"I Don't Care" is a song by American

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

band

Fall Out Boy Fall Out Boy is an American Rock music, rock band formed in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, in 2001. The band consists of lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Patrick Stump, bassist Pete Wentz, lead guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer A ...

and the

lead single A lead single (or first single) is the first single to be released from a studio album by an artist or a band, usually before the album itself is released and also occasionally on the same day of the album's release date. A similar term, "debut ...

from the group's fourth studio album ''

Folie à Deux ''Folie à deux'' (), also called shared psychosis Berrios, G. E., and I. S. Marková. 2015. "Shared Pathologies. Pp. 3–15 in ''Troublesome disguises: Managing challenging Disorders in Psychiatry'' (2nd ed.), edited by D. Bhugra and G. Malhi. ...

'' in 2008. It was first available for listening on the band's website on September 3, 2008. The song impacted radio on September 16. It is its album's best known song, being certified two-times platinum by the

Recording Industry Association of America The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...

(RIAA), denoting shipments of two million units, with over 500,000 sales in its first four months alone. In the United States, the song reached No. 21 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, placing lower than the No. 2 lead single, " This Ain't a Scene, It's an Arms Race", of the band's previous 2007 album ''

Infinity on High ''Infinity on High'' is the third studio album by American Rock music, rock band Fall Out Boy, released on February 6, 2007, by Island Records. Recorded from July to October 2006 at Pass Studios in Los Angeles, California, its music was compose ...

''. It received radio play at Modern Rock and Pop stations, charting at No. 21 on ''Billboard'''s

Hot Modern Rock Tracks Alternative Airplay (formerly known as Modern Rock Tracks between 1988 and 2009, and Alternative Songs between 2009 and 2020) is a music chart published in the American magazine ''Billboard'' since September 10, 1988. It ranks the 40 most-playe ...

and No. 22 on

Pop Songs Pop Airplay (also called Mainstream Top 40, Pop Songs, and Top 40/ CHR) is a 40-song music chart published weekly by ''Billboard'' Magazine that ranks the most popular songs of pop music being played on a panel of Top 40 radio stations in the U ...

. The song has been described as a very political track by

Patrick Stump Patrick Martin Stumph (born April 27, 1984), known professionally as Patrick Vaughn Stump, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and record producer. He is the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist of the Rock music, rock band Fall Out Boy ...

, the lead vocalist and guitarist of the band, but not political in the traditional sense; more about the politics of a relationship. Stump has said that this song is about the

superficiality In social psychology, superficiality refers to a lack of depth in relationships, conversation and analysis. The principle of "superficiality versus depth" is said to have pervaded Western culture since at least the time of Plato. Social psychology ...

and selfishness that is associated with pop culture. The song was ranked No. 68 on ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. The magazine was first known fo ...

''s list of the 100 Best Songs of 2008.Rolling Stone’s 100 Best Singles Of 2008
stereogum.com. Retrieved August 21, 2015.

Music

"Like the chorus says, 'I don't care what you think as long as it's about me.' It's that pop culture thing again, where people don't care about anything but the superficial, and I think there's something so tragic about that. I also thought there was something so ironically anthemic about the chorus, where it's not something you want to sing along to, because it's vacuous and empty. So I wanted something really anthemic underneath it, like something you'd hear at sports games or whatever, because I wanted people to hear it and be confronted with how empty that is. I didn't want anything to be superficial on this record unless the point was to point out superficiality." -- Patrick Stump on the song's message.

Wentz referred to "I Don't Care" as a "narcissist's anthem", further commenting that "To me, it's like a

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

anthem for the YouTube generation, just about how our attention span is about seven seconds... t asks,'Why can't we get people to pay attention for two minutes and 35 seconds?'" "I Don't Care" has been described as "

disco Disco is a music genre, genre of dance music and a subculture that emerged in the late 1960s from the United States' urban nightclub, nightlife, particularly in African Americans, African-American, Italian-Americans, Italian-American, LGBTQ ...

rockabilly Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the Southern United States, South. As a genre, it blends the sound of Western music (North America), Western musi ...

