Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday, released on March 26, 2002, through Victory Records. The album title comes from a line in the chorus of the album's second single "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)".
Forming in 1999, the group underwent several lineup changes before settling on vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist and vocalist John Nolan, guitarist Eddie Reyes, bassist Shaun Cooper, and drummer Mark O'Connell. Taking Back Sunday released a five-song demo in early 2001, after which they toured the United States for most of the year. They rented a room in Lindenhurst, New York, where they wrote and demoed songs. In December 2001, the band signed with Victory Records; they began recording their debut album with producer Sal Villanueva at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in Jersey City, New Jersey.
"Great Romances of the 20th Century" was released as the lead single from Tell All Your Friends in March 2002. A few months later, Taking Back Sunday toured across the United States with Brand New and Rufio. At the end of the year, a Fight Club-inspired music video was released for "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", which was released as the album's second single in February 2003. The group spent the early part of 2003 touring with the Used and the Blood Brothers before headlining their own tour. After that, Nolan and Cooper left Taking Back Sunday and were replaced by Fred Mascherino and Matt Rubano. In September 2003, "You're So Last Summer" was released as the album's third single, and the band began co-headlining a tour with Saves the Day, which lasted until November 2003. By that point, a music video had been released for "You're So Last Summer".
Critics have given Tell All Your Friends mostly positive reviews, highlighting its mix of musical styles. It sold 2,000 copies in the first week after its release, charting at number 183 on the Billboard 200 chart. The album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the US and had sold 790,000 copies as of 2009; in 2023, it was certified platinum. It is Victory Records' longest-running release on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart at 68 weeks, and on the Independent Albums chart at 78 weeks. In 2012, the band toured to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Tell All Your Friends, playing an acoustic set on the anniversary tour, which was later released in 2013 as the live album TAYF10 Acoustic. It has been included on lists of the best emo albums of all time by publications such as Alternative Press, NME, and Rolling Stone.
Background Guitarist Eddie Reyes became a staple of the New York hardcore scene, performing in various bands such as the Movielife.Manley 2011, p. 89 He contacted friends Antonio Longo and Steven DeJoseph; the former suggested adding his childhood friend, John Nolan, as a second guitarist. Bassist Jesse Lacey, who was childhood friends with Longo and Nolan, then joined,Manley 2011, p. 90 marking the formation of Taking Back Sunday in Amityville, New York, in November 1999. After three-to-four months, Lacey left the band when Nolan reportedly romanced Lacey's girlfriend at a party, and later formed Brand New. Adam Lazzara saw Taking Back Sunday live and inquired if they needed a permanent bassist, and drove from his hometown of High Point, North Carolina to Long Island to practice with them. A month later, Reyes invited him to join them and move in with him. Mark O'Connell, who was friends with Reyes, was then asked to become their drummer.
After recording their self-titled EP, Longo left the band; in December 2000, Lazzara switched from bass to lead vocals. O'Connell suggested recruiting bassist Shaun Cooper, who he knew from various acts throughout school, though the rest of the band needed convincing since they did not know him. In February 2001, the band recorded a five-song demo, appropriately titled Tell All Your Friends, copies of which were given to anyone associated with a record label. They embarked on their first tour with Northstar in July 2001. Taking Back Sunday then spent the rest of the year touring, during which they received offers from labels. Among these was one from Triple Crown Records, who were apprehensive as they had just signed Brand New. The band caught the attention of Victory Records; within two weeks of seeing them live, a contract was written up,Manley 2011, p. 92 and they signed to the label in December 2001.
Production Although other labels expressed interest in Taking Back Sunday, Victory Records encouraged them to make an album. Tell All Your Friends was recorded over a period of two weeks in December 2001 at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in Jersey City, New Jersey with producer Sal Villanueva. The band were not aware of him, but went with him at the insistence of Victory Records as he worked on Full Collapse (2001) by labelmates Thursday. Taking Back Sunday arrived without a drum set, presuming that the studio would have one. Engineer Tim Gilles said, "No major studio in America has their own [drum] set. You've gotta be fucking kidding me". The group spent each day driving from Long Island to Jersey City; as all of the members had day jobs, they had to request time off to record. Cooper collectively recorded his bass parts in four hours, spread over half a day. Villanueva would come up with ideas and suggest them to the band. Towards the end of tracking around Christmas, Lazzara became sick and lost his voice for two days. It resulted in the band having to miss one to two weeks of recording time. The sessions concluded in early January 2002, and ended up costing $10,000. Villanueva had contributed guitar work and co-mixed the recordings with Gilles (under the alias Rumblefish).
