Listen – I get it. Bands change their sound. And honestly – I usually love it. I mean, why wouldn’t I? It’s so cool to see people you adore for a long time do something new really well. The key word there, though, is “well”. And Fall Out Boy’s new single is definitely missing that word.
I really don’t get it. Harry Styles new music is extraordinarily different from anything he ever did while in One Direction, and yet, it is fantastic. His voice and range really work with the style of music he presents throughout the album. Paramore’s new album is one of my favorite to dance to at the moment. Throwing it back to past evolutions, look at Panic! At The Disco. The more albums they release, the more their music goes from “punk” to “pop”. Yet, Death of a Bachelor is still one of my favorite songs they’ve released. Geez, even Mumford and Sons change from folk music to music I like to call “Coldplay style” (…you can’t tell me Wilder Mind couldn’t have been written by Coldplay) was better than this!
I think Fall Out Boy’s biggest problem is that not only did they change their sound, but that the album is almost completely unrecognizable in comparison to their older music. Listen to one of their most iconic tracks – “Thnks Fr Th Mmrs”. Then listen to Young And Menace. Seriously, if you showed me these two songs without me knowing anything about Fall Out Boy, I would tell you these songs HAVE to be written by two completely different artists.
Also, I’m sorry, but did Fall Out Boy forget they were a band? That their lead singer is not the only member that matters? Tell me where exactly the other members of this band fall into this techno remix style of music. The song literally sounds like it was made by some high school student sitting in his basement messing around with a soundboard.
An article by Black Squirrel Radio says it best, “It seems like Fall Out Boy are the ones that are lost, with “Young and Menace” sounding less like the beautiful chaos they were going for and more like an amorphic blob of a club track that no DJ would dare to spin.” I love Fall Out Boy, I always have, and this song deeply hurt me. I can only hope that the rest of the album isn’t such a disaster.
