Happy album release day to All Time Low’s latest, maybe greatest, LP: Tell Me I’m Alive.
We’ve known All Time Low for a long time… a long, long time. The band was first on our cover in 2007, the second most-viewed video of our short-lived YouTube series of the early 2010s is with them, and our current editor first chatted with them back when she was still an intern. And, to further prove our point with these guys, we have featured them in some form or another for every single promo cycle of theirs – including Warped Tour, Sad Summer Fest, album anniversaries, and all nine LP releases. Time really does fly when you’re having fun… and when the All Time Low discography is the soundtrack to that fun.
2008
Our review of this concert (from their first big tour) features photos we can’t confirm or deny being taken on a Samsung Envy II, but besides that, the words themselves were full of high quality praise. “Sporting hipster outfits, colored glasses and too much hair product, these bands traditionally boast minimally insightful lyrics, plenty of hooks and surprisingly decent melodies. And they always rouse sizeable and noisy pre-pubescent crowds. While ATL doesn’t escape these elements, their gig at Roseland impressed me. The quartet from Maryland put on a quality of performance I would have expected from a more mature band. Ultimately though, their performance was a stellar one and it was blatantly obvious they were having the time of their lives on their first headlining tour of the U.S. “This is amazing—I got chills when I walked on stage,” frontman Alex Gaskarth said. “I can’t get over how many of you are here. I never in my wildest dreams ever expected this place to sell out. This is fucking incredible.” And with that, ATL delivered a show to remember.”
2009
In a late-2000s concert spotlight, we wrote all about why you should catch them live on tour. “All Time Low’s raunchy humor, good looks, and infectious pop-punk hooks have solidified them as the current kings of the scene. Need more proof? They’re currently MTV’s “Artist of the Month” and can be seen goofing off and playing acoustic songs in-between shows.”
2010
On signing to a major label, Alex broke down the changes and excitement that came along with it for us in a feature interview. “Different levels of resources, different sizes like of the team that’s behind you. The decision was just, it felt like on the indie label, we reached the highest point we could reach and trying to tackle things like getting radio and things like that was sort of becoming harder and harder based on the fact that the label hadn’t really done it before. We thought that maybe we hit a ceiling so, it’s to make something work for every party involved and also to launch us to the next stepping-stone.”
2011
In a 2011 spotlight, we once again told you about All Time Low’s insane trajectory in and around the pop punk scene: “Led by Alexander Gaskarth, the group from Baltimore, MD, has been becoming more and more popular as the years go by.”
Spotlight, spotlight spotlight. All Time Low was doing a lot of touring that we wanted to tell our readers about – so we did with some choice words, including the words sold out. “Already the [Dirty Work] tour has sold out for a few stops already including March 25 at The Starland Ballroom and March 26 at The Electric Factory.” While we had to say Rest In Peace to the latter venue, the former has been home to a slew of ATL shows over the years. We are proud to say that it is a humble favorite of the band’s.
Our second most-viewed video from our Project Greenroom series, our early-to-mid-2010s-alternative-scene-foray-into-YouTube, featured Alex and Jack Barakat backstage (at Starland, of course) in conversation. There are so many notable quotes, so maybe just enjoy the 12-minute watch that it is and tell us your favorite moment!
2013
The hits… it’s been a decade and these are still all over Pop Punk Playlists, 2010s classics, and alt radio. “‘Dear Maria, Count Me In’ went gold for us, so that’s always been a real favorite song in our catalog. A song like ‘Weightless’ has really come to define who the band is. If I was to introduce someone that has never heard a song by All Time Low, I think I’d chose one of those two songs to start off.” Alex knew in this feature moment that these were getting big, but did he know that they would stay big? Seriously, “Dear Maria” has over 428 million streams on Spotify, “Weightless” with 109 million!
2015
It’s safe to say that we were tight with the band’s rocking vocalist when he was cursing in interviews (like this one) and admitting that it brings peace of mind able to create a now decade-spanning setlist, which could be “pretty fucking hard!” Still, the reception was (and remains) amazing. “I think it’s cool that our fanbase has grown with us and we can play new songs and people are familiar with them. It’s not like those situations where people just wanna hear the first record or whatever, so it’s nice to be able to plan a tour—like the Back To The Future tour where we’re focusing on new material and have the response be really positive. So it’s really cool for us to be able to grow as a band and have others support that. But we can’t really play all of our songs, which is a bummer, because it’d be a three-hour show!”
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2017
We reminisced and reflected on the longevity of the band, the music, and the scene at this time, warming the hearts of everyone in conversation… but especially Alex, who said the following: “I think if you would have told us then that we would last 10 years that we would have been ecstatic. That was always our dream and we never wanted to be a flash in the pan kind of band. We always had aspirations to have a long life and not fizzle out. So yeah, it is pretty exciting that we still get to do this.”
In that same interview, Alex commented on his love for Starland Ballroom, which is ever-cemented in Garden State history, of course. “it always feels really intimate despite being big, and so we thought that room had the perfect balance of being able to fit the amount of people to make it feel inclusive, but at the same time not take it into rooms that felt like they were too big for that album and that era.”
2018
We told you – All Time Low and New Jersey go way back. The frontman told us that himself in a cover story we did! “[…] New Jersey was such a staple place for us in our coming up as a band. It was kind of one of the first markets that welcomed us and accepted us as if we were a hometown band. It gave us a place to go outside Baltimore when we began doing more shows. It felt really formative. It felt like it had a lot to do with this band becoming successful. It was the perfect venue for that show. Starland always stood out to us as kind of being just a great punk rock venue. We have always had some of our favorite shows there with the most energy
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This same year our single review for “Everything Is Fine” let our readers know that the energy is high in and around this band’s community – and their music keeps it that way. “All Time Low already have a criminally loyal fan base, and they certainly know how to keep them happy. Feel free to roll down your car windows and blast this banger at full volume: you likely won’t be the only one,” we said.
2021
Alex told us about hitting the road in the age of the coronavirus in a feature interview. “I think at the end of the day, it boils down to a sense of creating a safe community for people to come and celebrate and exist and be able to kind of forget about their troubles in a lot of ways. To be able to kind of cultivate that in this climate is really inspiring and it has inspired us a lot, too. It’s getting us through this time, as well, so it’s pretty incredible.”
TELL ME I’M ALIVE, THE NEW ALBUM FROM ALL TIME LOW, IS OUT NOW!
