Tell All Your Friends is the debut studio album by American rock band Taking Back Sunday, released on March 26, 2002, through Victory Records.

Bassist Jesse Lacey, who was childhood friends with Longo and Nolan, then joined,[2] marking the formation of Taking Back Sunday in Amityville, New York, in November 1999.

[7] Adam Lazzara saw Taking Back Sunday live and inquired if they needed a permanent bassist,[2] and drove from his hometown of High Point, North Carolina[8] to Long Island to practice with them.

[nb 2] Taking Back Sunday started jamming in a rehearsal room that Reyes had in Lindenhurst, New York, where they practiced and composed every night.

[13][23] The first song this lineup had written was "Great Romances of the 20th Century", which the members felt was better than anything they had done before, and that it sounded different from other Long Island acts, which were into pop and funk.

[41][nb 3] "Great Romances of the 20th Century" includes an audio sample from the film Beautiful Girls (1996), and opens with an electronic string line.

[41] Kevin Craft of PopMatters interpreted it as someone trying to console their friend, who is inexperienced at romance: "The would-be suitor must improve the verses he’s using in his attempts at courtship if he wants to have any shot at impressing girls who favor 'literate boys'".

[32][56] John Clark shot the cover art, which featured the number 152, alluding to a gas station Lazzara and his friends would stop at Exit 152 off Interstate 40 in Mebane, North Carolina.

In Chicago, Illinois, New York City and Los Angeles, California, Victory gave out 20,000 sampler albums at a cost of about $100,000; Brummel considered this a better investment than attempting to gain radio airplay.

[61] Nolan and Cooper formed Straylight Run with Michelle and Breaking Pangaea drummer Will Noon and subsequently ceased contact with all the members of Taking Back Sunday except O'Connell.

[63] O'Connell had asked Rubano to audition, but he was hesitant initially, since he was not a fan of emo music or aware of the band; however, he bought the album and learned Cooper's parts.

[78] For three weeks beginning in mid-March 2002, Taking Back Sunday participated in the Victory Records tour alongside Catch 22, Grade, Student Rick and Reach the Sky.

After a week or two of the tour being underway, Taking Back Sunday joined Brand New onstage during their performances of "Seventy Times 7", and Lacey returned the favor for "There's No 'I' in Team".

[32] Chart Attack reviewer Steve Servos praised the band's quiet-loud dynamic approach, and noted that Lazzara's ability to switch easily from singing to screaming despite his "somewhat raspy voice" set it apart as a release that would "rival any emo record to come out for some time".

[94] Peter White of Drowned in Sound enthusiastically noted that the album, which featured "nihilistic" pop songs that often employed "monster riffs" and screams similar to Obituary, would be a landmark of a new musical movement, with the potential to shift nu metal bands such as Limp Bizkit out of the mainstream in favor of emo.

[93] Kludge writer Ben Rayner applauded the band's overall execution of the "emo-punk blueprint", and noted that it would appeal to fans of Saves the Day and the Movielife.

[33] Despite praise for Taking Back Sunday's musical approach on Tell All Your Friends, some reviewers gave the album criticism for being too similar to other emo recordings around the time of its release.

While Morris was mostly pleased with the release, he criticized the originality of the album's material,[32] and Servos noted a "cookie cutter" emo sound present.

[30] While BBC Music's Olli Siebelt echoed this concern, he also credited the band with making an effort to stand out by including influences from post-punk, nu metal and hardcore punk.

[36] Despite its "not be[ing] their best sounding, most mature or highest in ambition ... it's Tell All Your Friends's intangible and emotionally charged energy, the uncertainty, the earnestness and the rough edges that make it so special".

[41] Austin Saalman of Under the Radar said the album was a "central influence" on the third wave of emo, "which soon unfolded and ultimately dominated '00s popular culture".

[125] Brandon McMaster of the Crimson Armada cited the album as an influence, while Derek Sanders, lead vocalist of Mayday Parade, has expressed admiration for it.

"[34][nb 8] Chris Collum wrote for AbsolutePunk that Tell All Your Friends "grabs the listener's attention from the start" and the album expressed "feelings that are completely genuine, not contrived, rehearsed or formulaic, without being over-the-top or sappy".

Collum called Lazzara and Nolan's vocal delivery "rapid-fire" in a "back-and-forth way, as if they were carrying on a dialogue, [that] allows you to really attach to and get a sense of the raw emotion behind the songs".

[38] In a retrospective review for Alternative Press, Brendan Manley wrote that the album "is as close as it gets to a modern masterpiece, capturing not just a band at their apex, but an entire scene".

According to Manley, Tell All Your Friends was "the crossover breaking point, finally bringing what had been percolating for years in East Coast VFW Halls to the attention of the masses".

"[111] Jonathan Bradley wrote for Stylus that although the album "is notable not so much for being a blueprint as it is a playbook", it would "provide the perfect How-To guide for teenagers with guitars all over the United States and beyond".

The DVD featured the music videos to "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "You're So Last Summer", "Great Romances of the 20th Century" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey".

[135] In a 2011 interview with CMJ, Lazzara and Nolan chose the album's final track ("Head Club") as their least-favorite Taking Back Sunday song.

[143] To help promote the tour, a career-spanning compilation Twenty (2019) was released, which included "Cute Without the 'E' (Cut from the Team)", "You're So Last Summer" and "Timberwolves at New Jersey" from Tell All Your Friends.