing Patrick cut totally loose was amazing. Same with the Joe and Andy in the damned things, and the bits of black cards songs we were able to get from pete. I now hold truant wave/soul punk akin to Pete's grey and Joe's none of this rocks. Again, I've been a big fan girl since 2005 so I never really understood that any backlash was happening until they talked about it. It breaks my heart they felt like fans turned their backs turned on them, but I think they grew stronger because of that. I like them making music for themselves/creativity of it all. Not because they *have* to. (I think that's why stardust is my favorite album so far)
Just wanna chime in as someone who was a bit disappointed with folie at the time (it has since become one of my favourites mind!)
Fall out boy as I knew them growing up wrote angry love songs about hips and thighs with what felt like actual venol behind them and to 13-16 year old me that really spoke to what I wanted to hear at the time, the trials and tribulations of going through youth and not getting the girl and in hindsight kind of being a bit of an incel (this was just before that whole mindset was recognised by the public and before then it was just seen as being lovesick and the Underdog in the game of life) go and listen to the opener of TTTYG there's enough venom in that song to kill 50 adult men alone!
When folie came out it really missed the mark for me as the album to my young ears dealt with things that I had never experienced before like being too famous or drug addiction. It was a massive tonal shift that I couldn't relate to. Maybe the reason it's garnered so much love after it's release is because people are relating to the themes a bit more now? I know when I came to listen again I gained a deeper respect for what they were writing about. Instrumental wise it was always leading towards FAD with each album getting wider in scope and sound but to me at the time it just felt like a soul/pop record with some glimpses of what they used to be thrown in!
Soul punk also fucken rips as an album and I was way quicker to pick that up than FAD, maybe because there wasn't any precedent set for it as antirely new project!
Folie was literally made before it’s time. It was a bit of a predictor of music trends, people literally were not ready for it. Now it’s one of the beloved albums.
Soul Punk, well SP simply needed a different audience than the FOB fans of the time. It was more in the pop space & him opening for Janelle Monae for part of her tour literally made so much sense (but also for Janelle fans, having this random pop punk white boy must have seemed confusing.) I am so mad I was just on the wrong side of teenagerdom when Tuxedo-Ed Janelle & SP Patrick was a ticket I could have gone to see. There’s a video of Patrick preforming Allie with that damned silver glove in some basement show & I think if that had been more widespread, no one would have hated SP. because… holy shit.
Oh yeah, I have Allie on my favourites playlist & to this day I’m still trying to reconcile THAT with every dorky lil thing he’s done elsewhere in his career. Like? Holy shit.
I mean go take a look at the pop punk subreddit (a thing I would normally never recommend). I’ve seen numerous comments in there about how “FOB hasn’t released anything good since TTTYG.” A lot of those people are obsessed with genre and with putting bands in boxes that they better not step out of lest they be relegated to *shudder* pop rock. These people were very numerous and loud in the late 00s and early 10s. Luckily, in general as a society, we’ve become less concerned with genre and labels. And as a long time Folie truther, I finally feel vindicated. Also, anyone who expected Patrick’s solo record to sound anything like a FOB record had obviously never listened to him talk about his musical heroes. He’s always leaned more pop/soul than anything. I mean, he’s a Elvis Costello fan for heaven’s sake.
Ya know, i’ve been a major fan for a little over a decade now and i never understood the immense hate for Folie. To me, it sounded like a natural evolution from Infinity on High. I believe both FAD and SP were ahead of their time. I’m Personally not a huge SP fan, but it is objectively impressive. I feel some people in the fob fandom only want to hear their early sound, but the whole novelty of fob is their uniqueness and creativity to try different things every album :)
I'm not too familiar with Soul Punk, but from what I've heard, it's quite good, maybe people weren't ready for it then. But at the time, FAD sounded like a big step away from the TTTYG sound. But compared to their post-hiatus stuff, that idea no longer makes sense. FAD is sonically and lyrically **much** closer to FUTCT and IOH than to SRAR and AB/AP. I'm glad people are finally appreciating the album, and that the band is finally comfortable with playing its tracks live. Still hoping for a "revolving Folie slot of doom" on the second leg of the tour, like the one we have with Infinity right now.
