Music / All Time Low

Left to right: Rian, Alex, Jack, & Zack

I'm new to this band...

help me please with the band members and everything..

— ThrashUnreal1000

All Time Low likes bras. If you ever go to their concerts throw bras up on the stage.

— Taylorisnowhere via YouTube

All Time Low is a Pop Punk band band hailing from Baltimore, Maryland, formed in 2003 with four members; Alexander (Alex) Gaskarth (rhythm guitarist, vocals,) Jack Barakat (lead guitar, backing vocals,) Rian Dawson (drums,) and Zachary (Zack) Merrick (bassist, back vocals.) They're most known for their singles "Weightless," "Damned If I Do 'Ya," and "Dear Maria, Count Me In," and have released 7 full-length albums, 5 EPs, & 2 live albums at current, as well as 2 DVD documentaries filmed on tours.

Discography:

• The Three Words To Remember In Dealing With The End (EP) (2004)
• The Party Scene (2005)
• Put Up Or Shut Up (EP) (2006)
• So Wrong, It's Right (2007)
• Nothing Personal (2009)
• The All Time Low Live EP, exclusive to iTunes (2009)
• Dirty Work (2011)
• Don't Panic (2012)
• Future Hearts (2015)
• Last Young Renegade (2017)
• It's Still Nothing Personal - A Ten Year Tribute (2019)
• Wake Up, Sunshine (2020)
• Tell Me I'm Alive (2023)

Tropes featured in All Time Low:

• Album Filler: Some people have cited some songs on Dirty Work and Future Hearts, and the majority of Last Young Renegade as this. Averted on pretty much every other album.
• Album Title Drop:
  • There's a song called 'The Party Scene' in The Party Scene, and Put Up or Shut Up comes from the song 'Break Out! Break Out!'
  • The title for Nothing Personal comes from the song 'Break Your Little Heart.'
  • Future Hearts has the song 'Old Scars/Future Hearts,' which contains the lyric, "We got scars on our future hearts." Ironically, had the song 'Take Cover' been included on Future Hearts, it would've had the lyric, "Take cover from our future hears."
  • Last Young Renegade has the line, "You were my last young renegade heartache," right in the first song on the album: 'Last Young Renegade.'
  • Wake Up, Sunshine has a song called 'Wake Up, Sunshine' which includes the lyric: 'Wake up, sunshine, somebody loves you for yourself'
• The Alcoholic: 'Stella' is about Stella Artois - THE BEER, not a girl.
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: 'Bad Enough For You.'
• Anti-Christmas Song. "Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass" is about a guy lamenting that his girlfriend left him at Christmas. He tears down the decorations and goes to drown his sorrows before sarcastically asking "Ain't that just what Christmas is all about?".
• Anti-Love Song: 'Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass' happens to be both this and an Anti-Christmas Song.
• Break-Up Song: 'Break Your Little Heart' is a pretty brutal one.
• B-Side: 'Caroline' and 'Take Cover' were written and recorded during the Future Hearts sessions, but left off the record. 'Caroline' sounds more like something from their first few albums, so that makes sense, but 'Take Cover' could've fit pretty well. They were eventually released on their second live album as bonus tracks.
