Take This to Your Grave

Take This to Your Grave is the debut studio album by the American rock band Fall Out Boy, released on May 6, 2003, by Fueled by Ramen. It was their only album under the label, as they signed to Island Records following its release; the band would return to Fueled by Ramen for their 2023 album, So Much (for) Stardust. Sean O'Keefe had helped with the band's demo, and they returned to Smart Studios in Madison, Wisconsin to record the bulk of their first album with him. Living on a stranger's floor for part of the time and running out of money halfway through, the band recorded seven songs in nine days, bringing them together with the additional three from the demo.

While lead vocalist Patrick Stump had previously written all of the album's lyrics and took them lightly, bassist Pete Wentz took to the process with considerable seriousness and obsessively picked apart his bandmate's lyrics. The exhausting process led to numerous revisions of single songs and several arguments. The album cover, which shows the four bandmates sitting on a broken futon, features a blue tint reminiscent of jazz records, and was the second choice after the original was rejected by the Fueled by Ramen label.

Take This to Your Grave gradually created interest in the band as they toured across the country, including a five-day stint on Warped Tour 2004. The album produced three singles, including the minor success "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy", and has often been named as a vital blueprint for 2000s pop-punk, with Alternative Press calling it a "subcultural touchstone" and a "magical, transcendent, and deceptively smart pop-punk masterpiece that ushered in a vibrant scene resurgence with a potent combination of charisma, new media marketing and hardcore-punk urgency". Take This to Your Grave is often regarded as one of the greatest pop-punk albums of all time. In 2017, Rolling Stone placed the album at number 5 on their list of the "50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums".

Background

Fall Out Boy was formed in 2001 in the Chicago suburb of Wilmette, Illinois by friends Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman. Wentz was a "visible fixture" of the relatively small Chicago hardcore punk scene of the late 1990s, performing in various groups including the metalcore band Arma Angelus. Wentz was growing dissatisfied with the changing mores of the community, which he viewed as a transition from political activism to an emphasis on moshing and breakdowns.

at a bookstore in Wilmette.

The band later went to Wisconsin to record a proper demo with 7 Angels 7 Plagues drummer Jared Logan. The band returned to the studio with O'Keefe to record several more tracks to create label interest. bringing together the three songs from the demo and recording an additional seven songs in nine days. According to Wentz, "we were lying to our parents about what we were doing, cutting corners. I was supposed to be in school. I didn't have access to money or a credit card. I don't think any of us did." The process was not without its difficulties: "It's not always happy: There's a lot of push and pull and each of them trying to get their thing. With [the album], we never let anything go until all three of us were happy," said O'Keefe. emo pop Mani Mostofi, former vocalist of Racetraitor, had held many discussions with Wentz when the band formed about their pop punk sound, which Wentz described as "softcore". Mostofi described Take This to Your Grave as "sounding like Hot Topic," but "feeling like CBGB."

Lyrics

According to Johnny Loftus of AllMusic, Take This to Your Graves lyrical content "merges musings on love and youth with healthy amounts of cutting cynicism, savvy popular culture touchstones, and cheeky phraseology". Stump wrote "Saturday" about how he felt like a failure on graduating from high school, and originally kept the song to himself until the group needed additional songs. Stump then collaborated with bassist Pete Wentz to complete the song's lyrics.

Stump, who viewed himself an "artsy fartsy dude who didn't want to be in a pop-punk band," had written most of the band's lyrics to that point, including the songs "Saturday", "Dead on Arrival", "Grand Theft Autumn/Where is Your Boy", "Grenade Jumper", and "Homesick at Space Camp".

Songs

"'Tell That Mick He Just Made My List of Things to Do Today'" opens with a telephone dial tone, which Wentz found particularly enjoyable, as it provided stark contrast to the louder instrumentation to follow. The song's chorus was the result of many arguments between Wentz and Stump over the phonetic phrasing of words versus their meaning. Wentz ended up throwing out all of Stump's lyrics for the first time in the recording process, and rewrote them entirely himself - a first. Stump said, "I realized I must really want to be in this band at this point if I'm willing to put up with this much fuss." Gutierrez was an early supporter of the band and attended each show from the beginning. The song's chorus came from a conversation between Trohman and Stump in the kitchen of the band's apartment. Trohman said they should write a fan appreciation song, and Stump noted how Chris "was [their] only friend".

"Calm Before the Storm" appears on the band's first true recording, Fall Out Boy's Evening Out with Your Girlfriend. Its bridge features a "screaming harmony" from Wentz, which took "five or six" digital tracks to create. He had had a lengthy conversation with Stump about Stump's love for Elvis Costello, and found an Armed Forces LP of Stump's sitting out, strategically placing it in the image to play it off as Stump's. The band actively tried to stop Uprising from releasing the recordings as the band's relationship with Muttaqi had soured. The band viewed it as a "giant piece of garbage" recorded before Hurley's involvement, and the band ceased to consider it their debut album. The band garnered positive reviews for subsequent gigs at South by Southwest (SXSW) and various tour appearances. They joined the Warped Tour for five dates in the summer of 2004, and on one date the band had only performed three songs when the stage collapsed due to the large crowd (the band finished with an a capella rendition "Where Is Your Boy" with the audience).

