Never trust a band that wouldn’t bleed for you: Fall Out Boy at Target Center

Cover image: Fall Out Boy taking the stage

Fall Out Boy closes 2ourdust with the longest concert in the band’s history, reaffirming its dedication to fans

By M Yeager

Fall Out Boy is to me as Matchbox Twenty is to my dad. That is, many of our playlists despite our best efforts end up being at least half their songs, and they always come out as our top artists on Spotify Wrapped. This also means that we could give you quite possibly more information than you need on these bands. Fall Out Boy has held a special place in my heart for over a decade and seeing them in concert was exemplary. 

Prior to the April 6 Fall Out Boy concert at Target Center in Minneapolis, I had seen the band once before during the first leg of their current So Much For (Tour) Dust in Somerset, Wis., which ended up being a less-than-great experience due to inclement weather paired with poor venue management. When the second leg of the tour, aptly named So Much For (2our) Dust, was announced with a Twin Cities date, my dad and I were all too ready to see the band again in concert — this time indoors and with a full setlist.

The members of Fall Out Boy

The 8-Ball, Stump’s medley and the Healing Tour

Before going into the weeds of the whirlwind that was the April 6 concert, there are a few things that I must explain for those who aren’t familiar with Fall Out Boy and discussions in the fandom spaces of X and Tumblr.

During both (Tour) Dust and (2our) Dust, there were two important segments: the 8-Ball and vocalist Patrick Stump’s piano medley. 

The 8-Ball segment is a part of the show wherein bassist Pete Wentz and occasionally Stump ask a digital 8-Ball what song they should play, often cryptically referencing said song. The 8-Ball offers all of Fall Out Boy’s discography including demos up for grabs. Many of the 8-Balls have been lesser-known songs and songs that the band had not played since before the hiatus from 2009-2013 and were met with a lot of negative reception. Often, there is only one 8-Ball song, but on occasion, there has been more than one. 

During Stump’s medley, the rest of the band leaves the stage and much like the 8-ball, Stump is free to play anything from the band’s discography, as well as covers of songs from other artists. What makes the medley special — other than the fact that it is intimate and it offers a chance for songs that are not the band’s big hits — is a similar reason to the importance of the 8-Ball. It often includes songs that were met with a lot of negative reception initially. During the medley section, Stump played some of his solo work, which was also met with extensive negative reception previously simply because it was not Fall Out Boy. Stump had stated in the past that he would not play them live again because of this reception.

Both of these segments and their deliberate inclusion of past work that was demonized in the past has earned both (Tour) Dust and (2our) Dust the moniker of the “Healing Tour.” Both the band and the audience can be happy and comfortable with songs that were not as loved before. While many of the 8-Balls have been from before the hiatus, the inclusion of the older songs is not a nostalgia grab as you see from other bands that have been around a long time, but rather a genuine appreciation for these songs and the entire discography — old demos and black sheep songs and all.

April 6 concert

The April 6 concert was the last date of the tour leg, and it could not have ended on a higher note than it did. Throughout the tour, Fall Out Boy was supported by three other artists, and that night was supported by CARR, Hot Mulligan and Jimmy Eat World.

Each of the openers

As everyone’s favorite artist has been an opener at some point in their career, I must also give my appreciation for the openers for Fall Out Boy that night.  I had seen CARR at the Somerset, Wis. concert before, and I enjoyed her set very much. She is extremely energetic, and you can’t help but be as energetic as she is on stage.

Hot Mulligan was not my cup of tea, per se, but I enjoyed them and their stage presence nonetheless. Jimmy Eat World, the oldest artist there, was also excellent. I am not as big of a fan of them as I am of Fall Out Boy, but they do always bring me a sense of comfort and nostalgia as someone who was for the most part raised on 1990s and early 2000s alternative bands. 

Jimmy Eat World’s set ended early, and as I was checking X during the break before Fall Out Boy, I felt that something big was coming. As Fall Out Boy took to the stage with the opening to “Love from the Other Side,” I knew that this concert was going to be something that I wouldn’t forget. This feeling was reaffirmed when Wentz asked the crowd, “Should we make up for Somerset?” followed by energy permeating the entire venue erupting with anticipation, excitement and pure joy. 

The concert goes down in Fall Out Boy history with six 8-Balls and 33 songs, effectively making it the longest Fall Out Boy concert to date. All of the band’s albums, from their very first and often overlooked “Evening Out With Your Girlfriend” to their most recent “So Much (For) Stardust” were represented. 

“They played songs from all throughout their career and all the different albums,” said Megan Cohen ‘25 (Philosophy, Arts and Humanities/English minors) who went to the April 2 concert in Milwaukee, Wis., “each of which are incredibly meaningful in their own way, and each of which represents a different era of Fall Out Boy.”

Additional pictures from the concert

The band did not just perform their songs but truly put on a show to remember. The staging was intricate and engaging, including Wentz’s disappearing trick where he at first seemed to reappear in the large tree on stage and later on a rising platform in the crowd as well as the 8-Ball overhead. CARR was invited back on stage to perform the live debut of “Rat a Tat,” performing the parts of the song that Courtney Love sang in the studio version of the song. 

Fall Out Boy also celebrated the contributions of both the Twin Cities and greater Minnesota to wider music and the band itself. During “Chicago Is So Two Years Ago,” the band brought Minnesota native Justin Pierre of Motion City Soundtrack on stage to sing. During the medley, Stump performed Prince’s “Purple Rain.” Wentz mentioned that Minnesota was one of the first concerts outside of their native Illinois that the band played and thus holds a special place in the hearts of the band members. 

One thing that stuck out to both myself and Cohen was the sense of community that the concerts provided. While both of us went to our respective concerts with others, we both felt that if we had gone alone, we still would not have been alone. Cohen summed up my feelings and likely the feelings of many other Fall Out Boy fans when she noted, “the communal life-changing, soul-moving and incomparable experience of singing your heart out with 17,000 other people to songs that you’ve been listening to since you were 12.” 

Unfortunately, I cannot sum up my immense feelings and thoughts on the concert and Fall Out Boy as a whole without risking sounding like a teenage fangirl who lives wholly on the internet and has somewhat of a parasocial relationship with the band. However, the way in which Wentz outwardly stated that this concert would make up for Somerset and the way that each band member was breathless but grinning by the end of the concert has cemented the band’s 20+ year long dedication to the fans for me. This sheer dedication reminded me of the oft-quoted line from one of Wentz’s since-deleted blog posts from 2008 titled ‘To you (off the top of my head)” which is also the title of this review — “Never trust a band that wouldn’t bleed for you.” 

While Fall Out Boy is not everyone’s cup of tea, I sincerely hope that you, dear readers, find an artist who is dedicated to you as their fan and would bleed for you in the same way Fall Out Boy does for theirs.