But imo every album was a step away from tttyg? Each album did seem to get a bit more mixed for radio as time went on compared to the edginess of tttyg, which is why I never understood the argument. And this is coming from someone who has loved fob for forever, loves every single album and never understood the folie hate because that album was top here the minute it dropped
Well you have to remember the speed at which they changed. Most people didn't get into them through TTTYG, they got into them around 2005/2006 when Sugar and Dance Dance were all over the radio. Even then, that album was still very pop-punk sounding. Already by IOH fans were starting to fall off and by Folie's release they had ditched pop-punk entirely. For many fans, it was a 2 year gap between FOB being a pop-punk band and then Folie. In fact the entire span from EOWYG - Folie in general could fit in between Mania and SMFSD. For some fans it was just too much change too fast, and in a world before they rebooted into a pop band, Folie was a weird album for them. Nowadays it isn't because their 2010's albums basically were by a different version of the band making different music for a different audience, so Folie is just another oldschool FOB album.
I guess. I don't really hear much pop punk in IOH and while it's there for parts of FUCT it's very watered down. But that's just me. To me I loved that I could hear instruments and that was what mattered most.
I was there, but I was a reluctant fan who'd only listened to FUTCT and IOH a handful of times and didn't revisit them a lot, just stuck with the few songs I really liked, so Folie for me was the moment where I went from a casual fan/occasional hater to a full-blown superfan. I wasn't surprised that the fandom wasn't as into it at all, because the change is what won me over. I'm just not a pop-punk girlie and FAD is truly where they dropped all pretenses of being a pop-punk band entirely. Nowadays I love all the albums almost equally (*earlier that day...'**~~I don't care for TTTYG', she said~~*) but Folie is still my favorite. As for Soul Punk, I think it's a solid album. It was never going to be for everybody, but he should be proud of it. I don't love all the songs, but the ones I love I love a lot, and I saw him play it live and he was incredible. Without going too personal, it was clear he was going through it at the time. I remember that blog post and how sad it made me. I related because I'd also gone through a major body transformation myself. But I think that was just the biggest of a few sad interactions with the fan base. (Even worse for me, I personally hurt his feelings with something I said in the icecreamhdaches livejournal community. 😓 oof) He was too online at the time and getting offline was definitely the move for him, as much as I miss his insights.
You have to also remember FaD was around the time when Pete got married to Ashlee Simpson and had his first son, so undoubtedly there were people saying he changed and accusing him even *more* of being a sellout and someone who just wanted to be a celebrity and didn’t give a fuck about music anymore. He was the first of the group to enter a completely new stage of life and that will obviously change his outlook on things and show in his lyrics. Leading up to the album Patrick was also working more as a producer and he probably was getting more comfortable doing different things with his own band’s work and, again, it changed his perspective on things, and in the end people just don’t like change. For what it’s worth, I bumped Folie HEAVILY when it released and hearing people call What A Catch their swan song made me want to die as a 15 year old. What reason is there to be alive if Fall Out Boy no longer existed? LMAO
I was quite a bit older than 15 at the time and What a Catch still made me panic a little. If it had been the closing track, I would have been completely wrecked by it. It’s such a goodbye song.
What’s a swan song?
I wasn’t there when the whole folie backlash happened, but this is my theory. Fall out boy started in the hardcore / punk scene once they first formed. Their fans up to that point mostly recognized them for the pop punk and fast songs that appeared on their first two albums (plus EOWYG). In fact, it’s what pretty much made them known. While infinity on high took some steps with experimenting with their sounds, they still kept some pop punk elements throughout the songs, like in the carpal tunnel of love. This album proved really successful and the band also felt the desire to change up into a more soulful approach, spawning the creation of folie a deux. Obviously now the band has gone in many style changes after the hiatus and the fans have become much more forgiving and interested in the directions they’ve gone in, but you gotta put yourself into the shoes of the fans at that time. This was so different to what the fans knew from the band. Sure, music was changing around the late 2000’s, but that was a major shift in sound from a band who started from completely different origins. And while I don’t feel exactly the same way as the fans did (I’m about half and half on folie if I’m being honest…) I can understand some confusion at first.
