Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday, released on March 26, 2002, through Victory Records. The album title comes from a line in the chorus of the album's second single "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)".

Forming in 1999, the group underwent several lineup changes before settling on vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell. Taking Back Sunday released a five-song demo in early 2001, after which they toured the United States for most of the year. They rented a room in Lindenhurst, New York, where they wrote and demoed songs. In December 2001, the band signed with Victory Records; they began recording their debut album with producer Sal Villanueva at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in Jersey City, New Jersey.

"Great Romances of the 20th Century" was released as the lead single from Tell All Your Friends in March 2002. A few months later, Taking Back Sunday toured across the United States with Brand New and Rufio. At the end of the year, a Fight Club-inspired music video was released for "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", which was released as the album's second single in February 2003. The group spent the early part of 2003 touring with the Used and the Blood Brothers before headlining their own tour. After that, Nolan and Cooper left Taking Back Sunday and were replaced by Fred Mascherino and Matt Rubano. In September 2003, "You're So Last Summer" was released as the album's third single, and the band began co-headlining a tour with Saves the Day, which lasted until November 2003. By that point, a music video had been released for "You're So Last Summer".

Critics have given Tell All Your Friends mostly positive reviews, highlighting its mix of musical styles. It sold 2,000 copies in the first week after its release, charting at number 183 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US and had sold 790,000 copies as of 2009; in 2023, it was certified platinum. It is Victory Records' longest-running release on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart at 68 weeks, and on the Independent Albums chart at 78 weeks. In 2012, the band toured to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tell All Your Friends, playing an acoustic set on the anniversary tour, which was later released in 2013 as the live album TAYF10 Acoustic. It has been included on lists of the best emo albums of all time by publications such as Alternative Press, NME, and Rolling Stone.

Background

Guitarist Eddie Reyes became a staple of the New York hardcore scene, performing in various bands such as the Movielife. He contacted friends Antonio Longo and Steven DeJoseph; the former suggested adding his childhood friend, John Nolan, as a second guitarist. Bassist Jesse Lacey, who was childhood friends with Longo and Nolan, then joined, marking the formation of Taking Back Sunday in Amityville, New York, in November 1999. After three-to-four months, Lacey left the band when Nolan reportedly romanced Lacey's girlfriend at a party, Adam Lazzara saw Taking Back Sunday live and inquired if they needed a permanent bassist, Mark O'Connell, who was friends with Reyes, was then asked to become their drummer. in December 2000, Lazzara switched from bass to lead vocals. O'Connell suggested recruiting bassist Shaun Cooper, though the rest of the band needed convincing since they did not know him. In February 2001, the band recorded a five-song demo, appropriately titled Tell All Your Friends, copies of which were given to anyone associated with a record label. Taking Back Sunday then spent the rest of the year touring, during which they received offers from labels. and they signed to the label in December 2001. Tell All Your Friends was recorded over a period of two weeks in December 2001 at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in Jersey City, New Jersey with producer Sal Villanueva. Taking Back Sunday arrived without a drum set, presuming that the studio would have one. Engineer Tim Gilles said, "No major studio in America has their own [drum] set. You've gotta be fucking kidding me". Cooper collectively recorded his bass parts in four hours, spread over half a day. Villanueva would come up with ideas and suggest them to the band. Villanueva had contributed guitar work and co-mixed the recordings with Gilles (under the alias Rumblefish).|source=John Nolan in 2005 on the album's title|width=25%|align=right|style=padding:8px;

Tell All Your Friends sound would later be described as emo, pop-punk and post-hardcore, drawing comparisons to Grade, the Movielife (specifically their 2000 album This Time Next Year), A review from CMJ New Music Monthly noted that musically, the album sounded like "two guitars butt[ing] heads" to fuse "clean-channel pop melodies" with "chugging metal progressions". One member would typically come up with a part, which the rest of the group would expand into a song. Nolan wrote a lot of material and had various ideas. He would cut parts and sections out of one song he had been working on and it would eventually end up in a Taking Back Sunday song.

