"Love From The Other Side" is about a difficult situation where Patrick Stump laments his pain. The lyrics are packed with metaphors and allegories. It's difficult to glean whether the song takes place during a relationship or after its breakup, but it's clear Stump understands that pain is a necessary part of the healing process and he looks forward to feeling better in the end.
Sending my love from the other side of the apocalypse
And I just about snapped, don't look back
Every lover's got a little dagger in their hand
Their romance used to be beautiful. She was once the "sunshine of my lifetime," but now Stump's life with her is akin to hell. He compares it to an apocalypse, but nothing can extinguish the love they once shared. The singer regrets his failings and sends her his love from that dark place.
"Love From The Other Side" is the first single from So Much (for) Stardust. The album reunites Fall Out Boy with producer Neal Avron, who worked with them on From Under the Cork Tree (2005), Infinity on High (2007) and Folie à Deux (2008). "Neal not only taught us how to make records, but has a unique capacity to really take time and focus on a record," said Stump. "We thought it was a no-brainer to work with him again, on a record where that was very important to us, and he was gracious enough to agree to work with us."
So Much (for) Stardust also marks the band's return to Fueled By Ramen, their original record label, which last released their 2003 debut longplayer, Take This to Your Grave, in 2003. The other label behind the release, DCD2, is a Fueled by Ramen imprint owned by Patrick Stump and his Fall Out Boy bandmate Pete Wentz.
Fall Out Boy debuted "Love From The Other Side" live on the January 18, 2023 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The band performed it as a trio because the performance came hours after co-founder guitarist Joe Trohman announced he was taking an indefinite hiatus from the group to tend his mental health issues. Patrick Stump took his place on lead guitar.
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Fall Out Boy have been labeled as an emo band, but emo music is traditionally characterized by expressing hurt and emotions. The lyrics written by Pete Wentz for
So Much (for) Stardust are much more profound in their expression of pain.
"It's the kind of hurt you get when you're in your early 40s, you look around at the state of the world and think, 'Jeez,'" Stump told
NME. "There's something about what he had to say throughout the whole album that really resonated with me. 'Love From The Other Side' definitely has this very mature bitterness to it."
"Love From The Other Side" sees Fall Out Boy return to their guitar-driven roots after the band moved away from their early emo power chords to a more experimental sound on 2008's Folie à Deux. The lead single from So Much (for) Stardust may have that classic Fall Out Boy energy but, according to Stump, "it's not a throwback record."
"I didn't want to go back to a specific style, but I wanted to imagine what would it have sounded like if we had made a record right after Folie à Deux instead of taking a break for a few years," he told NME. "It was like exploring the multiverse. It was an experiment in seeing what we would have done."
"Love From The Other Side" incorporates concepts that Stump had previously come up with for Folie, which were unfulfilled, such as the orchestral section and the piano introduction. The track opens the album, because the Fall Out Boy singer wanted to establish that the record would explore new territory. "It's not a warm, fuzzy rejoiner of our previous stuff," he said.
During the first verse, Stump references an incident that took place in 1991 when Italian artist Piero Cannata attacked Michelangelo's famous statue of David with a small hammer he had concealed beneath his jacket. He damaged the second toe of the left foot before being restrained.
We were a hammer to the Statue of David
We were a painting you could never frame
Is Stump singing about the band here? Fall Out Boy challenged the conventions of rock music when they emerged in the early 2000s with their distinctive style, characterized by eyeliner, skinny jeans, and emo lyrics.
Fall Out Boy played the song for the first time in concert during their January 25, 2023 show at Chicago's legendary 1,100-capacity Metro.
