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When From Under The Cork Tree was released in 2005, it was a turning point, not only for FALL OUT BOY, but for the emo scene of the early 2000s. Lead single Sugar, We’re Goin Down skyrocketed to success, and FALL OUT BOY ushered emo into the mainstream. 20 years since its release it is still as influential as it was when it was first released, paving a way for a new generation of the scene.
The album came about as a part of FALL OUT BOY’s deal to release their first album Take This To Your Grave on Fuelled By Ramen, and to move to Island Records for the follow up. Take This To Your Grave saw FALL OUT BOY emerge from Chicago’s hardcore scene with the drive to infuse their music with pop hooks and sensibilities. Frequent live shows and spots on the 2004 Warped Tour gathered the beginnings of a following. With From Under The Cork Tree as their major label debut, and off the back of the success of Take This To Your Grave, the pressure was on to deliver.
This pressure placed on the sophomore album plagued bassist Pete Wentz. In the making of the album, Wentz overdosed on anxiety medication, an experience that is candidly shared in the track 7 Minutes In Heaven (Atavan Halen), “I’m having another episode / I just need a higher dose.” In an interview with The Independent following the album’s release Wentz reflects “It is particularly overwhelming when you are on the cusp of doing something very big and thinking that it will be a big flop. I was racked with self-doubt.” Following the incident, Wentz returned to his family home in Chicago and began therapy, rejoining the band in corporate housing in Burbank, California later on to record the album.
From Under The Cork Tree deals with the anxiety and depression that was so prevalent in its making, and this honesty reached the hearts of listeners. Vocalist Patrick Stump and bassist Pete Wentz returned to a process they had explored on a few tracks from Take This To Your Grave, where Wentz would write lyrics that Stump would then write music around them, introducing R&B, metal, and folk influences into their sound. Wentz described the lyrical process as “more introspective”, a thread that finds roots in the album’s self-awareness. With this, came a self-deprecation that found them always one step ahead of their public image. “We can fake it for the airwaves / force our smiles, baby, half dead / from comparing myself to everyone else around me.”
This writing process was not always frictionless. Stump reflects in DIY “There are a lot of parts where you can hear the push and pull” noting the wordiness of lyrics as a frequent hiccup. The wordiness of FALL OUT BOY songs has spurred various parodies, and was picked up by Rolling Stone who in 2006 described Sugar, We’re Goin Down as “last year’s catchiest rock single and certainly its most unintelligible.” Stump joked in the same interview with Rolling Stone that he slurs Wentz’s lyrics to “make them sound better.”
Two weeks prior to recording the album, FALL OUT BOY scrapped ten songs and wrote eight more, one of which was Sugar, We’re Goin Down. The album’s producer Neal Avron, who had previously worked with the likes of NEW FOUND GLORY, recalls hearing it and Dance, Dance, and thinking “‘I don’t know if they’re huge smashes, but they sound like great songs to me.’” Their label was hesitant to release the track as a single, with Wentz reflecting “they told us the chorus was too wordy and the guitars were too heavy and that the radio wasn’t going to play it.” Yet, on April 4th 2005, Sugar, We’re Goin Down was released as the album’s lead single. Its success was largely in part due to its endearing music video starring Donald Cumming of THE VIRGINS clad with antlers and vying for the love of a girl who’s father disapproves. The video began to circulate on MTV’s Total Request Live, and the growing support gained radio plays for the track. It peaked at number eight in both the US and the UK charts, won the band a VMA and has since gone triple platinum, standing as the band’s best selling single to date.
When From Under The Cork Tree was released on May 3rd 2005, it debuted at number nine on the US Billboard 200. Following the album’s release, FALL OUT BOY released Dance, Dance as its second single, which reached number nine in the US and eight in the UK, and won a VMA and two Teen Choice Awards. Third single A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’ peaked at number 65 in the US and 38 in the UK. Yet, FALL OUT BOY’s presence was undeniable. In 2006, the band were nominated for Best New Artist at the Grammys, and they re-releases the album with three new tracks and two remixes of Sugar, We’re Goin Down and Dance, Dance. In 2016, Rolling Stone listed the album as number nine on their ‘40 Greatest Emo Albums Of All Time’ list, and in 2025 listed it at number 135 on their ‘250 Greatest Albums of the 21st Century So Far’ list.
When FALL OUT BOY played the Warped Tour main stage alongside the likes of MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE in 2005, their fan base grew exponentially. Guitarist Joe Troham writes in his memoir “this was the moment, the one where I watched us become a big band in real time.” These bands became figureheads for a new wave of emo characterized by MySpace pages, swooping fringes and heavy eyeliner. Matt Watts (THE STARTING LINE) remarks “Once Sugar, We’re Goin Down caught on, it opened up the floodgates.” Emo flooded the mainstream, with FALL OUT BOY as the poster boys. Wentz reflects that “It was just a weird moment in culture where bands became the boy bands for a minute again.”
From Under The Cork Tree has since been cemented as a pivotal album, having influenced an entire wave of music that followed it. The album’s producer Neal Avron cites the album as crucial for the musical landscape that followed it “Even something like KATY PERRY’s I Kissed A Girl [released in 2008] can be traced back to emo-pop.” Awsten Knight (WATERPARKS) remembers it was “one of the first physical albums I bought. […] To this day Pete is probably my favourite lyricist. I remember listening along with the booklet being like, ‘Holy shit! This is so creative but it’s also how I feel.”
It is in this connection to emotion and creativity that found From Under The Cork Tree plant itself in the hearts of a generation. Aware of their position in the scene, FALL OUT BOY always stayed one step ahead of the curve in their self-awareness and willingness to take their sound in intriguing new directions. Paving the way for an entire scene to dominate the mainstream, From Under The Cork Tree was a crucial moment for emo, and the shaping of the scene as it stands today.
From Under the Cork Tree was originally released on May 3rd, 2005 via Island Records.
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