Personal experiences inspired Taking Back Sunday's lyrics. For Nolan, several instances filtered into his lyrics: the falling-out with Lacey, whom he had known all of his life, affected how Nolan felt and what he was trying to work through in his writings; the ending of a five-year long-term relationship since high school and the subsequent process of figuring who you are and what you want to be as a result; and coming to terms with his born again Christian upbringing and the realization that he did not believe in his life up to that point. For almost every track, the breakdown consists of Lazzara and Nolan intertwining their vocal parts, crescendoing into screaming. The line "it's a campaign of distraction and revisionist history" is directly taken from Eggers' book, which was one of Nolan's favorite reads. The track's name came from the band's friend Mike Duvan who said the phrase "cut from the team". It opens with a four-chord guitar intro before shifting into single-note verses. The track also includes a reference to Brand New's "Mixtape". However, in 2015, Lazzara described Lacey as "a dick. He just sucks. He's not a good person."|group="nb" "Great Romances of the 20th Century" includes an audio sample from the film Beautiful Girls (1996), and opens with an electronic string line. During the song's chorus, Lazzara said he does his "best Daryl Palumbo [of Glassjaw] impression" and electronic strings are heard.

"Timberwolves at New Jersey" talks about being a musician in the New Jersey emo/post-hardcore scene, while of some lyrics take digs at former band members. The title for "You're So Last Summer" came from the time Lazzara and Nolan went to the movies with their friend Sarah. As the trio left the theater, someone said something and Sarah replied, "You're so last summer"meaning late to the party. "The Blue Channel" was named after Channel 14, which consisted of TV program listings. A music video for "Great Romances of the 20th Century" directed by Christian Winters, a friend of the band, was released on March 4. The video, conceived and directed by Winters, was inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club (a favorite of Nolan and Lazzara). The song was released to rock radio stations on February 17, 2003.

thumb|alt=a man holding a guitar and singing into a microphone|[[John Nolan (musician)|John Nolan (pictured) left the band in 2003 alongside bandmate Shaun Cooper; the two then formed Straylight Run.]]

Lazzara was suffering from a drinking problem around this time and cheated on Michelle Nolan, who he had been dating for a while. However, when Lazzara was unaware Nolan was on the tour bus, he claimed he had joked about the whole thing and did not take it seriously. The following day, Nolan told Cooper that he was leaving the band; Cooper had been mulling over the decision too, and decided he did not want to be in the band without Nolan. A week after the departures, a meeting was held while Nolan was moving from the place he shared with Lazzara. The band attempted to talk out their problems, but the meeting resulted in Nolan storming out.|group="nb"

New lineup and later promotion

Taking Back Sunday underwent a short period where they were unsure what to do next, and even briefly considered breaking up. Taking Back Sunday issued a statement, explaining that: "There have been a series of personal events with members of the band [...] We need very much to take a step back at this time". Reyes moved in with his girlfriend and toyed with the idea of taking the band name and restarting with an all-new lineup. He kept calling Cooper, Nolan and O'Connell in an attempt to reconcile.

Bassist Matt Rubano, who grew up with O'Connell, then joined the group. On August 12, 2003, the band appeared on IMX. On September 16, 2003, "You're So Last Summer" was released as a radio single. In November 2003, a music video for the track was filmed at Fulton Park in New York City. The video, directed by Winters, debuted on MTV on November 24. In the video, the band performs while Public Enemy vocalist Flavor Flav (in full regalia) jumps around. According to Lazzara, the group was making fun of itself: "We had two guys leave our band and there were two main singers, so we were trying to think of a way to bring the new band members into the video, but not have Fred singing the old guy’s part. And the funniest way to do that was to use Flavor Flav." On December 3, 2003, the band appeared on IMX again.

