This City
Encyclopedia
"This City" is a song by American singer and songwriter Patrick Stump
from his debut solo album Soul Punk
(2011). A remix featuring rapper Lupe Fiasco
was released as the album's first single. The remix was first uploaded to YouTube for streaming on June 28, 2011 and was later made available for download on iTunes and other digital retailers on July 26, 2011, and that version has been sent out to radio with some commercial success. Its music video has been released. The Soul Punk version was included on Spin
magazine's Lollapalooza
mixtape (2011) for free download in the wake of Stump's performance at the music festival in Chicago. Stump has performed the song at his concerts, at radio interviews and on his guest TV appearance on Good Morning New Orleans. The remix of "This City" will be released as a bonus track (as Soul Punk is a true solo effort) on both standard and deluxe editions of Soul Punk as part of his label's idea.
. This came after Fall Out Boy
(his main band)'s hiatus in late 2009. His album is a complete solo effort as he is doing everything: performing, composing all music, penning all lyrics, playing over ten instruments and producing, with the album's recording is funded by his own Fall Out Boy earnings. Its musical direction is generally pop/R&B orientated and has been described by Stump as "soul punk" and "smart pop," drawing influence from a wide scope of artists including Prince, Michael Jackson and David Bowie. According to Stump, the song changed the entire course of Soul Punk. "I had written a while draft of the album and then at the 11th hour came up with "This City," I really loved the song but felt like, conceptually, it didn't fit on the album. I had to go back and make an album for that song because I loved it so much. So one of the holdups on [the album] was re-writing the record around [it]." With Soul Punk originally due in February 2011, Stump delayed it to October 18 and rebuilt the album with the song, releasing Truant Wave
EP in the meanwhile for its delay in February 2011. "I had this feeling that the album was disjointed, and right before I was mastering, I played "This City" for my manager — I really liked it, but I was unsure about it, although I thought it was what I wanted to say — and he was like, 'Put it on, it's great! Then I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to put that on the record, then I really need to go back to the drawing board.' Basically I took "This City", "Everybody Wants Somebody", "Allie", and a song called "Dance Miserable", and rebuilt the album around those four songs."
track "This City" which features rapper and fellow Chicagoan Lupe Fiasco
on avclub.com, linked to his YouTube upload. The remix of "This City" will be released as a bonus track on both standard and deluxe editions of Soul Punk as part of his label's idea. Stump said his relationship with the rapper goes back several years. "Before Food & Liquor came out he and I were talking about working on something together. I ended up producing the song "Little Weapon" for his The Cool record," he said. "I actually wrote the hook for "This City" with him in mind before I decided to use it for Soul Punk, so when the label asked me if I'd be interested in doing a remix with an MC he was the only real way I'd say yes." He also added "I'm kind of pop but a little left of center, It sounds kind of like it makes sense on the radio but at the same time doesn't at all. It's very me." Becky Bain of Idolator commented on the song's "full-on R&B mode [...] pop-synth explosion" and noted that the "catchy tune [is] more soul than punk".
The remix was later released as Soul Punk
EP re-entered the Top 100 albums on iTunes. With airplay from Top 40 radio stations, the song has been steadily rising on the charts and became Stump's first charting single. "This City" (remix) debuted at No. 33 on Billboard
's Pop Songs chart the week of September 24, over a month after its digital availability. The following week it rose to a new peak of No. 31, then rose to No. 30 the next and entered the Heatseekers Songs at No. 17. After that, it placed at No. 27 on Pop Songs (fourth week), and at No. 16 in its second Heatseekers Songs week. The subsequent week of October 22 saw a new peak at No. 25 on Pop Songs and No. 14 on Heatseekers Songs. The week of October 29 saw the remix drop to No. 29 on Pop Songs in its sixth week, with radio play declining, however it rose to its Heatseekers peak of No. 13 that week, its fourth on that chart. The week after, also Soul Punks debut, it again fell to No. 32 on Pop and down to No. 17 on Heatseekers. In the US iTunes Store, the remix peaked inside the Top 100 songs chart when it was released and re-entered the Top 100 when the music video came out. About.com
ranked "This City" featuring Lupe Fiasco No. 10 on their Top 10 Hot Pop Songs chart for the week ending September 6, 2011.
. Prior to that he Tweeted about the video in the making and a behind-the-scenes clip was reported by MTV
on their website. The video features Stump dancing and performing the song in a room with flashing lights, projections and heavy use of special effects, alternating with brief grayscale
flashes of a city. Despite not being available at first, Lupe Fiasco appears for one scene by himself. Stump and Koller made the video simplistic to let the music do the talking rather than the video.
