Fall Out Boy biography

While walking across the stage to receive the MTV2 Award for "Sugar, We're Going Down," the only thing on Fall Out Boy bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz's mind was "please don't drop an f-bomb." Shortly thereafter the band, originally from suburban Chicago, was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist. But the accolades didn't stop there. Fall Out Boy won 3 Teen Choice Awards, and the video for "Dance, Dance" won the MTV Video Music Awards for Viewer's Choice, and was nominated for Best Group Video. For all their success, the band members have stayed true to their roots; not in the sense that they haven't changed, but in the sense that they're making music they love to hear and aren't changing to appease the tides of trend. Fame has never been the driving force behind the music for the band, and all the recent success hasn't quite sunk in yet. "I don't think of music as a career," Wentz says, "until certain things jar it for you." When pressed for an example, he cites the thousands of screaming fans who greet him when he gets on stage. Self-described nerds, they'd still be working just as hard on their music whether they were playing for an audience of 5 thousand, or an audience of 5. "The more you try to please everybody, the less you end up pleasing anybody," says Patrick Vaughn Stump, Fall Out Boy lead singer and guitarist.