In 2005, a second single "Grand Theft Autumn/Where Is Your Boy" peaked at number 84 on the now-defunct Billboard Pop 100. The album was re-released in January 2005 as Take This to Your Grave: Director's Cut for a run of 5000 copies, featuring a dance remix and a cover of The Police's "Roxanne", along with enhanced CD footage of the band commentating and breaking down each song, and the music video for "Saturday". In 2006, Take This to Your Grave was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for shipments of 500,000 copies, and had sold over 553,000 copies by January 2007. By the week ending August 24, 2008, Take This to Your Grave passed 634,000 sales according to Billboard. In 2013, the album was certified gold British Phonographic Industry for over 100,000 shipments.

Reception and legacy

Johnny Loftus of AllMusic described the album as a "spectacular debut art project", calling it "a smart collection of emo-influenced pop-punk tunes". The band expanded upon their evaluation, writing, "There's no overstating the impact Take This to Your Grave has had on not only the scene (and eventually mainstream culture) [...] it represents a zeitgeist that launched untold numbers of bands to pick up some musical gear, make noise in their garages and actively participate in this culture. The fact that the album continues to resonate with generations in the years following is a testament to its longevity." Gigwise called the album "an almost flawless slice of pop-punk [...] The record had just the right amount of sincerity, cynicism and slick pop-culture references — it didn't matter if you were 14 or 24, TTTYG would appeal to the streak of teenage bitterness inside all of us."

In 2025, Collider placed the album at the top of its list of "10 Pop-Punk Albums That Are Amazing From Start to Finish". Staff writer Janelle Sheetz wrote: "Fall Out Boy was easily one of the biggest successes to come out of the pop-punk scene of the early 2000s, and it’s hard to imagine that success without Take This to Your Grave. While the band blew up with From Under the Cork Tree, Take This to Your Grave is packed with songs that are just as good, with a blend of catchy hooks with great guitar riffs which perfectly demonstrate how pop punk got its name."

Rankings

{|class="wikitable plainrowheaders"

|+ Take This to Your Grave on select critic rankings

! Publication

! Country

! Accolade

! Year

! Rank

! scope="row"| BuzzFeed

| rowspan="2"| United States

| 36 Pop Punk Albums You Need To Hear Before You F——ing Die

| 2014

| style="text-align:center;"| 9

! scope="row"| Rolling Stone

| The 50 Greatest Pop-Punk Albums

| 2014

| style="text-align:center;"| 7

! scope="row"| Kerrang!

| 51 Greatest Pop Punk Albums Ever

| 2015

| style="text-align:center;"| 11

Commercial performance

Take This to Your Grave debuted on the US Billboard Heatseeker Albums chart at No. 31 on the week ending March 6, 2004, almost a year after its initial May 2003 release, and peaked at No. 11 the week ending January 15, 2005, almost a year later. It spent twenty-eight weeks on the chart in total. After its first three weeks, at No. 31, No. 41 and No. 22, the album fell off the chart and re-entered four months later at No. 29, falling out after nine more weeks. Three months later it re-entered at No. 37, then rose to No. 34 the following week peaking at No. 11 It then logged another eight weeks below No. 20. Again, it fell off and shortly re-entered at No. 43, inching up to No. 42 before dropping off and re-entering at No. 48. It spent its last week on the chart two years after its initial release at No. 47 the week ending May 14, 2005. The band's follow-up release From Under the Cork Tree debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 the following week, which made the band ineligible to chart on the Heatseeker Albums chart any longer. In February 2006, Take This to Your Grave reached No. 96 on the UK albums chart.

Track listing

Personnel

Fall Out Boy

Patrick Stump – vocals, guitar
Pete Wentz – bass guitar, backing vocals, unclean vocals on tracks 1, 4, 8, 10, 12
Joe Trohman – guitar, backing vocals
Andy Hurley – drums, percussion

Additional musicians

Justin Pierre – backing vocals on "Chicago Is So Two Years Ago"
Jeff Warren – backing vocals on "Grenade Jumper"

Artwork

Mike Joyce – booklet concept and design
Kyle Baker – jewel case layout
Nicholas Scimeca – O-card design
Ryan Bakerink – photography

Production

Sean O'Keefe – production, engineering, mixing
Greg Geary – Pro Tools engineering
Mike Harl – additional Pro Tools engineering
Todd Osterag – assistant engineer at Smart Studios
Noble Hibbs – assistant engineer at Gravity Studios
Paul Long – assistant engineer at Gravity Studios
Dominick Maita – mastering

Charts

{| class="wikitable sortable plainrowheaders" style="text-align:center"

|+ Chart performance for Take This to Your Grave

! scope="col" |Chart (2004–2021)

! scope="col" |Peak<br/>position

Certifications

Notes

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links

Take This to Your Grave at YouTube (streamed copy where licensed)