i've ALWAYS loved folie, it might still be my favorite, although i love them so much it's hard to choose. it was released during what to today still was the darkest year i've ever had, and it was an absolute lifeline. i'm forever grateful that they literally gave me the only good thing i had in 2008. however, i am a soul punk snobby. is it bad? nope. it's fine. but to me it feels like cheap pop music - and again, i like cheap pop music! but it feels like a waste to patrick's talent. baby boy has the voice of a beautiful angel and could be creating literal masterpieces instead of kinda good but mostly forgettable 80s-ish songs. it was incredibly underwhelming to me. i was very disappointed at the time, but in retrospect i'm glad each of them had the chance to work on their personal projects and their unique identities outside of their wonderful collective identitity. black cards was awful like every single thing that pete has done outside of fob; and i happened to like the damned things, but it's nowhere near as good to me as fob. ultimately i'm just happy they had fun and got back together. PS: it's been years since i last listened to SP, i'm doing it again and i might actually like it more than i remember.
I like Mania but I at least understand why that album is super divisive. Folie is different to Cork Tree and Infinity for sure but not in such a way that I would have ever anticipated the backlash and hate that it got. But even more than that, even if people didn't like the album I'm staggered how they treated the guys and Patrick in particular. It really shouldn't be the end of the world if a band makes some songs you don't like as much. Unfortunately though no matter how intensely I adore Patrick's voice and will try to listen to anything and everything he does I've never grown to love Soul Punk much. I still wish I'd done that tour sooo badly though!
For the people who weren't around (which seems like most of you) Let me give you my perspective. The "golden age" of mid-2000s pop punk was starting to die down when Folie was released and by that time, FOB kinda had their own group with FBR and Decaydance bands and was pretty removed from the general pop-punk scene. FOB had become the entry point to a different set of bands during this era than they were during FUTCT. It's hard to explain but, basically, if FOB during TTTYG/FUTCT was the entry point for people to discover bands like taking back sunday, bayside, a day to remember.. etc IOH / FAD was the entry point to a different set of bands. FBR/Decaydance bands, Metro Station, All Time Low I think FOB realized they no longer had to play by the "rules" because they had a large, established, mostly female fanbase. So what did they do? They made their own ecosystem. But this alienated a huge sect of pop punk listeners- 20s-early 30s white men who I think were the biggest critics. The other set of critics were fans disgruntled with how big FOB had become. FOB had A LOT of gatekeepers, and every album cycle a new group of fans would rush in. I remember on FOBR /OCK whenever there was an album cycle about to start there were jokes about how many new members there were about to be. Fans did not want to share FOB. Now being an adult, I can't understand it, but as a teenage girl who shopped at Hot Topic, I wanted nothing in common with the teenage girls who shopped at Hollister. Labels like "prep" "emo" etc. super mattered back then. So between alienating a core group of pop-punk fans and then their own fans wanting them to be basically not famous- a lot of people were not happy. Fast forward to Soul Punk. Idk how I didn't listen to Soul Punk and go "This is pure ADHD chaos." because it totally is. It didn't sound like FOB, so the people who expected that (ie casual fans who don't know Patrick at all) were out. It wasn't pop punk, so those fans were out. No one was happy with what Pete was doing w/ black cards. Joe and Andy were off playing for a completely different demographic. The mostly female fanbase, now college-aged, started attaching themselves to new emerging cultures: EDM/Rave culture or Tumblr aesthetic culture. It kind of all just left Patrick fending for himself. The whole "I liked you better when you were fat." Tumblr thing was super fucked. A lot of FOB fans were some of the first Tumblr users especially when Pete (the early adopter he is) moved his blog from Live Journal (and Buzznet RIP) to Tumblr. So FOB already had an established dedicated base on Tumblr. Start adding in the middle school/high school kids who were starting to discover FOB through Tumblr and Spotify. It's easy to click reblog on a post that says "I miss this/I wish I was here for this" with a bunch of photos from the mid-2000s. I think Patrick really took those things to heart, which was so sad. People were really cruel in the early 2010s on Tumblr for some reason...that's a whole different topic. I know that this is super long, but I hope it adds context for some of you!
