Champion
Fall Out Boy
"Champion" is Fall Out Boy at their most nakedly motivational, and it's a strange, brittle kind of motivation. The track is built on a stuttering, digitally chopped vocal figure and a synth bass that lurches rather than grooves — *M A N I A* was a record obsessed with texture over riffs, and this is one of its cleaner statements. Patrick Stump sings the verses tight and clipped, then opens into that enormous soul-schooled belt on the hook, a voice that always sounds like it's straining against the smallness of the man it comes from. The lyric is Pete Wentz's specialty: an anthem with a wound in it. "If I can live through this, I can do anything" isn't triumph, it's a bargain made in the dark, and the follow-up line about wanting to be remembered turns the whole thing into a fear of erasure dressed as a rally cry. It arrived when the band's original scene audience had aged into adulthood, and it reads as a song about surviving your twenties rather than conquering them. Right for the last ten minutes of a workout, or for driving somewhere at 2 a.m. having decided something.
fast
2010s
brittle, electronic, anthemic
American
pop rock, electropop. synth-pop rock. defiant, anthemic. clipped, tense verses break open into a soaring, wound-tinged rallying hook. energy 8. fast. danceability 5. valence 6. vocals: clipped verses, soaring soul belt, strained, emotive. production: digitally chopped vocal figure, lurching synth bass, texture-forward, clean arena mix. texture: brittle, electronic, anthemic. acousticness 2. era: 2010s. American. the last ten minutes of a workout, or driving alone at 2 a.m. having just decided something