Patrick Stump
Patrick Vaughn Stump is an American singer-songwriter, composer, record producer, and music critic. He is the composer, lead singer, and multi-instrumentalist of Fall Out Boy, an American rock band from Wilmette, Illinois, and is also a solo artist...
from his debut solo album Soul Punk
Soul Punk
Soul Punk is the debut solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Patrick Stump, the lead vocalist, guitarist and composer of Fall Out Boy. It was released in the United States on October 18, 2011 through Island Records, with varying release dates in other regions...
(2011). A remix featuring rapper Lupe Fiasco
Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco , better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco , is an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, Lupe is the CEO of 1st and 15th Entertainment. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his critically acclaimed debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food...
was released as the album's first single. The remix was first uploaded to YouTube for streaming on June 28, 2011 and was later made available for download on iTunes and other digital retailers on July 26, 2011, and that version has been sent out to radio with some commercial success. Its music video has been released. The Soul Punk version was included on Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
magazine's Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza
Lollapalooza is an annual music festival featuring popular alternative rock, heavy metal, punk rock and hip hop bands, dance and comedy performances, and craft booths. It has also provided a platform for non-profit and political groups. The music festival hosts more than 160,000 people over a...
mixtape (2011) for free download in the wake of Stump's performance at the music festival in Chicago. Stump has performed the song at his concerts, at radio interviews and on his guest TV appearance on Good Morning New Orleans. The remix of "This City" will be released as a bonus track (as Soul Punk is a true solo effort) on both standard and deluxe editions of Soul Punk as part of his label's idea.
Background
In January 2010, Stump announced that he was producing his debut solo album, titled Soul PunkSoul Punk
Soul Punk is the debut solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Patrick Stump, the lead vocalist, guitarist and composer of Fall Out Boy. It was released in the United States on October 18, 2011 through Island Records, with varying release dates in other regions...
. This came after Fall Out Boy
Fall Out Boy
Fall Out Boy is an American rock band from Wilmette, Illinois, formed in 2001. The band consists of vocalist, guitarist and composer Patrick Stump, bassist and lyricist Pete Wentz, guitarist Joe Trohman, and drummer Andy Hurley. The band released five studio albums from 2003–2008...
(his main band)'s hiatus in late 2009. His album is a complete solo effort as he is doing everything: performing, composing all music, penning all lyrics, playing over ten instruments and producing, with the album's recording is funded by his own Fall Out Boy earnings. Its musical direction is generally pop/R&B orientated and has been described by Stump as "soul punk" and "smart pop," drawing influence from a wide scope of artists including Prince, Michael Jackson and David Bowie. According to Stump, the song changed the entire course of Soul Punk. "I had written a while draft of the album and then at the 11th hour came up with "This City," I really loved the song but felt like, conceptually, it didn't fit on the album. I had to go back and make an album for that song because I loved it so much. So one of the holdups on [the album] was re-writing the record around [it]." With Soul Punk originally due in February 2011, Stump delayed it to October 18 and rebuilt the album with the song, releasing Truant Wave
Truant Wave
Truant Wave is the debut studio EP by American singer and songwriter Patrick Stump, member of Fall Out Boy. It was first released as a digital download exclusive to iTunes, on February 22, 2011 through Nervous Breakdance Media, Stump's own record label, before becoming available from all online...
EP in the meanwhile for its delay in February 2011. "I had this feeling that the album was disjointed, and right before I was mastering, I played "This City" for my manager — I really liked it, but I was unsure about it, although I thought it was what I wanted to say — and he was like, 'Put it on, it's great! Then I thought, 'Well, if I'm going to put that on the record, then I really need to go back to the drawing board.' Basically I took "This City", "Everybody Wants Somebody", "Allie", and a song called "Dance Miserable", and rebuilt the album around those four songs."
