When Fall Out Boy released their debut album Take This to Your Grave in 2003, pop punk was alternative while also gaining mainstream popularity. Some of the most widely-loved albums of the genre were all released in the early 2000s. However the Chicago lads' debut was a different pop punk album. Under-appreciated on first release, Take This To Your Grave is now considered a mainstay of the genre; in part for the things that made it hard for critics and audiences to get their head round in the first place.

To understand why Fall Out Boy’s debut album is special however, we first have to know where they came from. When the four founding (and current) members of the band—lead singer Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, drummer Andy Hurley and guitarist Joe Trohman—met, they were all involved in the hardcore scene in Chicago. Wentz was a big name in hardcore, performing in bands like Birthright and Racetraitor, the latter of which Hurley was also in; and Stump was a drummer in grindcore band Xgrinding processX, while Trohman’s primary project was heavy metal supergroup The Damned Things.

Trohman and Wentz formed Fall Out Boy because they were dissatisfied with hardcore. Speaking to Alt Press in 2013 for a ten-year anniversary issue, they said they envisioned the band as a “pop punk side project” to do in their spare time. That hardcore influence is one of the first things that made Fall Out Boy (and with them, Grave) different. Wentz has called the sound of the band “softcore” because they took hardcore elements—like Pete’s unclean backing vocals—and teamed them with the more traditionally pop punk sound and over-emotional lyrics. The songs were energetic, pure pop punk but also contained elements that gave them an edge.

While Patrick initially was a drummer for the band, they soon realized that what he actually should be doing was singing. Pop punk often falls into some stereotypes, and the vocals we associate with the genre tend to be vocally and nasally, veering towards whiny—Tom Delonge being a more extreme example. Patrick Stump, unlike a lot of pop punk singers, can really fucking sing. His apparent inability to enunciate has made him the object of some derision over the years, but for the most part, he has a legitimately soulful, huge voice that even the harshest reviewers haven’t been able to truly fault. To this day he’s the only singer of his kind in pop punk; just one of many things that made Fall Out Boy, and their debut album, stand out.