Patrick Stump Song Quotations

'As Long As I Know I'm Getting Paid' is a satire. Lyrically, I want to be direct. With my history in Fall Out Boy, there's some expectation that I'm going to be lyrically obtuse. But that song is a straight-faced satire of consumerism.

When you're No. 1 or No. 300, you still get to play and write the songs.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

There are some bands for whom that works very well and it's no disrespect to them because I'm sure there's something honest and natural about it, but for us I feel like it would be dishonest and kinda disrespectful to that artwork to do that. To be like: "Okay, we're going to go back and only play these songs, even though we have an hour to an hour and a half set and we gotta play more songs, but we'll skimp you on your extra half hour." That's just silly to me.

The song that's affected me the most profoundly is probably Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' or, more specifically, the couple seconds of instrumental break before Vincent Price starts 'rapping.'

I'm really attracted to music that sort of toes that line between pop and avant-garde, that pushes the envelope of what you can get in a pop song.

I don't see the songs as uplifting, but rather as trying to make lemonade from lemons, or whatever. When I listen to them, I understand the context. I don't like to pepper songs with my own experiences, though.

Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.