Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over

I could walk this fine line between elation and success, but we all know which way I’m going to strike the stake between my chest. So, “You have to prove yourself”. You’ll have to prove it to me. So now you’re waiting up for him…

Episode 6 of Ways of Hearing talked about how we choose which sounds are noise and which are signal. Kurkowski talks about the remastered version of the Beach Boys song not including the conversation that was being had in the background. This reminded me of a song off of one of my favorite albums, in which they chose to keep in what might have been considered noise. In the first verse of Reinventing the Wheel to Run Myself Over by Fall Out Boy, the lead singer says “‘You have to prove yourself,’ / You’ll have to prove it to me.” At the end of the song, you can hear the beginning of this line shouted by someone before trailing off, followed by laughter. I remember watching a video on Youtube a long time ago in which the band members said they asked their friend from The Plain White Tees to join them on the song. However, when it was time for his line, they all stopped playing as a joke, leaving him to shout alone. This clearly isn’t meant to be part of the song, and is something they likely would have cut out if it wasn’t funny. They chose to add what would have been noise to the song, and amplified it by adding it to the very end of the song.