", and contains a repeating

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spiritual (music), spirituals, work songs, field hollers, Ring shout, shouts, cha ...

riff throughout the song; Stump's vocal performance on the track has been compared to

John Lee Hooker John Lee Hooker (August 22, 1912 or 1917 – June 21, 2001) was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues that he develo ...

Music video

The music video was released on

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

on September 25, 2008. It was then uploaded to

the next day by Fall Out Boy via the group's YouTube channel. The video was directed by Alan Ferguson.

Guns N' Roses Guns N' Roses is an American hard rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1985 as a merger of local bands L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose. When they signed to Geffen Records in 1986, the band's "classic" line-up consisted of vocalist Axl R ...

alum

Gilby Clarke Gilbert J. Clarke (born August 17, 1962) is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and record producer. He is known for having a three-year tenure as the rhythm guitarist of Guns N' Roses, replacing Izzy Stradlin in 1991 during the Use Your ...

opens the video by greeting the band members as they enter the

green room In show business, the green room is the space in a theatre, or a similar venue, that functions as a waiting room and lounge for Performing arts, performers before, during, and after a performance or show when they are not engaged on Stage (thea ...

of a

French-language French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. Like all other Romance languages, it descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. French evolved from Northern Old Gallo-Romance, a descendant of the Latin spoken in ...

talk show. They sit down, then Clarke turns to a companion and blurts out, "What the hell happened to

rock and roll Rock and roll (often written as rock & roll, rock-n-roll, and rock 'n' roll) is a Genre (music), genre of popular music that evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It Origins of rock and roll, originated from African ...

? Eyeliner? Energy drinks? And no guitar solos? I've taken shits with bigger rock stars than them!" As the video progresses, the band members are then shown in various scenes causing trouble on the streets of

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

—harassing street performers, shoplifting disguised as nuns, pelting people with water balloons, urinating in the street—interspersed with clips of the band performing. During this footage, a graphic of a cat eating spaghetti appears abruptly, alluding to an incident on ''

The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet ''The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet'' is an American syndicated morning talk show. Produced by Fox, the show first aired on January 22, 2007, to a number of markets originally through Fox and MyNetworkTV, most in the Fox Television Stati ...

'', where producers used the same graphic to censor out obscene gestures by a guest. The rapper

Tyga Micheal Ray StevensonMicheal Ray Stevenson

appears in the video. Near the end of the video, the band members peel off their masks to reveal their hidden identities:

Andy Hurley Andrew John Hurley (born May 31, 1980) is an American musician who is the drummer for the rock band Fall Out Boy. Prior to Fall Out Boy, Hurley played in several hardcore punk bands. He joined Fall Out Boy as the full-time drummer in 2003 and ...

turns out to be

Mark Hoppus Mark Allan Hoppus (born March 15, 1972) is an American musician and record producer. He is the co-lead vocalist, co-founder, and bassist for the rock band Blink-182 and the only member to appear on every album. Hoppus became interested in ska ...

Pharrell Williams Pharrell Lanscilo Williams (; born April 5, 1973), also known mononymously as Pharrell, is an American musician, singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and fashion designer. He first became known as one half of the music production duo ...

Joe Trohman Joseph Mark Trohman (born September 1, 1984) is an American musician. He is best known as the lead guitarist and backing vocalist of the American rock band Fall Out Boy,Joe Bosso.The Fall Guy. ''Guitar World''. January 2009. 47–50. as well as t ...

Gabe Saporta Gabriel Eduardo Saporta (born October 11, 1979) is an American musician and entrepreneur. From the years 2005 until 2015, he was the lead vocalist and founder of the electropop band Cobra Starship. On November 10, 2015, after nearly ten years an ...

, and

Pete Wentz Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III (born June 5, 1979) is an American musician who is the bassist and lyricist for the rock band Fall Out Boy. Before the band's formation in 2001, Wentz was a fixture of the Chicago hardcore scene and was the lead si ...

Spencer Pratt Spencer William Pratt (born August 14, 1983) is an American reality television personality. In 2007, he began dating Heidi Montag, a primary cast member of the reality television series '' The Hills''. Subsequently, he came to prominence after ...

