Having taken a five-year hiatus following 2008’s Folie a Deux, Fall Out Boy came back strongly with 2013’s chart-topping Save Rock N Roll. That record, however, was only the start of the band’s renaissance – and it continued apace when January 2015’s American Beauty/American Psycho again hit No. 1 on the U.S. charts.
The group hadn’t intended to record such a swift follow-up, but fresh inspiration struck when they went on a U.S. tour with Paramore during the summer of 2014. “Patrick [Stump] kind of came up with the idea for this song ‘Centuries,’” bassist Pete Wentz revealed in an interview with Alternative Press. “He explained to me that he wanted to fit this sample from (Suzanne Vega’s 1987 hit) “Tom’s Diner” into this kind of anthem he’d written. It didn’t seem to make sense, but when I heard it, I realized it just fits together really well.”
The sample fit seamlessly into the song’s angst-y, guitar-driven backdrop and Fall Out Boy rush-released it as a single in the fall of 2014. Repaying the band’s faith, “Centuries” soon became a radio hit and rose to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. Its success also suggested a new direction for the band’s next album, though they needed to recruit a new producer, Jake Sinclair, before they could fully realize the songs for American Beauty/American Psycho.
“Jake’s helped us get a little more breathing room [in our songs],” Wentz said of the producer who also helmed albums by 5 Seconds Of Summer and Panic! At The Disco. “He’s helped us understand [that] contemporary music is made a lot more piecemeal and that we can record parts that are essentially for demos on our laptop that can make it to the final product. It’s kind of like showing cavemen how to use an espresso machine!”
With Sinclair on board and the team using “Centuries” as a template of sorts, the songs for American Beauty/American Psycho came together during the fall of 2014. As Wentz later told Associated Press, Fall Out Boy wanted the record to sound “contemporary…so you can hear it on the radio” and many of its best songs achieved that aim: not least the brass-driven “Irresistible,” the quirky, XTC-esque titular song, and the brilliantly infectious “Uma Thurman,” which put a sample of the theme from the much-loved 60s sitcom The Munsters to ingenious use.
Indeed, with “Uma Thurman” (the actress having personally given the band permission to use her name) cracking the Top 30 of the Billboard singles chart, American Beauty/American Psycho was well-placed to take the charts by storm. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and within a year went platinum. “The thing about this record, it’s challenging in the way our band needs to fight on two fronts,” Pete Wentz said in a 2015 Billboard interview. “We need to be relevant to pop culture, which means you need to be played on the radio. But we also need to care about our legacy and we want to play big shows, so we can show kids in the crowd that you can be a currently relevant rock band, but you can also sell out arenas. That’s the statement we’re making with this record.”
Listen to Fall Out Boy’s American Beauty/American Psycho now.