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Fall Out Boy’s latest effort So Much (For) Stardust) has been critically acclaimed and lauded by fans as some of their best work to date. The album artwork, prominently featuring a doberman, has left some puzzled and looking for additional context as to the dog’s identity and how the artwork came to be. The Bad Habits Collection is proud to bring you the exclusive reveal of the dog featured on the cover of their eighth studio album alongside the full story of how they were discovered.

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When Fall Out Boy officially announced their eighth studio album on January 18th, 2023 and unveiled the album artwork for So Much (For) Stardust, there were a lot of opinions to be had. Some of the fans immediately felt connected and claimed it as their own, some compared it to Fiona Apple’s 2020 release Fetch the Bolt Cutters, and some downright found it revolting. Overall, most agreed that it was polarizing to say the least. Donned in an all black background, the front cover features both the name of the band and the album itself in the work of Omar Mroz (hereinafter referred to by his online moniker Mr.Oz). The text is covered in glitter and written out in the same style featured earlier in the rollout of FOB8’s album cycle with A Claymation Fall Out Boy Celebration, dropped as a surprise present from the band on Christmas one month earlier. The headlining attraction of this sideshow was in fact just a simple square box, containing a swirling artistic depiction of a doberman barking in the presence of a froth of bubbles.

From the moment I first laid eyes on the iconography of Fall Out Boy’s new era, I had just two questions in mind: Who is the dog? & Why choose the dog? A few obvious possibilities were immediately ruled out. Solely based on what’s been posted to social media, this dog did not belong to Pete, Joe, or Andy. Patrick has remained dormant online for years at this point, but still the odds felt slim. I did my best to brush it off, but ultimately I kept coming back to the thought of WHY? If you’re familiar with my previous work on the history of Take This To Your Grave’s album cover, you already know this type of sentiment means a lot to me. After a while of waiting for the band to bring up the topic in an interview or statement, I had essentially given up hope on any type of official explanation. It was at this moment, just 3 days before the release of the record, that I accepted the reality of the situation. This wasn’t a hot topic within the fandom. And no one was going to provide me with the answers I was looking for. If I wanted to know more, it was solely up to me. So… I got to work. — 

To take a step back, the artwork for So Much (For) Stardust first hit the internet on January 11th, seven days before the official reveal. Posted alongside the name of the first single Love From The Other Side, our barking pup friend was featured on the home feed of FILTER | NEWs on VK, a Russian social media site that I’ve been told is comparable to Facebook. The artwork was watermarked with a subtle, transparent white logo for FILTER in the background. Despite this post being up for five days (a millennia on the worldwide web), it wasn’t until the 16th that the fandom at large made this discovery, with many claiming it was an outright fake.

However, the *stars* started to align proving this leak to have a dose or two of authenticity. Mr.Oz’s claymation video from earlier in the rollout followed the story of a similar looking doberman, who just so happened to pose in the final frame in a style strongly resembling the leaked cover. 

Beyond that, a post from lyricist and bassist Pete Wentz’s Instagram dating back just two days earlier was quickly dug up. On the 4th slide of the carousel, there it was: a selfie of Pete with a Santa hat on and propped up on the shelf behind him... the physical painting of the doberman seen on the leaked cover.

All but confirmed at this point, one last clue presented itself online. The freshly created Twitter account “@muchstardust” popped up out of nowhere, making itself known by following myself and a few other notable hardcore fans in this space. @muchstardust made just one single tweet before being suspended (for reasons unknown). 

The post featured three images, the watermarked cover, Pete’s selfie, and notably, a compressed form of the actual photo taken of man’s best friend —the same one the leaked cover features an oil painting rendition of. 

—  As we all know now, this leak was indeed real and confirmed as the album artwork just a few days later by Fall Out Boy themselves. But that’s when the trail went cold. Later promotional photos featuring the band and taken by their long time collaborator Pamela Littky included another doberman, but clearly not the same one once examined a bit closer. On March 21st, the Chicago rock group posted “What do you think the dog’s name is? 🫧”, but never followed up with the answer. It’s as if they were taunting me specifically with how vocal I had been about wanting to solve this mystery. Just before the album’s official release, I was tipped off by someone with an early copy of the CD that the liner notes of So Much (For) Stardust credit Safia Latif for the cover painting and Jen Patterson for the photograph the cover painting was based on. With new pieces of the puzzle in play, my search for the dog in question was reignited. However, my leads proved of little to no help. I could not get in touch with Safia and could not properly identify Jen Patterson online for the life of me. Taking the hunt back to the drawing board, I reverse image searched the photo @muchstardust had originally provided, which even at this point, months later, was our only source of the actual photograph. Littered with results of the album artwork naturally, I did come across one potential connection. Once again, I found myself on the public timeline of someone’s VK.com profile. “dextromethorpan 3” had included the same photograph in a gallery of different doberman puppies posted on December 21st, 2020. This was…something. Sure, this photo likely did not originate from the VK profile I had unearthed, but at least now I knew it had been around the web for a few years. Scratching my head, I wondered how Fall Out Boy had originally come across this image. Was it something that came up on one of their feeds? Or perhaps just a keyword search? Taking it to different forms of social media, I found a potential match on the /r/doberman subreddit posted 10 months ago. Titled “Cool pic of us playing with bubbles”, the dobie in question featured strikingly similar features and color patterns, and was of course, playing with bubbles. 

