2005 (Or, the year Fall Out Boy became so much more than a sidekick to Radioactive Man)
5. “Sooner Or Later” – Breaking Benjamin
Sooner or later /
You're gonna hate it / Go ahead and throw our life away / Driving me under /
Leaving me out there / Go ahead and throw our life away
First, I’d like to offer a tip of the cap to Green Day who
put 2 songs into my top 10 for 2005. Interestingly,
“Sooner or Later” is one of three songs that Mandie I shared in our top 5 for
this year (along with my #3 and #1). Breaking
Benjamin is just one of those groups I’m supposed to like, right? I’ve never
heard an alternative music fan say anything negative about them. I must admit that I haven’t dug much deeper
into these guys than their singles.
Maybe I should because many of them rank highly on my personal lists.
4. “Photograph” – Nickelback
Every memory of
lookin' out the back door / I have the photo album spread out on my bedroom
floor / It's hard to say it / Time to say it / Good bye, good bye
Whoa, wait a minute.
A Nickelback song?! I’m certainly
not a Nickelback apologist, but I must interject before you roll your eyes and
vehemently protest the remainder of this list or mini-series. Somewhere along the line, Nickelback became
this decade’s version of Creed. It
became trendy to bash them and point to their existence as everything that’s
wrong with modern rock music. You
wouldn’t be caught dead listening to them.
Except that you probably did once upon a time. You may run from your past but I’m not going
to. If you distance yourself from it,
it’s like it never happened right?
Nickelback’s initial sound was too unrefined for my liking and now they
are puppets of the blurred pop/rock radio sound (oops, there I go too). But there was a window in there when All the Right Reasons was released that
I appreciated their work. It’s sort of
appropriate that I get to discuss this song now. As part of my move into my new house, I
packed and unpacked various items that hadn’t been seen in years – high school
yearbooks, basketball card collections, old jerseys from sports teams I played
on. Like most people, I paused to take a
look and reflect. Memories came flooding
back in. If you’re feeling particularly nostalgic,
“Photograph” can accompany your trip down memory lane. I could write you pages of stories from my
past but, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
3. “Work” – Jimmy Eat World
Can't say I was never
wrong / But some blame rests on you / Work and play they're never okay / To mix
the way we do
I was pleased when this song snuck its way into Q101’s top
101 for this year because that meant that I got to include it here. Futures
is one of my favorite albums, and “Work” has always been a song that reassured
me of myself. The posted lyrics were
always my justification for my rule of not dating co-workers. Every good rule needs a supporting argument
and I fashioned Jimmy Eat World were as good an expert as any to cite. I’ve begun to revisit all of my rules
recently. I’ve even broken a couple of
them; the results have been mixed but I regret nothing. Maybe I’m turning a page in my life. I even considered clearing the slate of
strikes that people have accumulated and scrapping the system altogether, but
that would be lunacy. People MUST know
there are consequences for their actions.
Turning a page? Maybe not.
2. “Scars” – Papa Roach
I tear my heart open,
I sew myself shut / And my weakness is that I cared too much / And our scars
remind us that the past is real / I tear my heart open just to feel
Fun fact: Papa Roach lead
singer Jacoby Shaddix credits this song as the one that saved his life after a
particularly crazy night in Vegas. It’s
about trying to help someone who really doesn’t want the help. We’ve all got our own scars from the past, so
we can all relate to the song in some way.
Caring too much isn’t a fault I’ve typically been accused of. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve never had my
heart broken but that’s just another way of saying that I never really tried to
let someone in. To quote one of my favorite
movies High Fidelity: “I guess it made more sense to commit to
nothing, keep my options open. And
that's suicide. By tiny, tiny
increments.” My scars are far less
visible to the naked eye but a million tiny paper cuts doesn’t hurt any
less. Anybody got any Band-Aids? Never mind.
I’d be too stubborn to use them anyway.
1. “Sugar, We’re Goin Down” – Fall Out Boy
We're going down, down
in an earlier round / And Sugar, we're going down swinging / I'll be your
number one with a bullet / A loaded god complex, cock it and pull it
I was looking someone to carry the torch forward and become
a new go-to group. One day, I saw the
video for “Sugar We’re Goin Down” and I was amused by the story of a boy with
antlers being looked at disapprovingly by his girlfriend’s father only to find
out the father ended up having hooves himself.
More importantly, I took notice of the song itself and I wanted to know
more about this band. “Dance, Dance” and
“A Little Less Sixteen Candles…” (which is a pretty cool video in its own right
and deserves your time below) eventually satisfied my rule of 3 so From Under the Cork Tree was
purchased. It did not disappoint. The album could be played in a variety of
settings regardless of my mood. I
particularly enjoy listening to it this song while driving in the car with the windows
down. I also appreciated Fall Out Boy’s
cheeky, verbose song titles, such as “Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of
This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued.” A
new go-to group had indeed emerged.
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