Tell All Your Friends
Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday, released on March 26, 2002, through Victory Records. 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 New Jersey.
Tell All Your Friends
"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)". 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 second 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.
Production[edit]
Although other labels expressed interest in Taking Back Sunday, Victory Records encouraged them to make an album.[17] Tell All Your Friends was recorded over a period of two weeks in December 2001 at Big Blue Meenie Recording Studio in New Jersey with producer Sal Villanueva.[18][19] 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.[20] 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".[17] 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.[16][21] Cooper collectively recorded his bass parts in four hours, spread over half a day.[22] Villanueva would come up with ideas and suggest them to the band.[23] 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.[22] The sessions concluded in early January 2002, and ended up costing $10,000.[18][24] Villanueva had contributed guitar work and co-mixed the recordings with Gilles (under the alias Rumblefish).[19][25] 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.[26]
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.[16] The band wanted to make adjustments but were told they were over time and over budget for these changes to happen.[22] They wanted to re-record "Your Own Disaster" from their demo, but were unable to due to time and money constraints.[17] 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.[25] 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".[13][19] Nolan suggested his sister as he was aware that she had "an amazing voice".[17]
Release[edit]
Initial promotion, and Nolan and Cooper's departures[edit]
On February 21, 2002, the release date for Tell All Your Friends was announced as March, and "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" was posted online.[55] A music video for "Great Romances of the 20th Century" directed by Christian Winters, a friend of the band, was released on March 4.[56] Winters made the video before the group signed with Victory Records; the record company enjoyed it.[17] The song was distributed to radio stations on March 12, 2002; Tell All Your Friends was released on March 26, 2002.[32][56] John Clark shot the cover art, which featured the number 152, alluding to a gas station Lazzara and his friends would stop at Exit 152 off Interstate 40 in Mebane, North Carolina.[8][19] The back cover is a photograph of the exit sign.[8][nb 4] The vinyl version included the bonus track "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva".[41] To promote the album, Victory founder Tony Brummel targeted people who were familiar with the label and also emo fans. In Chicago, Illinois, New York City and Los Angeles, California, Victory gave out 20,000 sampler albums at a cost of about $100,000; Brummel considered this a better investment than attempting to gain radio airplay. RED Distribution, who handled distribution for Victory, was aware that the group did not have radio play and began posting about the album on emo websites. A Yahoo! Group with over 1,300 fans could download demos of "Bike Scene" and "Head Club", which was hoped would increase sales.[57][nb 5] TV commercials aired on the relatively new channels MTV2 and Fuse.[22]
While in Los Angeles, Midtown frontman Gabe Saporta visited Jillian Newman. He had been sent a package of Victory Records' releases by a friend and was playing them in Newman's office. The only one that grabbed her attention was Tell All Your Friends; she asked what it was.[16] She subsequently watched the band at the SXSW music conference; by June 2002, she started managing them.[9] On December 10, 2002, a music video was released for "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)" on Launch.com.[58] The video, conceived and directed by Winters, was inspired by the 1999 film Fight Club (a favorite of Nolan and Lazzara).[36] Lazzara's original idea for the video had men fighting women, which was rejected by Winters and Victory before Lazzara and Winters expanded it in the final version.[36][59]
Touring[edit]
After receiving a $10,000 advance from Victory Records, Taking Back Sunday purchased a van and trailer for touring.[16] In January 2002, the band toured with Rival Schools.[77] For three weeks beginning in mid-March 2002, Taking Back Sunday participated in the Victory Records tour alongside Catch 22, Grade, Student Rick and Reach the Sky.[56][77] In April and May 2002, the band started their first full tour of the United States supporting the Lawrence Arms.[16][24] This trek also included appearances at the Skate & Surf and Purgatory festivals.[78][79] During the first show of the tour, most of the crowd dispersed when the Lawrence Arms came on as Taking Back Sunday became the main draw.[16] The band then toured that summer supporting Brand New, alongside Rufio.[16][80] The tour had been in the works since the end of 2001; by that point, Nolan and Lacey had not spoken in around a year. Nolan viewed it as a sign that Lacey wanted to rebuild their friendship. After a week or two of the tour being underway, Taking Back Sunday joined Brand New onstage during their performances of "Seventy Times 7", and Lacey returned the favor for "There's No 'I' in Team".[16]
In addition, shows were often sold out and being upgraded to bigger venues, which would sell out. When this occurred, the group was given extra money. Nolan said: "And it was the first time we actually came home and had money, like we made money from the tour."[81] Until this point, the members would have gone back to work as soon as tours finished. Nolan said it was a "really big one for me [...] like, 'Wow, I'm not like just struggling to get by right now, we are actually kind of making a living doing this'".[81] In September 2002, they toured with Midtown and Recover on The Best Revenge Tour.[82] Four shows into the tour, Lazzara fell off the stage and gashed his face in two places and dislocated his hip.[83] The incident forced the group to drop out of the tour.[84] At the end of 2002, Taking Back Sunday toured with the Starting Line and Northstar.[85] The band opened 2003 touring with the Used and the Blood Brothers, and headlined the Takeover Tour in March and April 2003, with main support from From Autumn to Ashes and Recover; Breaking Pangaea, Somehow Hollow, My Chemical Romance and Count the Stars appeared on select dates.[86][87] Taking Back Sunday played on three 2003 Warped Tour shows, leading up to an appearance at Furnace Fest, which they headlined.[88] On September 9, 2003, the band performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live.[89] From September to November 2003, Taking Back Sunday co-headlined a tour with Saves the Day, supported by Moneen.[90] On November 11, 2003, the band appeared on Last Call with Carson Daly.[91]
Commercial performance[edit]
Before its release, Juarbe thought Tell All Your Friends was good but was unsure how it would do commercially. At the time, all of Victory's releases were gauged against Thursday, who had sold around 100,000 copies of their releases.[16] Although it was reported that 15,000 copies had been shipped,[56] only 2,000 copies were sold in the album's first week of release.[95] At the time, this was the biggest opening week for a new artist on Victory.[16] The album spent one week (at number 183) on the Billboard 200,[96][97] and 68 weeks on the Heatseekers Albums chart, peaking at number nine.[97][98] It spent 78 weeks on the Independent Albums chart, peaking at number eight,[99] and peaked at number 23 on the Catalog Albums chart.[100] It reached number 10 on the Independent Albums Year-end chart in 2003.[101]
Despite little airplay, Tell All Your Friends had sold 110,000 copies by March 2003;[57] near the end of the year, sales stood at 252,000.[102] By April 2004 the album had sold nearly 400,000 copies,[103] and by September 2005 it was certified gold by the RIAA. In June 2023, the album reached platinum status.[104] By May 2009, the album had sold 790,000 copies in the US, eventually selling one million copies worldwide.[105][106] Tell All Your Friends is Taking Back Sunday and Victory Records' bestselling release.[105] It would also become Victory's longest-running record on the Billboard Heatseekers and Independent Albums charts.[107] "Great Romances of the 20th Century" charted at number 33 on UK Rock & Metal Singles chart in 2011.[108]