Author's Saving Throw: In spite of "Greatest Hits" performing well, the singles and live previews off of INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY in 2022 see Waterparks return to a music style far more reminiscent of their first three albums. 2022 also marked the band's return to "scene" festival touring on spiritual Warped Tour successor Sad Summer Fest. Interviews with Awsten at the time alsomention wanting to make the "classic" Waterparks album, focusing more on a more balanced mix of metaphorical and blunt lyrics, having a more precise focus than the all-over-the-place Greatest Hits, and keeping it shorter. Unlike other examples of the saving throw, these moves (especially the shorter album length) were done to appeal to casual fans and listeners.
Colbert Bump: "Telephone" got an unexpected boost after being featured in the 2022 Netflix series Heartstopper. In contrast to the lyrics about Awsten's sudden infatuation with a girl he saw while depressed in a Target, the song was featured during a character's birthday party where the main characters kiss for the first time.
Directed by Cast Member: "Watch What Happens Next" is the first Parx video directed by Awsten, after him writing the scenarios for "We Need To Talk" and "Not Warriors/Crybaby". This was later followed up by him directing "Dream Boy", "High Definition", and "Easy to Hate" and he continued directing/co-directing most of the videos for Greatest Hits.
Executive Meddling: While when they first got signed, Waterparks claimed that Equal Vision let them keep control over their creative direction. Things went sour after Cluster as Equal Vision took more umbrage to Parx's unique marketing strategies (streaming lower quality previews of music on Instagram is bad, apparently)note In the song "Play", Awsten accused Equal Vision of leaking Entertainment three months before its official release, making complaints about Awsten's own "leaks" trivial in comparison and side projects (Awsten doing a whole parody rap mixtape is also bad, apparently). The hassle impacted how they planned to go forward, either with a more tolerant major label or self-publishing, until they decided on Hopeless Records. Equal Vision now owns Cluster, Double Dare, and Entertainment, which necessitated the creation of the "Double Dare 2019" and "Entertainment 2019" mashup tracks. The studio versions of those tracks were later made unavailable for purchase and streaming due to the continuing legal issues with Equal Vision. Hopeless Records, for comparison, was praised frequently by Awsten for the amount of promotional support they did for FANDOM even though the band's deal with them was only for one year.note Less delicately, Awsten was very glad to be on a label that wasn't "broke" like Equal Vision and didn't make promotional decisions that undermined his, like tweeting about what Waterparks songs fans would like a video for next They even distributed FANDOM: Live In The UK, which they financed, after the band moved to 300 Entertainment.
Parx also planned to release variants of the merch they sold during the One OK Rock tour specifically for European fans, but weren't allowed to by their merch company. A differently colored version of the "Waterparks Trash" shirt showed up on Waterparks' Artist Arena store along with another sweatshirt from the tour...but didn't on their Merch Now store for UK and Europe. Eventually, Parx was able to regain control over their own online merch distribution, so not only can they release whatever merch they want themselves, but merch sales from the band's own storefrontsnote separate from their current or previous labels now directly benefit the band instead of third parties.
When the band put out super-limited (1,000 copies) "Greatest Hits" CD variantsnote CD copies in red, blue, and yellow, featuring exclusive art and bonus tracks, 300 Entertainment cut the initial release in half. Fan complaints eventually lead to 300 making the other 500 copies available for sale. The reasoning behind 300's initial decision is unknown. The timing of it lined up with calls Awsten had with the label (as well as complaints and jokes Awsten made about the label) over possibly moving Greatest Hits from May 21st to another date. note Twenty One Pilots unexpectedly announced their album Scaled & Icy would be released on the same day. To add insult to injury, a surprising amount of high profile non-rock releases were suddenly announced for the same day, including Olivia Rodrigo's debut album "Sour", Blake Shelton's "Body Language", and BTS' second ever English single "Butter". It was ultimately decided for Greatest Hits to release on May 21st as originally intended. Fans were further soured on 300 Entertainment after finding many limited edition physical editions of Greatest Hits (CD, vinyl, and cassette) bought directly from their webstore had printing errorsnote Packaging misprint errors on the previously mentioned colored CD variants, cassettes missing a track, vinyls with disc imperfections.
Despite any fan claims to the contrary, the musical direction of Intellectual Property wasn't because of Fueled by Ramen meddling, as according to Awsten, the album was 95% done before the band met with anyone from the label.
