Fall Out Boy's Midlife Crisis

After pulling off one of rock music’s most impressive second acts, the band hit a roadblock while recording its latest album

- Andy Greene

PATRICK STUMP WAS LISTENING TO Fall Out Boy’s almost-complete seventh album, Mania, in July when he realized there was a major problem: It wasn’t very good. “It freaked me out,” the singer says. “I was like, ‘I don’t think this is something the four of us will like, I don’t think it’s something the label is going to like. It doesn’t sound like Fall Out Boy. Oh, God, I can’t turn this in.’ ” Stump told bassist Pete Wentz, who felt the same way; they decided to push the album back to January, even though they’d already committed to an American arena tour in the fall to support it.

The episode was the first major snafu Fall Out Boy had seen since 2013. Back then, after a four-year breakup, they returned to score huge pop-radio hits like “My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark” and “Centuries.” But the group’s Mania singles from earlier this year, the EDM-flavored “Young and Menace” and “Champion,” which had an old-school FOB vibe, failed to even crack the Hot 100. “The songs were trying to serve everybody, but they weren’t going to be compelling to anybody,” Wentz says of the scrapped album’s tunes. “It felt like all bread and no meat. There was no spicy mustard or anything.”