• Canon Discontinuity: Apparently, the band doesn't look back on their first EP or album too fondly, outside of maybe the songs they rerecorded for their second EP, and count So Wrong, It's Right as their actual first album. This is bolstered by the fact that they haven't played any songs from them in years and didn't celebrate The Party Scene's 10th anniversary in 2015, as well as the fact that it's not available to officially buy anywhere and how they've not spoken positively about it after they signed to Hopeless in 2006 and produced more music.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Jack, Alex, and Rian seem to be this. Zack has his moments, but Jack is really out there sometimes.
  • At the end of an interview, Alex pretended that the camera was a lion and then started trying to push it back with his stool. He also tried to [[Camera Abuse whip the camera]].
  • In a Five Minute Interview on Zune, Alex says something along the lines of, "Yeah, Dirty Work is gonna be a great album, I think! It's really the kind of music you and your friends can dance naked to in the front yard."
  • Basically, if they're on camera outside of performing, you can guarantee they'll all show shades of this at one time or another.
• Concept Album: Last Young Renegade is this. In Alex's own words, "[Last Young Renegade] is a collection of songs written from the perspective ... of the different versions of me that other people might have met over the years, through the ups and downs, in the public eye and behind closed doors. I gave those other sides of me a persona, and a name, and The Last Young Renegade was born."
• Cover Version: They started out as a blink-182 cover band, and several covers of their songs can be found on YouTube. They also covered Fall Out Boy's 'Tell Mick That He Just Made My List of Things To Do Today'. They have a lot of cover videos posted to Hopeless' YouTube channel, even one for Limp Bizkit of all people.
• Friends with Benefits: 'Party Song (The Walk of Shame)' is all about this with one (or both) of them wanting more, but not willing to tell each other.
• Grief Song: "Lullabies" is a tribute to Alex Gaskarth's older brother, who committed suicide in 2004. Alex has stated that he blamed himself for awhile because it happened after they had gotten into an argument.
• Growing Up Sucks: The song "Weightless" is about not wanting to grow-up and stay young, among other things.
  • A few songs from Last Young Renegade seem to have shades of this.
• History Repeats: All Time Low signed to an overtly Pop label after two hit albums and a live album/DVD/documentary at Hopeless Records and went more Pop than they usually go, or maybe should've, resulting in a divisive album that isn't sitting well with certain parts of their fan-base. Now, am I describing Dirty Work, or Last Young Renegade?
• Intercourse with You: "Afterglow" is probably the sweetest song about sex after The All-American Rejects' song 'Dance Inside.'
• Limited Animation: Every. Single. Video. For. Their. Non-music video songs. From. Don't Panic. Seriously, every upload of those songs on Hopeless Records' YouTube page has the exact same animation in the exact same order, just timed slightly differently with the tempos of each.
• Long-Runner Line-up: Type 1; the band has been Alex Gaskarth, Jack Barakat, Zack Merrick, and Rian Dawson since their formation in 2003 and they're damn proud of it. They all even have skull tattoos on their necks to commemorate being in the band.