Fan Community Nickname: Parx fans have spent a long time without one and still haven't collectively agreed on one. Attempts to get one started shortly after the release of "Blonde", when a fan asked Awsten to name the fandom. His not entirely serious answer was "Blondes", which didn't stick. "Parxies" started gaining some traction with FANDOM's release, but is often used by other fans dismissively. Even the host for Total Request Live, Kevin Kenney, was baffled by it. When asked if the name was official later by Kenney in an interview for KROQ, all Awsten said in response was "I didn't make that up."
God Never Said That: Fans attempts to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the band's formation on February 21, 2011 were tempered by Awsten explaining that the formal anniversary for Waterparks was actually when the first music from the band dropped: the release of Airplane Conversations on April 3rd, 2012. This means the actual 10th anniversary falls in 2022. Some fans had mistakenly assumed the anniversary based on the band Twitter being made on February 21, 2011. Awsten alsoexplainedthat he had made the account with the expectation that it would be used for music promotion eventually, but it was a parked account with no tweets until it started being used for band stuff.
Inspiration for the Work: In a Rock Sound issue, Awsten explained that "Telephone" was originally going to get dropped for being too pop punk, but he later reworked it to shift it into a pop track, citing Tom Hank's 60s pop act parody movie That Thing You Do! as an influence.
Keep Circulating the Tapes: 'Worst' was deleted from Awsten's website/YouTube channel a little while after its original uploading. The only way to listen to the initially released version is through lyric videos on other channels, but it eventually got an official release on FANDOM.
The first and only release from Awsten's parody rap alter ego Felony Steve, Big Money Mountain Vol II, had to be taken down because of Executive Meddling from Equal Vision. It's unknown why Equal Vision had an issue with it. The only way to listen to it is, again, through uploads on other channels.
Currently the 2019 studio versions of "Double Dare" and "Entertainment" can only be found via fan reuploads because of Equal Vision taking them down. Live versions are available on FANDOM: LIVE IN THE UK, their live CD/concert film.
In an unexpected move, the video for "I Was Hiding Under Your Porch Because I Love You", the first single from their first ever release Airplane Conversations was taken down from their official YouTube with a copyright claim...by Waterparks. Fan speculate this is because they see the video as an Old Shame, as the production quality is more amateur compared to other Waterparks videos. (Which makes sense, it was their first and it wasn't made with label backing!) The removal of the video might have also been because of bassist Gage Mattieu and drummer Owen Martin being featured in the video (though much of the video's focus was on Awsten).note As mentioned under The Pete Best, their involvement in Parx is considered unofficial Other fans saved the video and it's been uploaded elsewhere as a fan reupload on YouTube was taken down by MDDN. As of January 2023, higher quality reuploads are available elsewhere, but a a lower quality version of the video recovered via the Internet Archive is on YouTube.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: Awsten has admitted to being salty to a lack of fandom "appreciation" towards "Crying Over It All" off of Greatest Hits. In a Kerrang interview about ''INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY'', he mentioned feeling weird about "FUCK ABOUT IT" passing it in streams in a week. In the interest of fairness, "FUCK ABOUT IT" is an album single featuring popular rapper blackbear which actually got promotion and would understandably get more attention. Awsten's favorite song off of FANDOM, "High Definition", was released as a single, got a video, and was well-received by fans, but "Crying Over It All" didn't get the same treatment.
Greatest Hits in general was heavily hyped with Awsten putting a painstaking amount of work into production. The album was well-reviewed, performed well on streaming, and received Parx's then second-best Billboard chart positions as well as their best UK and Scottish chart performance. The way you'd see Awsten talk about it soon after release or in interviews about INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, however, you'd think it was a total flop. To top it all off, no songs off of Greatest Hits went viral the year of its release...but two songs off of "FANDOM" did.note Following off of "I Miss Having Sex, But At Least I Don't Wanna Die", "Turbulent" blew up on TikTok and "Dream Boy" got a boost in popularity in South Korea.
Money, Dear Boy: Awsten has previously criticized Emo Nite for pandering to scene nostalgia too hard to the detriment of new music. Despite that, he has previously played Emo Nite, though due to a first DJ set being heavy on TED Talks instead of nostalgic songs, his second set got cut to ten minutes. When asked how he felt about that, Awsten said "That means I'm getting paid a LOT of money to show up for 10 minutes."
