While walking across the stage to receive the MTV2 Award for “Sugar, We're Going Down,” the only thing on Fall Out Boy bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz's mind was “please don't drop an f-bomb.” Shortly thereafter the band, originally from suburban Chicago, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. But the accolades didn't stop there. Fall Out Boy won 3 Teen Choice Awards, and the video for “Dance, Dance” won the MTV Video Music Awards for Viewer's Choice, and was nominated for Best Group Video.
For all their success, the band members have stayed true to their roots; not in the sense that they haven't changed, but in the sense that they're making music they love to hear and aren't changing to appease the tides of trend. Fame has never been the driving force behind the music for the band, and all the recent success hasn't quite sunk in yet. “I don't think of music as a career,” Wentz says, “until certain things jar it for you.” When pressed for an example, he cites the thousands of screaming fans who greet him when he gets on stage.
Self-described nerds, they'd still be working just as hard on their music whether they were playing for an audience of 5 thousand, or an audience of 5. “The more you try to please everybody, the less you end up pleasing anybody,” says Patrick Vaughn Stump, Fall Out Boy lead singer and guitarist. Stump, perhaps the least flappable band member save for vegan drummer Andy Hurley, becomes agitated when people take the reward of music more seriously than the art. “If you gave me 3 million dollars to spend,” Stump says, “I'd find 3 million dollars worth of musical equipment to buy.”
The success of their mega hit album From Under the Cork Tree hasn't been taken for granted. Instead of resting on their laurels, Fall Out Boy has opted to go immediately back to work in spite of a hectic tour schedule by releasing their next album, Infinity on High. “If you have the songs there, why not record them?” says Wentz. The group's prolific nature can best be summed by Stump, who enthusiastically proclaimed, “fuck down time,” when asked if he'd like a break from the busy schedule.