No. 4: Fall Out Boy Have Smiles On Their Faces

And the song at No. 4 invites you to open your mind and shake your behind.

So when Idolator started I was pretty lukewarm-to-bitchy about Fall Out Boy, but over the course of this year, thanks in part to the ravings of ex-Idolator boss Brian Raftery and the whole shared adoration for the Josie & The Pussycats soundtrack thing–not to mention the fact that in the year that Indie Rock Broke it was kinda nice to hear songs with guitars that didn’t sound like they’d been forcibly neutered before they were committed to tape–I relented. Especially after hearing the ferociously epic pop song “The Take Over, The Break’s Over.” You’ve got the pogo-stick guitar and ratatat drumming that usher in the proceedings, the chorus that is never going to not make me think of Pebbles’ “Girlfriend” in an abstract way^*, the swooping hoisted-fist-worthy dual-axe action at the end, and the line about conjugal visits. It’s audaciously all over the place in a “let’s see if this will stick” sort of way, but (probably for that reason) it went pretty much nowhere as a single, garnering a fraction of the spins that even the old (and way inferior!) “Sugar, We’re Goin’ Down” did over the course of this past year and being pretty much a hit only in the alternate musical universe that is TRL. (Dear bands out there: This is a(nother!) sign that I should never, ever pick your singles. So don’t ask, because it’ll just be too painful for all of us.)

Fall Out Boy – The Take Over The Breaks Over [MySpace] Fall Out Boy [MySpace] Idolator’s 2007 Top 40 List Of Awesomeness [Photo: Getty]

^* Yeah, I have no idea. Maybe it’s a lasting effect of sleeping through my clock radio a lot back in the late ’80s.