Taking Back Sunday’s Album Covers & Continuity

4 min readFeb 21, 2021

Taking Back Sunday took Long Island by storm at the turn of the century. One of the more popular rock bands to ever come out of Long Island, Taking Back Sunday has managed to maintain a diehard fan base over the last twenty years despite shifts in sound, personnel, touring cycles, etc. Although one could speculate for pages and pages as to how and why this is the case, I wish to zoom in a little closer and take a look at the iconography of the album art for their first four LPs, and the power that comes with continuity. The first decade of the band’s existence was commercially their peak, with their records Tell All Your Friends, Where You Want To Be, and Louder Now being their biggest successes selling hundreds of thousands of records collectively. I’m choosing to include their 4th record New Again because although it wasn’t as successful as the aforementioned three it was still toured on and supported by the rippling successes of their first records.

So let us first establish the consistencies with these album covers. First and foremost, the number 152. 152 can be seen on the cover of any Taking Back Sunday album. Its origin is the actual highway sign on Tell All Your Friends, which in practice was the exit that North Carolina-based singer Adam Lazarra and friends would take as a pit stop going to and from shows when they were younger. In addition to being included on the cover of every Taking Back Sunday album, it’s been parlayed into long-term branding for the band, included on merch of all kinds in years to come.

In addition to the number 152, excluding Louder Now, every album has iconography related to driving. Whether it be the open highways on Tell All Your Friends or Where You Wanna Be, or the classic car on the cover of New Again, an album which’s layout calls back to the New Again desert aesthetic, driving and mobility are something fans can directly attach to the music. The “why?” is up to interpretation, as it’s never truly been spoken on by the band at great length. But Taking Back Sunday is a by-product of the booming “emo music” scene from the 2000s. Being emotionally charged music, one could tie a lot of nostalgia and emotion to those driving visuals. Going for a drive to clear your head, taking a road trip, things of that sort tie in very closely with driving and listening to music while driving.

I think the big payoff with the continuity in these themes is interpreted meaning. The symbolism isn’t explicitly saying anything. But the symbolism is consistent. Every album has these themes that keep the album art of the band just as tied into the entity’s timeline as the music does. So although the symbolism and semiotic value are open to interpretation, the consistency makes it feel like there’s something you’re missing, or there’s something explicitly there that you need to look for. And in essence, maybe that’s exactly the point. Art is subjective, so the meaning we find in said art is simply whatever we internalize it to be.