Some fans are still in mourning, or perhaps that’s just their look, from the news two years ago that Fall out Boy would be going on indefinite hiatus following their last albums panning by critics and fans alike.
Each of the members went their separate ways and frontman Patrick Stump headed straight back into the studio to record his debut solo album ‘Soul Punk’ – which was also panned by critics and fans and was a commercial failure.
Now Stump has hit back at his ‘haters’ in a blog post on his personal website where he laments that even Fall Out Boy’s biggest fans have turned on the band and that no amount of money can make up for having no self respect musically.
“Fall Out Boy’s last album Folie A Deux was our most critically panned and audiences openly hated it (it was also our poorest selling major label album even if one adjusts for the changing music economy),” Stump wrote.
“Now, that’s not to say it didn’t have its fans, but at no other point in my professional career was I nearly booed off stages for playing new songs. Touring on Folie was like being the last act at the Vaudville show: We were rotten vegetable targets in Clandestine hoodies.”
“That experience really took the wind out of the band’s sails; It stopped being fun. I suppose I’m just not that thick skinned.”
The pretentiously named Folie A Deux and the subsequent backlash is eventually what tore the band apart. The anger directed towards the band extended to Stump’s solo work where he discovered “kids that paid for tickets to my solo shows to tell me how much I sucked without Fall Out Boy.”
“The standard response to any complaints I could possibly have about my position in life seems to be ‘You poor sad multi-millionaire. I feel so sorry for you,'” he continued. “Quite right, I still have access to enough money to live on in order to avoid bankruptcy for at least a few years as long as I stick to my budget, but money really isn’t everything and it never was.”
“Still, there’s no amount of money in the world that makes one feel content with having no self respect. There’s no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty.”
“It’s as though I’ve received some big cosmic sign that says I should disappear. So I’ve kind of disappeared. I know a lot of you have wondered where I’ve been. I’m sure others of you are disappointed to hear I’m still kicking around somewhere (kidding…sort of).”
“I hate waking up every morning knowing I’m disappointing so many people. I hate feeling like the awkward adult husk of a discarded once-cute child actor. I’m debating going back to school and learning a proper trade. It’s tempting to say I won’t ever play/tour/record again, but I think that’s probably just pent up poor-me emotional pessimism talking (I suppose can be excused of that though right? I am the guy from That Emo Band after all).”
“I’ve managed to cobble together some work…I’ve been moonlighting as a professional songwriter/producer for hire and I’ve even been doing a bit of acting here and there. I have no interest (and evidently that sentiment is reciprocated) in performing music publicly any time soon but as I’ve said I’m sure that will happen when it happens.”
There’s no rush Patrick. No rush.
