Adam Lazzara is not a manly man. The singer of Taking Back Sunday has been called "a punk-rock Mick Jagger" by Rolling Stone magazine and has struck a few model poses in photo shoots, but he laughs at the idea of being an emo sex symbol. "Just even tagging the word 'sex' on and having it relate to me is just funny in general, because I'm just an awkward mess when it comes to anything like that," he says. Listening to TBS's angst-ridden, heart-on-sleeve lyrics, it's obvious Lazzara's not kidding. He has, shall we say, issues with women. "I'm under the assumption that I'm going to be the one that's leaving you" goes the opening line to "I Am Fred Astaire," from TBS's new album, Where You Want to Be.
The angst and soul-baring is what draws women to people like the 23-year-old Lazzara, though. Tortured souls are the hot, new things in rock 'n' roll, and Lazzara and his band are at the forefront of emo's sensitive-boy revolution. "Unfortunately, that's a lot of all I think about," he says of his troubles with females, explaining the songs that have catapulted TBS into the Billboard top 10 (Where You Want to Be debuted at No. 3) and sold-out shows (including the Vegas stop at the House of Blues) across the country. Like Mick Jagger or any classic rock star, women want him and men want to be him.
But Lazzara doesn't want the rock star label. "I don't think there's such a thing as rock stars anymore," he says. "We're definitely not rock stars, and if we are rock stars, we're real pathetic at it." That self-deprecation defines Lazzara's attitude, and in many ways it's what emo in general and TBS in particular are built on: The more screwed up and insecure you are, and the more you brag about it, the more people like you. It's a weird, anti-macho aesthetic that in its own way is just as cocky as the Jagger swagger Lazzara wants to disown. He talks about being the guy on the Nintendo Fusion Tour who doesn't know anything about video games: "It's funny being on tour with a bunch of bands that are good at video games. They'll come up like, 'Hey man, you want to play Halo?' and I'll be like, "What the f--k is Halo?' I'm totally questioning my manhood." He talks about the band's boring backstage activities: "We were some place where we didn't know anybody from the town, and after the show it was just like the five dudes in the band and then a couple of our crew dudes, and we're just all sitting around looking at each other after the show, and we're just like, 'Dude, we're pathetic. We are so pathetic.'" He's a huge fan of Fight Club who never gets in fights.
Yet, somehow he comes off as brash and confident in TBS' music, breaking hearts as much as he has his own broken. In interviews, he brags that people think he's a dick. In that way, TBS are emo in a nutshell: Sensitive assholes who get really sad and scream about it in their music, but don't want you to think that they're self-centered or anything. To some it might seem smug, but to the thousands of teens who buy TBS albums, it's a genuine inner conflict with which they can identify.
Whatever you think of his music, Lazzara is content to remain introverted and self-effacing, more focused on writing and playing songs than on deconstructing the reasons why. In Vegas, he'll be adored by a full house of sweaty adolescents singing along to his every word, but after the show he'll still be the shy, awkward guy who some people think is a dick, hanging out alone or with his band mates. "Even when we're in party towns," he says, "we really don't party so much."