When the band heard the final mixes, they realized that the studio staff had altered the recordings, namely sounds had been manipulated and the guitar tones differed from how they were recorded. The piano intro to "The Blue Channel", which was initially slow, was sped up to match the tempo of the rest of the song, which was four times faster. Cooper said that the band was unhappy with these choices, and mentioned that the intro to "Great Romances of the 20th Century" was similarly altered from a piano to a synthesizer. The band wanted to make adjustments but were told they were over time and over budget for these changes to happen. They wanted to re-record "Your Own Disaster" from their demo, but were unable to due to time and money constraints. Instead, it was re-recorded for their second studio album, Where You Want to Be (2004). Engineering was handled by Gilles, Erin Farley, and Arun Venkatesh, with mastering by Gilles at Surgical Sound. Neil Rubenstein, who later became the group's tour manager, contributed vocals to "There's No 'I' in Team", "Timberwolves at New Jersey" and "Head Club". Nolan's sister, Michelle, sang on "Bike Scene" and "Ghost Man on Third", and Matt McDannell contributed vocals to "Head Club". Nolan suggested his sister as he was aware that she had "an amazing voice".
Composition Overview
Tell All Your Friends sound would later be described as emo, pop-punk and post-hardcore , drawing comparisons to Grade, Fugazi, the Movielife (specifically their 2000 album This Time Next Year), Weezer, and Thursday.Bonazelli 2002, p. 58 A review from CMJ New Music Monthly noted that musically, the album sounded like "two guitars butt[ing] heads" to fuse "clean-channel pop melodies" with "chugging metal progressions". The vocals were reminiscent of Saves the Day, and the Canterbury Effect, often switching from singing to screaming. Around this time, emo bands the Get Up Kids and the Promise Ring influenced Taking Back Sunday. Lazzara and Nolan shared an apartment, often staying up talking until 5:00am, and began showing each other compositions on which they were working. Rubenstein would often find them composing songs with acoustic guitars.
Taking Back Sunday started jamming in a rehearsal room that Reyes had in Lindenhurst, New York, where they practiced and composed every night. The first song this lineup had written was "Great Romances of the 20th Century", which the members felt was better than anything they had done before, and that it sounded different from other Long Island acts, which were into pop and funk. The band frequently recorded demos; they wrote music together, while Lazzara and Nolan wrote the lyrics. One member would typically come up with a part, which the rest of the group would expand into a song.Taking Back Sunday 2005, event occurs at 2:32–46 Nolan wrote a lot of material and had various ideas. He would cut parts and sections out of one song he had been working on and it would eventually end up in a Taking Back Sunday song. Many songs featuring Lazzara and Nolan use call-and-response vocalssomething that Reyes' prior band Clockwise had done with their members Hanratty and George Fullan. When Reyes started Taking Back Sunday, he told Fullan that he wanted to include the dual vocals as it was something he really liked.
Personal experiences inspired Taking Back Sunday's lyrics.Taking Back Sunday 2005, event occurs at 3:03–12 For Nolan, several instances filtered into his lyrics: the falling-out with Lacey, whom he had known all of his life, affected how Nolan felt and what he was trying to work through in his writings; the ending of a five-year long-term relationship since high school and the subsequent process of figuring who you are and what you want to be as a result; and coming to terms with his born again Christian upbringing and the realization that he did not believe in his life up to that point. Nolan and Lazzara had a concept where some of the lyrics could be read "like a play where one line is the boy and the next line is the girl... Sometimes when you read the lyrics it's a little boring and it's more interesting this way". According to Nolan, about half of their song titles came from "sitting around late at night watching TV". The songs followed the structure of: quiet verse, loud bridge, big chorus, repeat, breakdown, chorus, ending. For almost every track, the breakdown consists of Lazzara and Nolan intertwining their vocal parts, crescendoing into screaming.
Tracks
"You Know How I Do" is a mid-tempo track that opens with feedback, which shifts into Nolan's guitar part before the drums join in. A breakdown is heard later in the song, with bass accompaniment and contrasting vocal lines. "Bike Scene", another mid-tempo song, starts with palm-muted guitar parts. Nolan said its name was taken from American Thunder, which had an episode titled "Monterey Peninsula Bike Scene", while the lyrics were potentially inspired by him reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (2000) by Dave Eggers and Lazzara reading Fight Club (1996) by Chuck Palahniuk. The line "it's a campaign of distraction and revisionist history" is directly taken from Eggers' book, which was one of Nolan's favorite reads. Lazzara and O'Connell came up with the opening riff for "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" while at Lazzara's father's house in North Carolina. Nolan suggested it be expanded into a full song after it was brought into practice sessions. The lyrics resulted from a relationship that Lazzara had recently left; an underlying theme of betrayal is present. The track's name came from the band's friend Mike Duvan who said the phrase "cut from the team".Taking Back Sunday 2019, event occurs at 5:26–43 It opens with a four-chord guitar intro before shifting into single-note verses.