Old Shame: For an MTV interview, Awsten considers Airplane Conversations and Black Light as such, answering a question about "first song you ever wrote" with the first good song they ever wrote being "I'm A Natural Blue" on Cluster. In spite of not performing or talking about the EPs because he perceives them as "not great", Awsten is still thankful that they "did a lot" for the band and that fans still go back and listen to them. Awsten isn't that ashamed to bring them up during promotionalgames where he's asked to list Parx song titles and to occasionally bring up songs like "Fantastic" when discussing the band having genre mashing ambitions since the beginning. There's some plan for the official return of Airplane Conversations physical editions, especially as the initial print run was limited and can now cost hundreds of dollars secondhand.
Promoted Fanboy: Awsten unabashedly gushes about all the bands he grew up with that he still likes and the newer acts that he's enjoying now. The Madden Brothers from Good Charlotte are Waterparks' managers that are helping shepherd the band's career. Awsten looks up to them and appreciates their advice as much as they believe in Waterparks and in Awsten as a person!
Waterparks not only got to perform on Warped Tour with Mikey Way from My Chemical Romance as their bassist, but when Awsten made a surprise appearance to perform with Simple Plan, Joan Jett was watching! Mikey has previously played bass on both the Cluster EP and on Greatest Hits. He's played bass live for them during Good Charlotte touring and Reading & Leeds back in 2016, Warped Tour in 2018, and during the Nashvile date for A Night Out On Earth Tour in 2021. To top it all off, Waterparks opened for part of the North American leg of My Chemical Romance's reunion tour!
Awsten got to perform "She's Kinda Hot" with fellow Madden Brother proteges 5 Seconds of Summer during a 2018 show in Houston.
Awsten: BEFORE WE WERE SIGNED IN LIKE 2014 I USED TO TEACH GUITAR LESSONS AND TAUGHT @5SOS SONGS ALL THE TIME & LAST NIGHT I GOT TO SING WITH THEM AT THE SHOW & IT WAS THE COOLEST THING IN THE WORLD. I LOVE YALL @ASHTON5SOS @CALUM5SOS @LUKE5SOS @MICHAEL5SOS 10/10 DUDES, THANK YOU ❤️
One of the few positive lines in TANTRUM is "been getting texts from idols I've looked up to since 15". During live shows, he quickly adds to the end "which is fucking great, by the way!" The exact person the line is referring to? Pete Wentz! That positive line and a joke on a Waterparks tour shirt that shows distaste for Awsten's signature use of Caps Lock actually refers to Pete. Pete, who prefers all lowercase letters himself, suggested that he not use it. Obviously he didn't, but it wasn't enough to keep him from referencing it on a t-shirt that was already in of itself pretty meta. and they even met in person too!◊ Though Otto actually met Pete first, which Geoff and Awsten narrowly missed out on. Awsten was annoyed by it, in particular because he didn't believe that Otto was telling the truth. Awsten did a guest appearance on "Grand Theft Autumn" when Fall Out Boy played the O2 Arena.Then there's this surprisingly caps lock free tweet about "Young and Menace" back when it first dropped...
Awsten: As far as new Fall Out Boy goes, appreciate art when it's given to you, dummies.
Awsten went from being a One Direction fanboy to having one of their most important songwriters and producers, Julian Bunetta, co-write on "Funeral Grey".
Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: Waterparks may be the only band to have a member dedicate an entire podcast to reading and reviewing fics, many of which (including the very first fic he reads on the show) dip into NSFW territory. In the first episode, Awsten even states he finds them "very fun to read."
Similarly Named Works: "Last Heaven", a song title that appeared on a hidden track listing on Waterparks' website before the actual finalized listing for Fandom dropped, shares a name with another song by The Gazette. The song's demo was eventually released on 1 (A COLLECTION OF UNRELEASED HOME DEMOS, THIS IS NOT G, OR EVEN AN ALBUM, SHUT UP ENJOY).
"Violet!" shares a name with "Violet", the debut single of Ninomae Ina'nis from hololive English. Additional coincidences: Ina'nis dropped the teaser during her birthday stream on May 20, 2021, a day before the release of Greatest Hits. The teaser features her in a yellow rainjacket, the primary color worn by the band on the Greatest Hits album cover.
