FIRST: If you have any interest in actually learning something about this band and aren't just skimming through my stupid fucking website, then watch this video. His retelling of their career is a lot more coherent than mine and he actually went through the effort of talking about EVERYTHING instead of just phoning it in after Almost Here like I did.

There's some cool folks on Twitter and Tumblr who know a lot, like A LOT A LOT about this band and other adjacent bands (Cobra Starship, Gym Class Heroes, etc.) but I haven't been active in the TAI... online fandom or whatever in a year so I wouldn't know exactly who to link. I fucking love looking through old livejournal threads about them but most of them are just so ridiculous and stupid that I don't have the heart to link them here. Here's a good one though:
A pretty wholesome fan testimonial of meeting them, including telling William Beckett that people ship him with Gabe Saporta. Kind of historical considering they both fed into the whole Gabilliam thing pretty hard ever since.

If anyone has a good LJ primer about them please send it to me so I can link it. I haven't looked through TAI... threads in a LONG time and I didn't bookmark the interesting ones.

If you've seen my Brand New fanpage, prepare to be dissapointed when you look at this one because I'm no where as near into TAI... as I used to be, meaning a lot more vagueness and no sappy testimonial about how I used to cry to them in my high school's bathroom or whatever. Here's the best testimonial you're going to get: I snuck in my headphones while taking finals one year, listened to their discography on repeat, and got the best scores I've ever recieved on a test. Also, when I listen to them I become less suicidal.

Recent TAI... updates:
Played Riot Fest September 16-18, 2022 + after show on 9/17 (first show in 7 years!) Setlist: 17th, 18th

May 26 played The Dome in London, Setlist

Played Slam Dunk Festival 2023 May 27th and 28th Setlist: 27th, 28th

Opening for Fall Out Boy So Much For (Tour)Dust June 21 (Chicago) and July 3 (Los Angeles)

Playing @ When We Were Young October 2023

In the style of every Fall Out Boy adjacent band, The Academy Is... entered the universe with a little emo EP that pretentious internet music nerds will swear is better than all of their later "mainstream" releases. The Academy Is... also entered the universe as The Academy, a pop punk / emo band formed in Hoffman Estates, a suburb of Chicago.

"Frontman William Beckett and guitarist Mike Carden grew up in rivaling bands in the local Chicago music scene. Beckett eventually ended his short-lived solo project Remember Maine, wanting to take music more seriously and looking for someone who shared his passion. When Carden's band broke up, the two gradually found themselves talking more and more, engulfed in deep conversations about music. After realizing they were very much alike, they decided to try their hand at writing songs together and The Academy was born."

(Source: last.fm ... so reliable, I know.) According to people on the internet who were born after this all happened, there was apparently a lot of stupid teenager drama that came with the conception of this band (but let's be honest with ourselves, what band DOESN'T have stupid teenager drama at the beginning of their career)

Anyways... The first incarnation of The Academy consisted of frontman William Beckett, guitarist Mike Carden, guitarist Adrian LaTrace, bassist Adam Siska (or Sisky or whatever), and drummer Mike DelPrincipe. Their self-titled debut EP was released in 2004 under LLR Recordings, who had also released The Last Place You Look by Remember Maine, (AKA WILLIAM BECKETT'S GAY ACOUSTIC SOLO PROJECT).

Shortly after this, they became The Academy Is... due to other established bands having already been going by The Academy. Anyone who's verbally rambled about this band to someone who doesn't know who they are knows how much more convinient it would be if they were still just called The Academy, but the ellipsis adds character and that's more important. Apparently most of the music written on this EP was done by LaTrace and Carden but I couldn't find a source for this...

Since this all took place in the mid 2000's, Pete Wentz's presence is obligatory. Blah, blah, blah, Pete Wentz, William Beckett, Fueled by Ramen, blah, blah, blah. The Academy Is... released their debut album Almost Here on February 8, 2005 (AND IT FUCKING OWNS AND YOU SHOULD GO LISTEN TO IT NOW BECAUSE IT'S ONLY LIKE 30 MINUTES). After this came their first lineup change. Guitarist Adrian LaTrace was replaced by Tom Conrad, formerly of 5o4plan, and drummer Mike DelPrincipe was replaced by Andy Mrotek (AKA EVERYBODY CALLS HIM THE BUTCHER), formerly of Last Place Champs. After touring with Fall Out Boy, Something Corporate, Midtown, Matchbook Romance, Motion City Soundtrack, and Armor for Sleep, The Academy Is... went on their first headlining tour in the summer of 2005 with Plain White T's, Days Away, and June. On Billboard's charts Almost Here peaked at #7 on Top Heatseekers, #16 on Independent Albums, and #185 on The Billboard 200.

