Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz Speaks Out About Grammy Snub: ‘It Really Doesn’t Matter At All’

The list of nominees for the 50th Grammy Awards reads like a who’s who of pop, rock and hip-hop royalty: Kanye, Justin, Jay, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Fergie, Nelly, 50 and the Foos all scored multiple nods, as did a host of others who actually require last names — Amy Winehouse, Taylor Swift, etc.

Shoot, even Jimmy Carter got a nomination.

But if you scour the entire field of noms — 31 categories, hundreds of artists — there is one group that is strangely missing: Fall Out Boy, who, despite topping the Billboard albums chart in February with Infinity on High, clogging rock radio with singles, touring nonstop for an entire year and generally being one of the most successful rock acts on the planet, were inexplicably overlooked by members of the Recording Academy.

And if it doesn’t make a lot of sense to you, imagine how the guys in Fall Out Boy must feel. Oh, wait, you don’t have to imagine anything … you can just read their reaction, which they posted on their blog mere hours after bassist Pete Wentz learned of the Grammy snub. And it went a little something like this:

“The first reaction is jealousy mixed with a slight sense of entitlement. We just want to be a part of your club. We feel like the Orphans in the movie ‘The Warriors,’ when we are just dying to be the Baseball Furies,” Wentz wrote. “We play the events for you and the right parties all the time (which is a bit embarrassing either for you or us, not sure which, possibly both. It’s kind of like being invited to a birthday party and then not allowed to eat the cake).”

Of course, this reaction can be viewed in one of two ways: A) “Fall Out Boy were robbed! They have every right to be peeved!”; or B) “Fall Out Boy are acting like big babies — or Kanye West. Someone should tell them just to shut up and move on.” (Honestly, both are probably correct.) So, in the interest of keeping it fair and balanced, we decided to go straight to Wentz to have him explain his side of things.

“People are reading [what I wrote] and they’re saying, ‘Oh, you’re Kanye, you’re bitter.’ And I totally admit that,” he told MTV News. “It’s interesting, because you see the same people at the same podiums year after year, and I don’t know if people who love music can relate to that. And who knows, it could be we’re up there next year. It just seems like the same people get the nominations each year, and the same people make it up to the podium, and we’re stuck in Burbank. We get to play the home version.

“I mentioned the whole ‘play the events’ thing because it’s kind of awkward when you play a Grammy party, like we did, and you don’t get nominated,” he continued. “And you think about it and you get sort of upset, but then you think about it some more and you realize that it really doesn’t matter at all.”

Wentz credited Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor with helping him get over the snub (”I’ve been reading stuff he’s written online, and it was like, ‘Wow, Trent doesn’t give a f— about any of this. Why should we?’ “) and, much like almost everything FOB go through, they’re using the situation as both a dose of humility and creative fuel.

“If people are worried about us not having anything to whine about anymore, well, now we have plenty to whine about. And if people wanted to shut us up, they should’ve just given us that f—ing Grammy nomination,” Wentz laughed. “Since they didn’t, it’s only making us want to put out a new album sooner. It’s going to be about snubs. We’re going to call it And the Award Goes To … Write that down, but please let people know I’m kidding about the title of the album.”

Source: MTV. 

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