. Meanwhile, a hustling woman celebrity shown earlier in the video pulls off her mask and shows herself to be Pete in a dress. Viewers are returned to the green room, where Clarke, still mocking the band, tears off his mask and reveals himself as

Sarah Palin Sarah Louise Palin (; Heath; born February 11, 1964) is an American politician, commentator, and author who served as the ninth governor of Alaska from 2006 until her resignation in 2009. She was the 2008 Republican vice presidential nomi ...

, who gives Palin's trademark wink to the audience as the video ends. When asked about his view on the video, Wentz replied:

It's a series of vignettes, and in the end, the joke is: Everyone in the world who is famous is just a WWE character. And some of you are
Hulk Hogan Terry Gene Bollea (; born August 11, 1953), better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired Professional wrestling, professional wrestler. He is signed to WWE as a brand ambassador. Known for his flamboyance and massive physiq ...
, and some of you are
The Undertaker Mark William Calaway (born March 24, 1965), better known by his ring name the Undertaker, is an American retired Professional wrestling, professional wrestler. Widely regarded as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time, Calaway ...
, and it's awesome. It's just as great to come out to the boos. This one is about portraying the band, too, because there's been videos where it's been about individual characters, and this one is really a band-based video. Everyone has really equal face time, and there's a communist aspect to the video in the imagery, but we're also trying to
ake Ake (or Aké in Spanish orthography) is an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the municipality of Tixkokob, in the Mexican state of Yucatán; 40 km (25 mi) east of Mérida, Yucatán. The n ...
something that's equal.

Criticism

Bassist

posted a blog expressing dissatisfaction about the

product placement Product placement, also known as embedded marketing, is a marketing technique where references to specific brands or products are incorporated into another work, such as a film or television program, with specific promotional intent. Much of t ...

in the edited

music video that was not approved by the band: "The version of the video that we worked on night after night is not the version that aired, yet somehow a cut full of glorious camera-phone shots did ..It doesn't make any sense to us. ..Imagine seeing this edit only after you buy the video off of iTunes and realizing that no one even had the balls to call you and tell you they were changing the video and cutting parts." Later in his blog post, Wentz explained that "this will probably end up deleted by me or someone else", and by the next morning, the post was later replaced with an image of

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by E. C. Segar, Elzie Crisler Segar.Bluto Bluto, at times known as Brutus, is a cartoon and comics character created in 1932 by Elzie Crisler Segar as a one-time character, named "Bluto the Terrible", in his ''Thimble Theatre'' comic strip (later renamed ''Popeye''). Bluto made his fi ...

, with the word "

censored Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information. This may be done on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient". Censorship can be conducted by governmen ...

" taped across their mouths.Blog Post by Pete Wentz at PeteWentz.com
, PeteWentz.com The iTunes version of the album released the original version as a bonus video.

Track listing

Lyrics written by bassist/backing vocalist

; music composed by

and

Norman Greenbaum Norman Joel Greenbaum (born November 20, 1942) is an American singer-songwriter, known for his 1969–1970 hit song "Spirit in the Sky". The song made him one of the most famous acts with a best-selling one-hit wonder for all time. Early life a ...

. ;UK two-track CD single # "I Don't Care" (album version) – 3:38 # "I Don't Care" (Cobra Starship Suave Suarez Remix) – 3:11

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Official remixes

To date only three remixes of the song are considered as official remixes. Those remixes are the "Suave Suarez Remix", "Machine Shop Remix" and the "Tommie Sunshine & Mightyfools Remix". The first is included on a 2-track CD single released in the United Kingdom, the first is also included on the

deluxe edition of ''Folie à Deux''. The second was released on the Japanese bonus track edition of ''Folie à Deux''. The third was released on Tommie Sunshine's profile and was noted by the official Fall Out Boy website. * Suave Suarez Remix – 3:11 * Machine Shop Remix – 3:02 * Tommie Sunshine & Mightyfools Remix – 5:16

References

External links

Watch the video for "I Don't Care"
a
YouTube.com
{{Fall Out Boy 2008 singles Fall Out Boy songs Songs written by Pete Wentz Songs written by Patrick Stump Song recordings produced by Neal Avron Music videos directed by Alan Ferguson (director) Island Records singles Music video controversies