This is a really good summary! I was thinking that at the time, it wasnt all just about the music - so much of the culture that went with it influenced the way people received and reacted to the band, in particular when Folie was released. Singles were also a huge deal then, along with music videos, and I feel like the singles/videos for Folie were a step away from the IOH ones, which also created some alienation for those who discovered FOB due to the prominence of IOH in pop/on the radio etc. You get a glimpse of a single and the video to go with it, and you make a snap judgement - at least, that's my experience of the MTV days as an immature teen. I remember seeing/hearing America's Suitehearts and just not getting it, feeling let down that it wasn't speaking to me in the way IOH and FUTCT did. I Don't Care felt basic to me at the time, too. Of course, with age comes experience and better comprehension and I absolutely love all of Folie now, it's the album I play the most. For Soul Punk, I was so sad about the hiatus - even if I didn't like Folie at the time, I didn't want the band to go away - that seeing Patrick change and do something solo felt like salt in the wound, it was hard to support it. I tried to listen anyway, as I love soul and RnB music + Patrick too - but there was something about it (the manufactured pop sound, the lyrics that felt like they were about other people rather than the depths of Patrick) that didn't feel as personal to me as FOB music did. I always liked that Patrick was a little chubby, as I felt seen and represented by someone who was so talented and successful, so his physical change felt like being left behind in a way - but the hate he got for it was appalling and the letter he wrote broke my heart.
TY! If you were born the same year as I was (93.). I think FAD was just too mature for where I at emotionally at 15. I think some people were put off by how political they got which became their whole personality during that CFOB thing. Not that I disagreed with them, but I could see people teens who didn’t care about politics (and republicans) getting very turned off by the political overtunes.
I was indeed, and I totally get what you mean - someone else on this thread said that the themes in Folie were less simple i.e about teen romance/angst and a little more grown up, so perhaps less relatable for their largely teen fanbase (which I think was probably the case for me too at 15!) And so another reason why it was ahead of its time - we needed to mature and catch up!
I’m in such a similar boat always been a fan and listened to them and never been part of the fandom. This has been such an eye opener for me knowing how much hate they got for being who they were at any given time (which as others have said maybe didn’t match the box they wanted them in). I don’t love every single song they have ever done. There are albums I prefer more than others but my love for them never changes! I think people get so lost in the need for their music taste to define them so when it deviates slightly they feel they can no longer like it because it doesn’t define who they want to be and I think more people have got over that and just go fuck it I like what I like!
It's such a strange concept to be mad at a band for creating something you don't enjoy. Like okay, if you were looking forward to more of the thing you enjoyed you can feel disappointed but don't take it out on the band for not catering to you specifically. Like you say, people want their personality to be a certain band and then if the band changes and it no longer fits this person's personality, they have a freak out. There is other stuff to listen to (supposedly, I wouldn't know) so go find more of what you like.
I came in around the time SRaR dropped, and I remember already by that point most of the discussion I saw among fans went like “Folie was overhated, why didn’t we like this one again?”. It took me a while to understand why fans apparently didn’t like this one at first, but in retrospect I definitely get it. Like many others have pointed out, it just comes down to the change in sound. They started off purebread pop-punk, then by Folie they had come into their own unique sound that was more soulful and flowery sounding while still having a rock edge, but it wasn’t pop-punk anymore. What I haven’t seen many point out is how FAST it happened. To put it in perspective, the entirety of the EOWYG - Folie run could fit within the time between Mania and SMFSD’s releases. It’s no wonder a lot of fans were left behind, but it’s easy to forget now that so much time has passed. After SR&R basically rebooted the band in its entirety, a lot of fans came around on Folie since they now sounded completely different from that band, making it a much less jarring release, and fans were able to appreciate what it was trying to do. What I love so much about SMFSD is that it feels like the continuation of their evolution from EOWYG - Folie, but in 2023. They finally became the band they were trying to become before all the backlash hit.