• Mood Whiplash: While Future Hearts may have a few of these, Last Young Renegade has a more obvious one, with 'Nice2KnoU,' a song about leaving the past in the past and moving forward coming immediately after 'Good Times,' a song about feeling nostalgic. It's also the only song that's consistent with any of their pre-Future Hearts albums, as it's the only actual Rock song on LYR, not only making it feel out of place in its sorting on the album tracklist, but also the album as a whole, since LYR is composed almost exclusively of 80s-influenced, synth-infused, slow, kind of lethargic, Pop music without as much energy. It almost comes off as them throwing the fans that they knew wouldn't like LYR as a whole a bone, as it's the most stripped-back, straight-forward, energetic song on the album.
  • Even if you liked the song, you have to admit that 'Dirty Laundry' was probably a big one when it was released as a single. Even coming off of Future Hearts, it's, largely, a big step away from what they're known for. Even on the album, the ending minute of the song has them slipping back into what they're known for after a few minutes of nothing but a synth guitar, automated drums, and Alex's voice, implying there was more to come afterwards where there wasn't. That it was the first single off LYR and first music video they'd released since Future Hearts pretty much cements that it was intentional on their parts.
• New Sound Album:
  • Dirty Work. Although Don't Panic reverses the change somewhat.
  • Last Young Renegade full stop. Whereas Dirty Work at least tried to have songs more in-line with the material from the albums before it, LYR just doesn't have more than a few, and even then, it's debatable. Whether it's any good is a source of contention.
• Non-Appearing Title: 'Coffeeshop Soundtrack,' 'Hometown Heroes, National Nobodies,' 'The Girl's a Straight-Up Hustler,' 'Keep The Change, You Filthy Animal,' 'A Party Song (The Walk of Shame)' and a few others.
• The One That Got Away: 'Remembering Sunday.'
• Opposites Attract: Or as 'Just The Way I'm Not' likes to say, "opposites distract."
• Parody: The video for 'Poppin' Champagne' parodies excess-laden rap videos. Perhaps a bit too well, as the video's MTV premiere led to a scathing review from MTV News' James Montgomery who thought it was completely unironic.
• Precision F-Strike:
  • From 'Weightless':
    And I'm stuck in this fucking rut
    Waitin' on a second-hand pick-me-up
  • From 'Something's Gotta Give':
    Maybe I'm a fucking waste
    Filling up the empty space
  • From 'Life Of The Party'
    You said it's all for a reason
    Well, what the fuck is the reason now?
• Product Placement: For Rockstar Energy Drinks in the 'I Feel Like Dancin'' video. Lampshaded by being as blatant about it as possible.
• Put on a Bus: Many songs from their first 3 albums and first 2 EPs haven't been played live in years for some reason outside of maybe the occasional one-off, despite many of them still being rather popular with their fans, particularly from their first album and first Hopeless EP. They usually just play either the hits or singles when on tour, which leaves a lot of lost potential in having live versions of those songs with Alex's voice as it is now versus how it was back then. It's being a bit subverted in that they're going to play So Wrong, It's Right in full live for its 10th anniversary in December 2017, but that's only for 3 stops on their tour, though they have been dusting the majority of those songs off for live performances on their Young Renegades tour, but it's far from playing them semi-regularly at the very least.
• Rearrange the Song: It's Still Nothing Personal - A Ten Year Tribute is a rearrangement of the entire Nothing Personal album.
• Revisiting the Roots:
  • Future Hearts has the feel that it was, majorly, an attempt to go back to their 2005-2009 sound, as well as transform their sound into a more straight-forward Pop Punk/Power Pop sound after 3 albums of being a more Emo-influenced act. It was also just as straight-forward as those albums, rather than trying to be as experimental as Dirty Work was.
  • Wake Up, Sunshine can also be seen as this after the genre-shift of Last Young Renegade, though with some experimentation thrown in in places.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Pete Wentz and Mark Hoppus cameo in the "Weightless" video poking fun at the influence Fall Out Boy had on them, and the influence Blink had on both bands.
  • The product placement Take That! of the 'I Feel Like Dancin'' video featured a ludicrous amount of Rockstar Energy Drinks placement. Guess which energy drink brand is a common All Time Low tour sponsor and probably provided the funding for the video?
• Shout-Out:
  • 'Keep The Change, You Filthy Animal' off their third album Nothing Personal is also a quote from Jack's favorite film Home Alone.
  • Also "Merry Christmas, Kiss My Ass", a bonus song from Dirty Work, is a shout out to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, while "Get Down On your Knees and Tell Me You Love Me" references the first sequel to Home Alone.
  • Wake Up, Sunshine's title track has a shoutout to Harvey Danger's song 'Flagpole Sitta' with the line, "And then they say, 'If you're bored, then your boring.'"
• StealthParody: 'I Feel Like Dancin'.' Made less stealthy by the music video.
• Take That!:
  • The video for 'Weightless' is basically a prolonged list of shots towards (and not limited to) groupies, Fan Dumb, Hate Dumb, roadies, and themselves.
  • The video for 'I Feel Like Dancin'' issues several jabs towards product placement, needless sex appeal, and record label Executive Meddling.
• Titled After the Song: They got their band name from a New Found Glory song called "Head On Collision" which has the line, "it feels like I'm at an all time low."
• Vocal Evolution: Compare Alex's vocals from their first EP to something on Future Hearts. Over 10 years of singing really helped his vocals to sound better.
  • An even straighter example is that some time in between Nothing Personal and Dirty Work, Alex's voice changed significantly. It got a lot deeper and he got a lot better with his diction and/or singing, to the point that if you hear live versions of their older songs from their second live album, the difference is stunning with how much better he sounds.

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