By Spencer Schneier, Staff Writer

Published in print Oct. 1, 2014

The first album I ever bought was From Under the Cork Tree by Fall Out Boy. It was a big moment for me- I had stepped away from “pop” music and into the realm of exploring my own taste.

At the time, Fall Out Boy was still a band with slashing, driving guitar sound and an angry Patrick Stump singing about how he “read about the afterlife. But I never really lived.” This was a significant shift at the time, away from pop music and into this realm of pseudo-punk (whether Fall Out Boy were ever truly a punk group is certainly up for debate, so I leave it at that.)

Whether it was “real music” or not, I was hooked. While I tend to constantly search for and add new artists to my salvo, I do not typically drop bands from the group from which I listen.  This loyalty to Fall Out Boy did not create much of an issue early on, even when in 2007 they released their third major album “Infinity on High”.

Along the way, of course, new tastes were developed (whether Linkin Park and All American Rejects count as “new” here is debatable I suppose), and with this a certain desire to expand my musical horizons came along. Fall Out Boy released a new album, “Folie A Deux”, in 2008.

This album presented the first significant shift in their sound, and perhaps it is fitting to the narrative that I had significantly shifted my music interests around the same time. While Fall Out Boy produced their first pop-sounding album, I had shifted to rap and hip-hop music.

This shift from rock to more popular-sounding rap and hip-hop came as a result of the normal urges to fit in, and for a few years I went through the proverbial dark ages of music. Listening to artists like Drake and Eminem, I lost music in a sense. It was no longer a major bearer on my life or my moods.

Shortly after releasing “Folie A Deux”, Fall Out Boy broke up.

A few years later, I began listening to rock again. Once again I was immersing myself in bands like The Black Keys, Cage The Elephant and basically anything Jack White was involved in or endorsed in any way. When I got my Spotify account set up, it came time to build my master playlist of “Good Songs” (as it is titled). Even after this renaissance of sorts, there were a few Fall Out Boy songs on the list, but they were hardly a fixture in my day-to-day music consumption.

It was a brisk afternoon in 2013 when I received a text from a childhood friend (and Fall Out Boy lifer) that they had released a new song and had an album on the way. I was excited- after all they had not quite established that their sound would be any different.

When I first listened to their new album (fittingly in the bathroom washing my hands) I was not impressed. It sounded much more like the Jonas Brothers than any Fall Out Boy I had previously known.

After many listens, I came to tolerate it, and for no reason in particular I continued to listen to it for a while. Despite my newfound “good music” (we all go through a music elitist phase), I couldn’t help but enjoy hearing Patrick Stump in my headphones again.

This caused me to face some inconsistencies in my behavior. After all, how could I consider myself a music connoisseur when I was listening to Fall Out Boy’s best impersonation of The Backstreet Boys?

But it was this consideration- or cognitive dissonance- that led me to consider the fact that music (and art) is entertainment first. Similarly to the rules we see in sports for being a “real fan,” music sees these music elitist who try to establish what “real music” is. No one person can be a judge of something that is so subjective, so aesthetic, as music and more generally, art.

It was Ryan Downing of Greensboro-based Jonas Sees in Color who said to me that there are no rules in rock n’ roll. No one can try to add labels such as “good” or “bad” to one’s choice of expression. Whether that puts me, a soon-to-be- 18 year old boy in the same boat as many 12 year old girls (at a recent Fall Out Boy concert), so be it.

Even with their new single “Centuries” sounding like more of the same, I can’t help but enjoy listening to the energetic vocals of Patrick Stump.

There are no rules, there is no right or wrong. It’s music.