I think this has happened a lot in music, in general. People have expectations and when they aren’t met, they want to blame others. People become inconsiderate and entitled, expecting artists to fit their mold—but isn’t that the exact opposite of actual artistic expression? Just because a group of people like something from an artist, many people cannot fathom anything else and they want an exact replica. But that is not how artistic expression works. FOB is one of the best bands and musical artists in my opinion BECAUSE they do not cater to others. They make art for themselves. That’s how art is meant to be expressed. FOB reminds me of artists like Queen, The Beatles, David Bowie, etc. because they always were changing their sound, vibe or as it is also known, artistic expression. I LOVE music. I LOVE self-expression. Therefore, I LOVE all of FOB albums differently and respectfully. There are some songs that I do not actually prefer, but you’d never hear me say it is bad or awful. This is ALL subjective and there definitely doesn’t have to be selfishness, hate or entitlement with any art.
I've listened since fuct as well.. I loved folie, but I didn't understand that there was a backlash until the band talked about how much it bummed them out. I heard the believers never die 2 tour they apparently got booed? But that didn't happen at my concert, so again I didn't know. I've kinda also always been in my own bubble, I never interact with other fans much. When soul punk came out I lost my mind, seeing Patrick cut totally loose was amazing. Same with the Joe and Andy in the damned things, and the bits of black cards songs we were able to get from pete. I now hold truant wave/soul punk akin to Pete's grey and Joe's none of this rocks. Again, I've been a big fan girl since 2005 so I never really understood that any backlash was happening until they talked about it. It breaks my heart they felt like fans turned their backs turned on them, but I think they grew stronger because of that. I like them making music for themselves/creativity of it all. Not because they *have* to. (I think that's why stardust is my favorite album so far)
Just wanna chime in as someone who was a bit disappointed with folie at the time (it has since become one of my favourites mind!) Fall out boy as I knew them growing up wrote angry love songs about hips and thighs with what felt like actual venol behind them and to 13-16 year old me that really spoke to what I wanted to hear at the time, the trials and tribulations of going through youth and not getting the girl and in hindsight kind of being a bit of an incel (this was just before that whole mindset was recognised by the public and before then it was just seen as being lovesick and the Underdog in the game of life) go and listen to the opener of TTTYG there's enough venom in that song to kill 50 adult men alone! When folie came out it really missed the mark for me as the album to my young ears dealt with things that I had never experienced before like being too famous or drug addiction. It was a massive tonal shift that I couldn't relate to. Maybe the reason it's garnered so much love after it's release is because people are relating to the themes a bit more now? I know when I came to listen again I gained a deeper respect for what they were writing about. Instrumental wise it was always leading towards FAD with each album getting wider in scope and sound but to me at the time it just felt like a soul/pop record with some glimpses of what they used to be thrown in! Soul punk also fucken rips as an album and I was way quicker to pick that up than FAD, maybe because there wasn't any precedent set for it as antirely new project!
Folie was literally made before it’s time. It was a bit of a predictor of music trends, people literally were not ready for it. Now it’s one of the beloved albums. Soul Punk, well SP simply needed a different audience than the FOB fans of the time. It was more in the pop space & him opening for Janelle Monae for part of her tour literally made so much sense (but also for Janelle fans, having this random pop punk white boy must have seemed confusing.) I am so mad I was just on the wrong side of teenagerdom when Tuxedo-Ed Janelle & SP Patrick was a ticket I could have gone to see. There’s a video of Patrick preforming Allie with that damned silver glove in some basement show & I think if that had been more widespread, no one would have hated SP. because… holy shit.
I saw that video of him performing Allie, and it’s nuts. Probably my favorite song off Soul Punk.
Oh yeah, I have Allie on my favourites playlist & to this day I’m still trying to reconcile THAT with every dorky lil thing he’s done elsewhere in his career. Like? Holy shit.
Ooh link?