The American rock band Fall Out Boy formed in Illinois in 2001when high schoolers Pete Wentz and Joe Trohman decided to join forces. The band has been called pop punk or pop rock, but Fall Out Boy refers to themselves as “soft”: hard-core punk. The band built their sound off the artists they listened to growing up, including Green Day, Descendants, and The Smiths.

According to Absolutepunk.net, a website that profiles bands, in early 2001 Wentz and Trohman, who both had played in multiple hard-core punk bands, decided to form their own band. Guitarist Trohman met vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump in a Borders bookstore. Stump introduced himself when he heard Trohman talking about a band they both liked. Stump’s impressive vocal range earned him the role of lead vocalist, even though he auditioned as a drummer.

For their first two shows, Fall Out Boy was nameless, and the band decided the audience should name them. When the band asked for names, one audience member suggested “Fallout Boy,” a reference to the sidekick of Radioactive man from The Simpsons.

Wentz described the band’s sound as “soft”: hard-core punk mixed with pop sensibility, “I think the interesting thing is that we are all hardcore kids that are writing pop music…it gives us a different style because at our core we are always hard-core. That aspect is always going to be evident in our music. We are hard-core kids that couldn’t quite cut it as hardcore kids.”

The central part of Fall Out Boy’s sound comes from the band’s lyrics, mainly penned by the band’s bassist Wentz. Wentz commonly uses literary devices including irony to narrate personal stories and experiences. Freshman Cynthia likes Fall Out Boy, in part, because “the messages in their music are real and people can connect with them.” Fall Out Boy has a different sound than the robotic hums or quick, spoken words of the music most youth listen to today. “They give you a free feeling”, freshman Similouwa Oni said. “They are original and just plain fabulous”, Savannah Kunze said.

People can connect with the words that come from Wentz and Stump. The “hard-core kids” have a different sound from many other bands and musical artists of today. You may like the “soft” hard-core rock or not; either way, they created have a unique sound for themselves.