Streisand Effect: Waterparks is usually pretty self-aware about how people react to things, so why they were willing to evoke the Streisand Effect by removing their video for "I Was Hiding Under Your Porch Because I Love You" from YouTube? While it didn't lead to a massive amount of interest in the video, it still raised eyebrows among Parx fans and lead to its eventual reupload on YouTube. Then that reupload eventually got taken down by MDDN. As of January 2023, the Streisand Effect lead someone to reupload a lower quality version of the video recovered from the Internet Archive by another fan. This version so far has remained up, though higher quality versions are still available elsewhere.
The video was most likely taken down for heavily featuring pre-2012 members and being an example of Early-Installment Weirdness. The visuals, in spite of the video being directed by the same person behind the video for "Silver", are more evocative of any number of local scene band videos back in 2011 instead of what Waterparks would later be known for. The video does feature some glimpses of the weirdness of future Parx videos, including Gage and Owen having inexplicably wet hair while Awsten's remains dry and the band being hassled by a costumed mob.
To a lesser extent, Awsten has previously expressed distaste for pictures of himself in his teen years before Waterparks circulating around. Fans on Twitter as a result don't normally post them, expressing a desire to respect Awsten's boundaries, while Tumblr fans take the opposite approach, expressing that said pictures have been publicly accessible online for years. Unlike the earlier example, MDDN and Waterparks haven't gone out of their way to issue copyright takedowns. Strangely, this hasn't stopped Awsten or MDDN from occasionally posting pictures of teenage "scene Awsten" on their socials. Old school friends of Awsten have also posted pictures of him to share with fans without any repercussions.
The Pete Best: Waterparks went through a host of lineup changes in 2011-2012 before finally landing on Awsten, Geoff and Otto. Later interviews with Awsten indicate that the previous members aren't considered to have officially been a part of Waterparks (even though some of them were featured in promo) due to not writing any music or playing any shows with the band; Awsten was the only constant involved with working Airplane Conversations and finalizing just who the other band members would be. The lineup often associated online with Airplane Conversations was Awsten along with Gage Matthieu on bass and Owen Marvin on drums. Owen was later replaced with Otto on drums with the band never having a bassist after Gage. Geoff joined sometime later. Additional members that didn't make it to Airplane Conversations also exist, with two of them being mentioned in Awsten's book and another one mentioned and shown in a 2011 interview and photoshoot. Much of Awsten's distaste for the previous band members, described in detail in his book, can be summed up as a lack of professionalism and actual commitment to the band.
Throw It In!: The dad's dialogue in the "Dream Boy" video was entirely improvised.
Trolling Creator: The leadup to a new Parx album can include intentional misdirection on Awsten's part, targeted towards fans trying to search for clues before official announcements.
A fake but convincing looking tracklist for FANDOM was hidden in the source code of the Parx website before official setlist confirmation.
In the leadup to the announcement of the fourth Parx album title and the first single, Greatest Hits was revealed to be the title, but Graffiti was also mentioned a few times before that. Expectations were that Greatest Hits was the album title with Graffiti the single title (or the other way around), but the single title ended up being Snow Globe. Later, Awsten would reveal that Greatest Hits as the next album title was decided way before that...as it was hidden as a hint in the FANDOM liner notes in the legal section as "Next Greatest Hits".
Uncredited Role: Greatest Hits features multiple uncredited features, mostly for background vocals and minor instrumental parts. These parts were mentioned during promotion but not in the liner notes. This includes fellow MDDN represented artists De'Wayne, who previously did background vocals on FANDOM, and Zeph, but also better known artists you'd expect to be credited. This includes Mikey Way from My Chemical Romance (who previously played bass credited on the Cluster EP), Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional and Dallon Weekes from I DONT KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME, The Brobecks, and formerly of Panic! at the Disco. De'Wayne, Chris, and Dallon were featured on "You'd Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out to Get You)", Dallon was featured on "Fruit Roll Ups", and Zeph was featured on "Crying Over It All".
Exceptions include Joe Ragosta from Patent Pending's co-writer credit on "You'd Be Paranoid Too" as well as Josh Madden, one of the Madden Brothers that isn't in Good Charlotte, on "Gladiator (Interlude)", it being based off a recorded rant of his.
Misc
Awsten dated Ciara Hanna from Power Rangers Megaforce from 2016-2017, which informed many of the songs on Double Dare, Entertainment, and FANDOM.
mention