So I did what any other sane fan would do… and sent a private message to the Redditor the night before the album dropped with Jen’s photograph. “/u/drc55555” responded Saturday morning agreeing that the dog did look a lot like their own, but that they didn’t recognize the photograph. I woke up in a cold sweat seeing the glimpse of the Reddit notification on my iPhone and replied informing them of the cover of Fall Out Boy’s brand new release and asking if the user was the Jen Patterson credited in the album’s booklet. A day later, they replied once again noting that they weren’t Jen, but that this has sparked a memory of another DM they had received in the fall of last year from an Elektra Records personnel, Fueled By Ramen’s distributor who Fall Out Boy had publicly rejoined the roster of just this January. Indeed, 200 days ago from this very conversation, a marketing representative from the label had reached out to the Redditor through the same platform letting them know that an artist they work with had come across the very same photo I myself found and that the artist had fallen in love with it, hoping to use it as part of the artwork for an upcoming project. /u/drc55555 had conceded that they regretted not responding at the thought of how their dog could have become famous. This is when I knew, I was HOT on the trail. Either a member of FOB discovered this photo of their dog while scrolling Reddit or had specifically sought out the same search terms as me, which meant the actual photograph used on the cover could have potentially been found through the very same method. My search accelerated and within a few hours I had run a variety of similar terms by Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, really any social media site I could get my hands on. Nothing had come up, but I hadn’t called it a day quite yet as one of the more obvious sites remained: Instagram. Heading to the explore page I have barely used in my own time on the platform, I typed in the same keywords that brought me to the pup’s uncanny match on Reddit: “doberman bubbles”. And there it was, exactly 60 rows down, right in the center, the original image of the dog I had been looking for all along along with an alternate photo of the same dog in the next slide in the same setting captioned “BUBBLES!!!!!”, posted —you guessed it, in 2020. 

—  With this case officially closed, I’m beyond stoked to introduce Blitz the Doberman to other fans of Fall Out Boy. At the time of publication, Blitz has 12.8k followers on his public Instagram account, which lead me to question how this match hadn’t already been made. Blitz’s bio reveals he was born on February 27th, 2019 and lives in Las Vegas with his human, one Jen Patterson.

In a beautiful twist of fate, within the hour of finishing the final draft of this piece, Blitz’s humans responded to my inquiry from earlier in the week. I spoke with Jen at length who was happy to share her story exclusively with The Bad Habits Collection. Similarly to the Redditor from earlier, a marketing rep from Elektra Records had reached out to her through Instagram on September 20th, 2022 inquiring about using a picture of her pup for one of their artists’ work, a message she initially regarded as spam. Eventually, she came to an agreement with Elektra, however, this story ended there for her. Up until Jen read the direct message I sent to Blitz’s account, she had not the slightest idea that he was featured on the cover of the new album of one of the biggest modern rock bands left in the world. I was shocked to hear this, but Jen on the other hand was incredibly excited to learn of the breaking news. I shared a photo with her of her name printed in the liner notes of So Much (For) Stardust, a cool moment for us both. Jen told me “I never considered myself a photographer, but that’s amazing!” When I asked about how Blitz already had such a huge following on Instagram, she told me all about how she’s networked with others in a doberman group and has kept a steady stream of posts coming on the daily. In discussion of what she’d like for others to take away from this article, Jen simply hoped others would get to know Blitz’s name —my entire goal of this investigation all along. Half-joking, she expressed that she’d also love to have gotten her hands on some merchandise with his face on it. Infinitely grateful for her responding to my DM and taking the time to talk with me, I’ve personally sent Jen physical copies of So Much (For) Stardust in both vinyl and CD format. I’ll be sure to update this write-up with a photo of FOB’s newest mascot posing with his album cover when they arrive! Closing out our conversation, Jen let me know that she “felt like if you hadn’t reached out, we would not have known.” To be honest, there were times in this journey that I thought it might be for the best if I gave up the search for this pup as to not invade anyone’s privacy. I figured if Blitz hadn’t already made himself known publicly, maybe there was a specific reason behind not doing so. I would have never guessed that reason was because his family were simply unaware of his new-found fame. I feel honored to have been the one to share this discovery with Blitz’s owners and again want to thank them for their contributions to this piece. Jen has also graciously shared the original photograph of Blitz the cover was based on in its full resolution, uncropped:

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After scouring the internet to to uncover this story, it all leads me to just one final question: Why Blitz? What’s the connection? Moreover, what’s the intended meaning here? Jen let me know that she herself was unaware of how and why the photograph was found and selected, but we can naturally draw our own conclusions. Discussing this topic with other longtime fans of the band, all have come to the same conclusion that Fall Out Boy’s latest effort features some of Pete’s bleakest lyrics in a long time paired somehow ever so perfectly with some of Patrick’s most uplifting and dance-worthy melodies to date. As my partner pointed out, the album artwork depicts a breed known for their usage as guard dogs with a tough exterior, but shown playing lightheartedly with what’s usually associated as a child’s toy. In the words of fellow Fall Out Boy historian and Bad Habits Collection collaborator Tommy McPhail, the cover displays “the epitome of boundless joy and simplified bliss amongst chaos”, a phrase that perfectly sums up the entire feeling artistically and masterfully expressed in So Much (For) Stardust in my own eyes. Fall Out Boy’s newest full-length studio record So Much (For) Stardust, produced by the legendary Neal Avron, is one of their strongest statement pieces in years and is now available everywhere music is streamed or sold. You can follow Blitz’s adventures on Instagram: @blitzdoberman —  “The kind of pain you feel to get good in the end. Inscribed like stone and faded by the rain: ‘Give up what you love before it does you in.’” Written by Alex Toor for The Bad Habits Collection