During the later half of 2006, William Beckett was featured on Cobra Starship's debut single, Snakes On a Plane, with Maja Ivarsson of The Sounds and Travie McCoy of Gym Class Heroes. Go watch live performances of this song from back then if you want to see Bill struggle to sing the chorus. God bless.

Similarly to The Academy EP, Almost Here is also victim to people on the internet who think their later albums are too mainstream and written by a bunch of haters.

In October 26, 2006, guitarist Tom Conrad was replaced with Michael Guy Chislett. So it goes. During Warped Tour 2006, the writing process for their second album began. Santi, which is apparently named after some guy that went to school with William and Sisky according to a Youtube comment from 2011, was released on April 3, 2007 and peaked at #32 on the Billboard 200. Check out the DVD, uploaded on youtube dot com by yours truly! Part 1, 2.

Following the release of Santi, The Academy Is... appeared on the lineup for the 2007 Honda Civic Tour alongside Fall Out Boy, +44, Cobra Starship, Hey Monday, and Paul Wall. Following this, they tourned Australia and Singapore with Cobra Starship, also playing Reading and Leeds Festival in the UK. In September of 2007, they began touring with Armor For Sleep (another really underrated emo band!), The Rocket Summer, and Sherwood, and later Cobra Starship (again)

I'm going to be completely honest here and admit that I don't care / don't know shit about Cobra Starship / Gabe Saporta but they heavily coexist with TAI... and the venn diagram of TAI... and Cobra Starship fans is basically just one circle.

(...Santi!)

In June and July, The Academy Is... joined the Warped Tour 08 lineup along with Cobra Starship, Gym Class Heroes, and whichever other pop punk bands were popular in 2008. In August, TAI... and Cobra Starship joined Panic! at the Disco on the Australian and New Zealand leg of their world tour. Also some people say P!ATD overshadowed TAI... because they were slightly too similar or something stupid. Don't know.

On August 19, 2008, their third and final album, Fast Times At Barrington High (named after William and Sisky's high school), was released. "About a Girl" ended up being their most popular single ... by far. The album made it onto Rolling Stone Magazine's 50 Best Albums of the Year at #46, and peaked at #17 on the Billboard 200. They then went on tour with We The Kings, Hey Monday, and Carolina Liar (AKA MORE BANDS THAT I DON'T LISTEN TO BUT OTHER TAI... FANS DO BECAUSE I'M FAKE, GAY, PHONY, A HORRIBLE PERSON, PRETENTIOUS, ETC.)

A new EP, Lost in Pacific Time: The AP/EP, was released on September 22, 2009. On September 29, TAI... replaced The All-American Rejects for one show of their Blink-182 tour.

On May 26, 2010, TAI... announced that they would be opening for KISS on their uncoming summer tour. They also said that this tour would not affect their new record whatsoever ... which ended up never being finished or released

(Hard to believe that this was a real thing that happened. If you couldn't already guess, there wasn't a very big overlap of TAI... and KISS fans. According to sources that I'm not going to cite at all, they got booed at some shows. So sad.)

THE END
On March 23, 2011, William Beckett tweeted that the band is currently working on demos for the upcoming album. On May 24, The Academy Is... made an announcement that The Butcher and Michael Guy Chislett would be leaving the band.

On October 8, 2011, The Academy Is... announced that the band had broken up. :(

The last noteworthy thing that happened to the band in 2011 was Sisky joining Say Anything. Pretty cool!



Oh and also I'm just going to throw in that William Beckett had been releasing solo music from 2012-2014, none of which I've listened to. He's also featured in the song Wolf in Sheep's Clothing by Set It Off, which is more well-known than anything TAI... ever did.