Fall Out Boy are lighting up the Genius charts this morning with “Love From the Other Side,” the lead single off the enduring emo-pop foursome’s forthcoming eighth album, So Much (for) Stardust. A lot has happened in the three years since we last heard from the Chicago group—war, disease, insurrection, etc.—and the lyrics seem to reference the frightening state of the world. But it’s hard to say for certain what this song is about. Maybe that’s why so many people are coming to Genius to read the words.
“Love From the Other Side” is credited to all four members of Fall Out Boy: bassist/lyricist Pete Wentz, lead singer and guitarist Patrick Stump, lead guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andrew Hurley. Trohman announced that he’s taking a break from the group due to mental health issues just before FOB debuted “Love From the Other Side” last night on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, but he can presumably be heard on the cinematic, string-boosted studio recording. FOB sound like they’re riding into battle in Narnia or Middle Earth, and Stump’s vocals on the first verse suggest the stakes are high.
Model house life meltdown
Still a modern dream letdown, it kills me
You know I’m dying out here
What would you trade the pain for?
So far it reads like a love song. But in the next lines, as Stump references a bizarre 1991 news story involving a deranged man taking a hammer to Michaelangelo’s famous statue of David (shoutout to Genius user elsbe for making that connection), it seems like he might be singing about the band itself. FOB certainly challenged rock’s status quo when they came on the scene in the early 2000s with their eyeliner, skinny jeans, and oh-so-clever sad-boy lyrics.
We were a hammer to the Statue of David
We were a painting you could never frame, and
You were the sunshine of my lifetime
In the pre-chorus, Stump admits that he still feels like an outsider.
This city always hangs a little bit lonely on me, loose
Like a kid playing pretend in his father’s suit
I’d never go, I just want to be invited, oh, got to give up
Get the feeling, get the feeling, don’t fight it, fight it
On the triumphant chorus, Stump wails like a guy who’s been through hell and come out on the other side. He’s a jaded survivor, but a survivor nonetheless.
Sending my love from the other side of the apocalypse
And I just about snapped, don’t look back
Every lover’s got a little dagger in their hand
The second verse doesn’t do much to clear up the ambiguity of the lyrics. Stump feels time slipping away, and the relationship he’s describing—perhaps with a lover, perhaps with his bandmates—may be headed toward paradise. Or death, depending on how you read it.
Nowhere left for us to go but Heaven
Summer falling through our fingers again
And you were the sunshine of my lifetime
What would you trade the pain for?
The second pre-chorus totally plays like the complaint of a career musician worn down by relentless album and touring cycles.
We’re taught we gotta get ahead, yeah, no matter what it takes
But there’s no way off the hamster wheel on this rat race
The epic rock thumping gives way to ringing piano chords on the bridge, where Stump shakes off a headache and tries to decide whether he’s going to abandon ship—whatever that ship is.
I saw you in a bright clear field, hurricane heat in my head
The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end, good in the end
Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain: “Give up what you love
Give up what you love before it does you in…”
“Love From the Other Side” comes with a fanciful music video that evokes fellow Chicago band Smashing Pumpkins’ silent-film-inspired “Tonight, Tonight” clip.
You can read all the lyrics to “Love From the Other Side” on Genius now.