Touring

After receiving a $10,000 advance from Victory Records, Taking Back Sunday purchased a van and trailer for touring. For three weeks beginning in mid-March 2002, Taking Back Sunday participated in the Victory Records tour alongside Catch 22, Grade, Student Rick and Reach the Sky. During the first show of the tour, most of the crowd dispersed when the Lawrence Arms came on as Taking Back Sunday became the main draw. The tour had been in the works since the end of 2001; by that point, Nolan and Lacey had not spoken in around a year. Nolan viewed it as a sign that Lacey wanted to rebuild their friendship. After a week or two of the tour being underway, Taking Back Sunday joined Brand New onstage during their performances of "Seventy Times7", and Lacey returned the favor for "There's No 'I' in Team". Until this point, the members would have gone back to work as soon as tours finished. Nolan said it was a "really big one for me [...] like, 'Wow, I'm not like just struggling to get by right now, we are actually kind of making a living doing this. Four shows into the tour, Lazzara fell off the stage and gashed his face in two places and dislocated his hip. The incident forced the group to drop out of the tour. At the end of 2002, Taking Back Sunday toured with the Starting Line and Northstar. The band opened 2003 touring with the Used and the Blood Brothers, and headlined the Takeover Tour in March and April 2003, with main support from From Autumn to Ashes and Recover; Breaking Pangaea, Somehow Hollow, My Chemical Romance and Count the Stars appeared on select dates. Taking Back Sunday played on three 2003 Warped Tour shows, leading up to an appearance at Furnace Fest, which they headlined. On September 9, 2003, the band performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live. From September to November 2003, Taking Back Sunday co-headlined a tour with Saves the Day, supported by Moneen. On November 11, 2003, the band appeared on Last Call with Carson Daly.

Critical reception

Tell All Your Friends was met with a mostly positive critical reception. Several reviewers took notice of how Taking Back Sunday executed the emo sound on Tell All Your Friends. AllMusic reviewer Kurt Morris said Taking Back Sunday's "ability... to sound so blatantly" like the Movielife was "almost their undoing". He found them "a bit more rockin than the Movielife, having blended punk, hardcore, emo, and pop in a more successful fashion. Rolling Stone Gil Kaufman lauded how the album made the band sound unique among their emo peers, many times averting from "sad-sack emo pitfalls" into "pop-infused hardcore" and "enlightened, dramatic lyrics" describing "heartache that teeter[s] between despondency and dark vengeance".

Despite praise for Taking Back Sunday's musical approach on Tell All Your Friends, some reviewers gave the album criticism for being too similar to other emo recordings around the time of its release. While Morris was mostly pleased with the release, he criticized the originality of the album's material, While BBC Music's Olli Siebelt echoed this concern, he also credited the band with making an effort to stand out by including influences from post-punk, nu metal and hardcore punk. According to Siebelt, Taking Back Sunday composed songs which were both "upbeat and emotionally aggressive". Siebelt compared the album to All and the Descendents, saying that it retained "enough of its own identity" to lift the band above its peers.

Commercial performance

Before its release, Juarbe thought Tell All Your Friends was good but was unsure how it would do commercially. At the time, all of Victory's releases were gauged against Thursday, who had sold around 100,000 copies of their releases. only 2,000 copies were sold in the album's first week of release. At the time, this was the biggest opening week for a new artist on Victory. near the end of the year, sales stood at 252,000. By April 2004 the album had sold nearly 400,000 copies, and by September 2005 it was certified gold by the RIAA. In June 2023, the album reached platinum status. By May 2009, the album had sold 790,000 copies in the US, eventually selling one million copies worldwide. Tell All Your Friends is Taking Back Sunday and Victory Records' bestselling release. It would also become Victory's longest-running record on the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts. "Great Romances of the 20th Century" charted at number 33 on UK Rock & Metal Singles chart in 2011.

Legacy

Best-of lists, influence and retrospective reviews

Drowned in Sound included the album on their list of top albums of 2002. According to Alternative Press Philip Obenschain, Tell All Your Friends "has remained one of the scene's most celebrated and influential releases". The album was included in Rock Sound 101 Modern Classics list at number 13, and the magazine considered it "[t]he Hybrid Theory of emo". They later ranked it at number 35 on the list of best albums in their lifetime. Billboard said "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" "basically helped popularize post-hardcore and emo to the public". Tell All Your Friends has been included on several best-of emo album lists by A.Side TV, Alternative Press, Houston Press, Junkee, NME, and Rolling Stone, as well as by journalists Leslie Simon and Trevor Kelley in their book Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture (2007). Similarly, "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" appeared on a best-of emo songs list by Vulture, while Loudwire included "There's No 'I' in 'Team" on their own list. Alternative Press included "You're So Last Summer" and "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" at numbers 81 and 5, respectively, on their list of the best 100 singles from the 2000s. Brandon McMaster of the Crimson Armada cited the album as an influence, while Derek Sanders, lead vocalist of Mayday Parade, has expressed admiration for it. CMJ New Music Monthly writer Andrew Bonazelli predicted that the record would be "a solid bet for the future of rock radio [...] Should pimp-metal eventually go the way of the grunge or glam-rock dodo, the masses' ears just might be taken back by Taking Back Sunday." and emo would become a mainstream fixture in music by the summer of 2002. |group="nb"

