Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge by My Chemical Romance

Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, My Chemical Romance's second album and their major-label debut, came out on Reprise on June 8, 2004, and it's the record that carried the New Jersey band off an indie label and into the big leagues. Howard Benson produced it, and the band wrote and recorded it from late 2003 through March 2004 with grief hanging over the sessions: the death of Gerard and Mikey Way's grandmother shaped much of what they wrote. Gerard sang, Mikey played bass, Ray Toro and Frank Iero handled guitars, and Matt Pelissier played drums, soon to be replaced by Bob Bryar after the album came out.

It's pop-punk with a gothic streak and a flair for melodrama, and a longer stretch in the studio left it far tighter and more polished than the debut. The songs are about love, loss and revenge, and some dig into gender and sexuality, while a loose story runs underneath, picking up from "Demolition Lovers" on the debut: two dead lovers split between heaven and hell, reunited only if he can collect the souls of a thousand men. "Helena" is a thundering, full-throttle anthem, "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" is a hyperactive, sarcastic sing-along, and "The Ghost of You" swells into a cinematic ache.

Those 3 songs were the singles, the album went platinum and sold more than three million copies in the US, and a deluxe edition with every track remixed plus four live recordings arrived on June 6, 2025.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.