AMITYVILLE, N.Y. — Rock band Taking Back Sunday announced their plans to play a special setlist at this year’s Riot Fest featuring songs whose lyrics were heavily featured in people’s 2003 AIM away messages, sources report.
“We’re aware that our fanbase at this point is just nostalgic millennials,” singer Adam Lazzara said. “So we wanted to cater our setlist especially to them. Remember how deep you felt when you wrote ‘and with my last dying breath, I’ll apologize for bleeding on your shirt’ in your away message when you were a sophomore in high school? You’d better believe you’ll be hearing that. We’re even thinking about complementing our songs with some stock sounds of doors opening and closing so you can really relive those high school years.”
Local 39-year-old fan Tyler Williams was excited by the news.
“I can’t wait for this,” Williams said. “I used to impress my crushes by typing things like ‘and will you tell all your friends you’ve got your gun to my head?’ in my AIM away message. They would never leave me any IMs, but I could tell they were blown away by how cryptically poetic I was. I’m going to sing along to all the lyrics in their set this year, so I know all the women in the crowd are going to be watching me the entire show. I may even grow my bangs out in the meantime, which is sure to have them swarming. There’s no way I’ll be going home alone.”
Williams’ old crush Jessica Sennett revealed that she will also be in attendance.
“Oh Christ, Tyler’s going to be there?” Sennett despaired. “That dude was so fucking annoying. He used to IM me constantly in high school with this super cringey poetry, and then when I would see him in the halls he would just shyly look away. I remember one time I responded to his IM with ‘hey’ just to be polite, and he had put up an away message that just said ‘but I love the way you’d roll excuses off the tip of your tongue as I’d slowly fall apart.’ What the fuck does that even mean? I need to buy a wig or something to disguise myself in case I run into him.”
At press time, Lazzara had also revealed the band would be playing a special “Music Embedded in Your Old MySpace Page” second set.
