Fall Out Boy Announce Biggest-Ever Tour and New Single "Aces"

Fall Out Boy have released a new single, "Aces," and put their biggest-ever headlining tour on sale today. The Twilight of the Punks Tour hits North America next July with the Offspring, Good Charlotte and The Story So Far opening. The band — Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Joe Trohman and Andy Hurley — marked the announcement with a pop-up show at L.A.'s Koretown Plaza Tuesday, including the live debut of "Aces."

The single lands 25 years after the band formed. In separate interviews, Stump and Wentz explained how it came together — and what it doesn't mean.

How did "Aces" get made?

"We're always writing. We were writing through the [2009-2012] hiatus," Stump said. "There's never a period where Pete and I aren't talking and writing. There's a lot of times where you don't have anything that you really feel like you need to share."

The sessions had a deliberate throwback setup. Stump dug out amplifiers from storage that he hadn't played since roughly 2008 — the same amps used on "Sugar." "I was like, 'Oh, wow, that sounds very 2006,'" he said. During recording, one speaker cabinet's electronics blew up.

The band reunited with producer Neal Avron, who also produced 2023's So Much (for) Stardust and 2008's Folie à Deux. Stump said he missed Avron's perfectionism after the fast workflows of the 2010s: "I missed the way Neal is like Kubrick, where we're gonna take it 1,000 times, and we're gonna spend so much time on mic placement."

The song's rapid opening guitar lick came from a Paul Simon concert anecdote: Simon told the crowd he'd written intricate parts as Simon & Garfunkel's only guitarist, then hired other players as a solo artist. Stump applied the lesson. "It'd be really fun if I didn't have to play this. So then I brought it to Joe [Trohman]," he said.

What does the tour change for the band?

It's their largest headlining run yet, and Stump admitted the scale still surprises him. The first headlining tour nearly triggered his disbelief too. "They send me one of those, and I'm like, 'You can't be serious, though,'" he said of Crush Management's routings.

Wentz framed it as a one-time opportunity. "This is our shot. This is our chance to do the biggest version of the whole thing," he said. "This is the time to do the production that looks like the musical, or this is the time to do the inside of your brain and do it in a stadium."

He wants an immersive set. "I do want it to feel like a universe unto itself... you'll be able to walk into the experience and feel like you are inside of it," he said. One idea: rebuilding the Fireside Bowl, the tiny Chicago punk venue where the band cut their teeth. The last tour's chronological "Days of Fall Out Past" format, he said, "barely worked" when everything went perfectly — so expect something different.

Stump, for his part, won't see the staging until day one. On the previous tour that meant discovering a 40-foot dog head alongside the audience. "I'm just some schmuck that sings," he said of his on-stage persona.

The tour name has a tennis origin. Wentz took his kid to Rafael Nadal's last French Open match, watched Zverev dismantle him, and heard a French spectator mutter "Twilight of the Gods." "I was like, 'Oh, yeah. Got it, got it,'" he said.

Is there an album coming?

Stump was blunt: "Currently there is no album. I'm not currently working on an album." He compared the interrogation to Marvel casting rumors, where every denial reads as confirmation.

Wentz compared the approach to Hella Mega, the 2021 stadium tour with Green Day and Weezer, which they supported with a single song. "I would love to do a Fall Out Boy musical," he said. "But there's not an album that we're gonna dump out tomorrow."

Where's the band at now?

Trohman, who missed some past dates with nerve damage in his hands, has had surgery and recorded the new single fine, Wentz said — though it "been an ongoing issue." He'll play the tour.

Wentz summed up the group's dynamic: "We've allowed each other to interact as adults." Watching fans approach Hurley at airports, he said, gives him perspective: "Oh, yeah, we've grown up."

Stump, characteristically, kept his own counsel on Pete's lyrics about aging: "My guess is always as good as the audience's."