The No.1 website for musicians
Plus, he chooses between Beatles or Stones
Joe Bosso, Thu 5 Nov 2009, 7:02 pm UTC
You guys don't have 20 albums to sort through, so was it hard to come up with a tracklist for a greatest hits collection?
"No. We're not putting this out and comparing it to Aerosmith or The Beatles or Bob Marley. This is more like 'greatest hits for Fall Out Boy.' The way we picked the tracklisting was, 'Well, here's every song we did a video for.' We left a few songs off.
"And then we recorded two songs and we're putting this Christmas song on, and a DVD commentary. The artwork also has messages to our fans - some are hidden, some of them are right there. A lot of it is just a thank you to people who have stuck with us.
"We wanted to call the record Believers Never Die - it's just a phrase that stuck around Fall Out Boy - but we were allowed to be convinced to go out with Greatest Hits in the way that it's an 'Idiots Guide To Fall Out Boy.' We were trying to think of ways to call it greatest hits, but I feel like every funny or quirky way has already been done."
The new song, Alpha Dog, is more of a return to your earlier sound. Did that just kind of happen naturally or did you want to return to the old sound?
"We never got the chance to him. I don't even know if he heard it. We've decided not to play it anymore. It's his song" Wentz on Fall Out Boy's version of Michael Jackson's Beat It
"Ahh. Interesting. I feel like the two new songs…I don't know…I just only look at the lyrics, so they feel different to me. But we recorded those songs at the same studio where we recorded From Under The Cork Tree, so there was some magic in that. But that's interesting…yeah."
You're including your cover of Beat It. I'm sure Michael Jackson heard it before his death. Did he ever remark about it? Did he ever comment to the band about it?
"Nah. I wish. We never got the chance to him. I don't even know if he heard it. We kind of recorded it on a whim, like, nine months before he passed away. We've decided not to play it anymore. It's his song, you know? We put it on the record because we did a video for it, but it's definitely his song."
Has being a husband and father changed your writing in any way? Do you find lyrics are coming our different?
"For the first six months after Bronx was born, I couldn't write at all, and then all of a sudden I started writing again. I think it made me look at the world in a different way. We have a very selfish culture, and we all embrace it, and that's what I Don't Care was supposed to be about, and what America's Sweethearts was supposed to be about.
"I hate explaining lyrics 'cause it feel like 'whatever.' But I Don't Care was about looking at a picture of yourself in the mirror, like the ultimate form of narcissism."
You are quite the Tweeter -
"Yeah. [laughs] Sometimes."