Chris Collum wrote for AbsolutePunk that Tell All Your Friends "grabs the listener's attention from the start" and the album expressed "feelings that are completely genuine, not contrived, rehearsed or formulaic, without being over-the-top or sappy". Collum called Lazzara and Nolan's vocal delivery "rapid-fire" in a "back-and-forth way, as if they were carrying on a dialogue, [that] allows you to really attach to and get a sense of the raw emotion behind the songs".

A CD/DVD version of the album was released in November 2005. The CD included "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva" and an acoustic version of "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" as bonus tracks; live acoustic versions of "You Know How I Do" and "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", and an interview as enhanced content. The DVD featured the music videos to "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "You're So Last Summer", "Great Romances of the 20th Century" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey". Four of the album's tracks were included as part of the Notes from the Past compilation in 2007. Tell All Your Friends was performed live in its entirety at Bamboozle 2011. In a 2011 interview with CMJ, Lazzara and Nolan chose the album's final track ("Head Club") as their least-favorite Taking Back Sunday song. In 2015, Lazzara said that he disliked his vocals on the album: "I was just yelling everything hoping it fit in there somehow, trying to paint with some strange color."

To celebrate Tell All Your Friends 10th anniversary, the band toured the US in October and November 2012 with support from Bayside. In November, the album charted on the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart, peaking at number eight. The recordings were made in Los Angeles and Chicago. In September, the band performed two electric versions of the album in New Jersey. TAYF10 Acoustic and TAYF10: Live from Starland Ballroom were released as a double-DVD set in December, and TAYF10 Acoustic was released on vinyl. In 2014, Cooper said that Warner Bros. wanted the group to re-record Tell All Your Friends during the Taking Back Sunday (2011) sessions; Cooper replied to them, "Are you nuts?" Throughout 2019, the band performed Tell All Your Friends in its entirety for their 20th anniversary world tour. To help promote the tour, a career-spanning compilation Twenty (2019) was released, which included "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "You're So Last Summer" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey" from Tell All Your Friends. A remastered version of Tell All Your Friends was released on vinyl in 2019; a 20th anniversary edition was released on May 27, 2022.

Track listing

All music written by Taking Back Sunday. All lyrics written by Adam Lazzara and John Nolan. All recordings produced by Sal Villanueva.

Taking Back Sunday

  • Shaun Cooper – bass guitar
  • Adam Lazzara – lead vocals
  • John Nolan – lead guitar, keyboard, vocals
  • Mark O'Connell – drums, percussion
  • Eddie Reyes – rhythm guitar

Additional musicians

  • Neil Rubenstein – vocals (tracks 4, 7, and 10)
  • Michelle Nolan – vocals (tracks 2 and 6)
  • Matt McDannell – vocals (track 10)
  • Sal Villaneuva – additional guitar

Production

  • Sal Villanueva – producer, mixing
  • Michele Logo – photography
  • John Clark – front cover artwork
  • Adam Lazzara – back tray photo
  • Patrick Larson – layout
  • Rumblefish – mixing
  • Erin Farley – engineer
  • Tim Gilles – engineer, mastering
  • Arun Venkatesh – engineer

Charts

Weekly charts

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

|+ Chart performance for the original release of Tell All Your Friends

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! scope="col"| Chart (2002–04)

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

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|-

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

|+ Chart performance for the reissue of Tell All Your Friends

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! scope="col"| Chart (2012)

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

|-

|}

Year-end charts

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

|+ Year-end chart performance for Tell All Your Friends

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!Chart (2003)

!Position

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!scope="row" | US Billboard Independent Albums Year-end

| 10

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Certifications