In 2002-2003, I was a sixteen-year-old emo kid who discovered all my music through scouring message boards, cross-referencing the thank yous in CD liner notes, or watching hours of Fuse TV. I was ingesting a healthy diet of Thrice, Sunny Day Real Estate, Fugazi, pre-hiatus Weezer, Zao, and the like.
And when the Fuse airwaves started being infested with at three All-American Rejects videos on heavy rotation (was it only three? I could have sworn it was at least five), I had an almost visceral reaction. It was the cheesiest, most cliche, overproduced schlocky pop punk I had ever heard. It was so pop punk it was almost devoid of any punk ethos at all. It felt like the exact embodiment of copycats who heard Dashboard Confessional and learned the exact wrong lesson.
And for years, I endured it angrily.
But after I graduated, I was driving around with a friend and flipping through their CDs when I found this and threw it in as a joke. And to my utter surprise—and the disappointment of my punk cred—I realized that this album totally bangs.