"Explode" by Patrick Stump

If the world truly ended in 2012 then the first track of Patrick Stump’s solo album would play as the planet’s credits rolled. A Film by The Powers That Be, Starring Vin Diesel as America, Cate Blanchett as the Gay Community, and Lenny Kravitz as Himself. The opening line alone earns the song this dubious honor: “Clap if you’ve got a ticket to the end of the world.” On the nose, as most of Stump’s lyrics are. Early in the formative days of Fall Out Boy, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III banned Stump from putting words to songs that would come to define the 2000s pop punk boom. Wentz continues to make a career out of absolutely senseless one-liners that nonetheless make you go “…Yeah. Fucking…Yeah!” Stump does not have this gift/curse and puts in a herculean effort to architect an allegory of anxiety.

Stump describes the song’s subject, an officer called upon to deactivate a ticking timebomb, as a “living, breathing action-screenplay cliché.” The tale is told in the breathless, staccato vocal stylings of a lifelong Michael Jackson fan. He sounds like he’s having a panic attack and is whispering so his mom doesn’t hear and come downstairs with good intentions only to see him in such A State. A far cry from the inarticulate belting for which he was so well known.

I try not to be sympathetic to millionaires in general, but if he wants it, Stump has a hiding spot in my basement when the revolution comes. 2011 was a rough time for my guy. Fall Out Boy was ostensibly Gone, leaving the public eye in the wake of their woefully misunderstood 2008 record Folie A Deux, which as all real ones know is FOB’s best work. But at the time people fucking hated it. Fans booed them off the stage. Pop music was outgrowing guitars and guyliner and Stump knew it. Less a trend-chaser and rather a devotee to pop icons from the 80s, Stump made a solo album that was exactly the kind of music he loved. It wasn’t as snarky or aloof as FOB. He just can’t help but be sincere as shit. The second track, “This City,” is the funniest and most endearing “I Love Chicago” song ever, with a chorus that could describe literally anywhere. If Stump thought the backlash to Folie was bad, nothing prepared him for the hate Soul Punk brought.

I say that, and yet “Explode” tells me he already knew what was coming. Anxiety, my therapist reminds me, is a liar. I, however, never had to face a crowd of people who would immediately and vocally react to the things they do not like about me. You ever hear an entire stadium groan when their favorite soccer player whiffs a shot? That would kill me. Stump’s solo shows saw him running between instruments and loop pedals like a cartoon character whose legs go vortex mode. People in the audience would regularly shout, “We liked you better when you were fat.”

And man, what the fuck? I know we all form these relationships with our favorite artists and feel some sense of shared ownership over their work, but their bodies? I dunno. I assume we all agree now this was Not Cool. I think this was the reaction Stump expected when he wrote, “I feel like I’m gonna explode…I get so worried. I get so low.” It’s not particularly poetic. It’s cliché. But damn if it isn’t exactly what my anxiety tells me every day. Stump fears the future as much as anyone. He just wants to sing a little song, he doesn’t want to be this cultural touchstone, this parasocial performer. The linchpin line: “If I’m never your hero I can never let you down.” When identifying with our idols supplants our own identity, the sirens should be going off.

In 2011, synthy, peppy pop was making its ascent again as emo’s third wave schtick wore out its welcome, but My Chem hadn’t broken up yet and Carly Rae Jepsen was waiting in the wings. The kids, the longtime fans, were not ready to be won over into this next undefined era. Patrick Stump was just the sad shadow of a former star. The world was ripe for transformation, and for those anxious many of us, change feels like the end of everything. If Pat fades maybe then we will too, and holy shit are we more prepared for oblivion than we are for change.

Where were you when you heard Fall Out Boy broke up? Where were you when you heard they were back together? Can you explain why the liner notes of “Soul Punk” have a coded message that reads “Reaganomics Failed”—besides the fact that Reaganomics failed? Let me know—I crave details about your personal lives so I can commit identity fraud.