Remix
On Tuesday, June 28, Stump premiered the remix of his Soul PunkSoul Punk
Soul Punk is the debut solo studio album by American singer-songwriter Patrick Stump, the lead vocalist, guitarist and composer of Fall Out Boy. It was released in the United States on October 18, 2011 through Island Records, with varying release dates in other regions...
track "This City" which features rapper and fellow Chicagoan Lupe Fiasco
Lupe Fiasco
Wasalu Muhammad Jaco , better known by his stage name Lupe Fiasco , is an American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur. As an entrepreneur, Lupe is the CEO of 1st and 15th Entertainment. He rose to fame in 2006 following the success of his critically acclaimed debut album, Lupe Fiasco's Food...
on avclub.com, linked to his YouTube upload. The remix of "This City" will be released as a bonus track on both standard and deluxe editions of Soul Punk as part of his label's idea. Stump said his relationship with the rapper goes back several years. "Before Food & Liquor came out he and I were talking about working on something together. I ended up producing the song "Little Weapon" for his The Cool record," he said. "I actually wrote the hook for "This City" with him in mind before I decided to use it for Soul Punk, so when the label asked me if I'd be interested in doing a remix with an MC he was the only real way I'd say yes." He also added "I'm kind of pop but a little left of center, It sounds kind of like it makes sense on the radio but at the same time doesn't at all. It's very me." Becky Bain of Idolator commented on the song's "full-on R&B mode [...] pop-synth explosion" and noted that the "catchy tune [is] more soul than punk".
The remix was later released as Soul Punk
Truant Wave
Truant Wave is the debut studio EP by American singer and songwriter Patrick Stump, member of Fall Out Boy. It was first released as a digital download exclusive to iTunes, on February 22, 2011 through Nervous Breakdance Media, Stump's own record label, before becoming available from all online...
EP re-entered the Top 100 albums on iTunes. With airplay from Top 40 radio stations, the song has been steadily rising on the charts and became Stump's first charting single. "This City" (remix) debuted at No. 33 on Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
's Pop Songs chart the week of September 24, over a month after its digital availability. The following week it rose to a new peak of No. 31, then rose to No. 30 the next and entered the Heatseekers Songs at No. 17. After that, it placed at No. 27 on Pop Songs (fourth week), and at No. 16 in its second Heatseekers Songs week. The subsequent week of October 22 saw a new peak at No. 25 on Pop Songs and No. 14 on Heatseekers Songs. The week of October 29 saw the remix drop to No. 29 on Pop Songs in its sixth week, with radio play declining, however it rose to its Heatseekers peak of No. 13 that week, its fourth on that chart. The week after, also Soul Punks debut, it again fell to No. 32 on Pop and down to No. 17 on Heatseekers. In the US iTunes Store, the remix peaked inside the Top 100 songs chart when it was released and re-entered the Top 100 when the music video came out. About.com
About.com
About.com is an online source for original information and advice. It is written in English, and is aimed primarily at North Americans. It is owned by The New York Times Company....
ranked "This City" featuring Lupe Fiasco No. 10 on their Top 10 Hot Pop Songs chart for the week ending September 6, 2011.
Music video
A music video for the remix has been released, directed by Ken Koller. On September 13, Patrick Stump announced that the music video for "This City" (remix) would premiere on September 20 on Vevo with a teaser on IdolatorIdolator (website)
Idolator is a music blog. Created by the blog network Gawker Media in August 2006, Idolator was later sold to rival blog network Buzz Media, which also owns music blog Stereogum. From the 2007 departure of original head writer Brian Raftery until November 2009, the blog's head writer was Maura...
. Prior to that he Tweeted about the video in the making and a behind-the-scenes clip was reported by MTV
MTV
MTV, formerly an initialism of Music Television, is an American network based in New York City that launched on August 1, 1981. The original purpose of the channel was to play music videos guided by on-air hosts known as VJs....
on their website. The video features Stump dancing and performing the song in a room with flashing lights, projections and heavy use of special effects, alternating with brief grayscale
Grayscale
In photography and computing, a grayscale or greyscale digital image is an image in which the value of each pixel is a single sample, that is, it carries only intensity information...
flashes of a city. Despite not being available at first, Lupe Fiasco appears for one scene by himself. Stump and Koller made the video simplistic to let the music do the talking rather than the video.
"There's not really a plot, there's not really a story to it. The song's called 'This City,' and it describes a lot of these images in a city, and I feel like those images are already there; it would be kind of redundant to take a camera into a city; it's almost like the colors and the lights and the images that are going to be around this are going to be representing the life in a city. One thing that Ken and I were talking about is that a city is so complicated, so ... we wanted to do something a bit different with it, and a bit more abstract [...] the treatment was really funny to look at; it was literally one sentence, like 'Patrick stands in a room and sings and we project all these images and lights on the walls.'" -- Stump, reported by MTV.
Weekly charts
| Chart (2011) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles The Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles is a chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States. It lists the top 25 singles below number 100 that have not yet charted on the Billboard Hot 100. Sometimes, however, singles halt their progress on this chart, and never appear on the Hot 100... |
2 |
| US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Heatseekers Songs |
13 |
| US Billboard Pop Songs | 25 |