On January 18, 2023, American rock band, Fall Out Boy, released their first single from their upcoming album, So Much (For) Stardust. The new song is called Love From The Other Side and features a rock sound that fans were missing in Fall Out Boy’s last album, MANIA.
The track starts off with a beautiful piano feature with an orchestra playing. As someone who is in orchestra, I really enjoyed this bit. This calm orchestral intro is a drastic difference from the beginning of the first verse of the song. Heavy guitar and drums begin roughly 36 seconds into the song. The guitar and drums give off Infinity on High vibes, Fall Out Boy’s third studio album. If I didn’t know better, I would think Love From The Other Side was a song from Infinity On High. Many fans who like Fall Out Boy’s older music appreciate Fall Out Boy’s return to rock music.
Not only is the instrumental of Love From The Other Side amazing, but the vocals are too. Patrick Stump, the lead vocalist for Fall Out Boy, brings punkier, more intense vocals to this song than what you can find on MANIA. These vocals are similar to the ones on past Fall Out Boy albums, like American Beauty/American Psycho.
The lyrics to Love From The Other Side elevate this song so much more. Pete Wentz, the band’s main lyricist, used many metaphors that describe hardship. In the chorus, Wentz writes “Sending my love from the other side of the apocalypse.” Many fans speculate that this describes Fall Out Boy’s release of MANIA as some sort of disaster and now they are on the other side of this so-called disaster.
MANIA wasn’t a huge success among Fall Out Boy fans, it featured a sound that was unlike any other Fall Out Boy album. Another lyric that may describe this “apocalypse” can be found later in the chorus, “Every lovers got a little dagger in their hand.” This lyric might be referencing how after the release of MANIA, fans were seemingly turning on the band.
The last lyric I want to mention is “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.” This lyric may be alluding to how harsh the music industry is. Love From The Other Side is Fall Out Boy’s first release since MANIA (2018) and this lyric describes how everyone in the industry is trying to push out music as fast as they can to get ahead and stay relevant and Fall Out Boy just wasn’t trying to do that.
Overall, Love From The Other Side is an awesome song and I would recommend it to anyone who likes Fall Out Boy’s older music or is into rock music. This single makes me excited for Fall Out Boy’s upcoming release, So Much (For) Stardust, being released on March 24th, 2023.
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