While touring to promote Tell All Your Friends (2002), guitarist John Nolan and bassist Shaun Cooper left the group and were replaced by Fred Mascherino and Matt Rubano, respectively.

While Taking Back Sunday was on the 2004 Warped Tour, Where You Want to Be was released in late July on Victory Records.

They worked with Blink-182 member Tom DeLonge to create a music video, "This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)," which was filmed in 48 hours.

The band went on a winter tour with Atreyu and Funeral for a Friend, and "This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)" was released to radio in early January 2005.

Taking Back Sunday released its debut album, Tell All Your Friends, in March 2002[2] and spent most of the year and 2003 touring.

[6] In September 2002, the band went on tour;[7] on this stint, vocalist Adam Lazzara fell off the stage and gashed his face in two places, in addition to dislocating his hip.

[8] In early 2003, guitarist John Nolan said they were aiming to record in the near future, with plans to re-recorded two older songs, namely "The Ballad of Sal Villanueva" and "Your Own Disaster".

"[17] After a September–November 2003 co-headlining tour with Saves the Day,[18] according to Rubano, the group had "about 45 minutes to rest" before starting work on Where You Want to Be.

Two weeks of recording were done at Mission Sound in Brooklyn, New York, with Giordano assisted by Oliver Strauss and Barbra Vlahides.

[22] After recording drums, bass and most of the guitars, the band, Giordano and Parker moved to Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey.

[25] Conductor Ray Zu-Artez (who played piano)[22] was brought in and wrote what Giordano said was "some pretty cool string parts".

Despite Lazzara wanting to include Mascherino as much as possible, he felt there was no need for two people to be singing certain parts, deciding to maintain the dual vocals as it was a big appeal for the group.

II" was the first song written by the new line-up;[29] the track, along with "A Decade Under the Influence", started out as riffs by Reyes that he brought in and jammed out with the rest of the band.

[37] The members called a truce on it, since O'Connell had worked on some Straylight Run tracks, with Nolan and Cooper letting Taking Back Sunday keep "...Slowdance on the Inside".

According to MTV, Taking Back Sunday posted on its website that DeLonge had "a great visual concept and was a very enthusiastic, focused and attentive first-time director.

Victory Records was uncertain whether to make the video an internet-only release or send it to MTV,[52] and on May 11 it was posted on Yahoo!

"[35] On Chart Attack, despite the album's being "overwrought" its "quality songwriting and some killer arrangements conceal Where You Want to Be's occasional off-the-chart cheese readings.

"[26] In a brief review for Entertainment Weekly, Sean Richardson wrote that Taking Back Sunday was "best suited for multipart campfire sing-alongs" and struck "rock-radio gold" with Where You Want to Be.

"[60] Rolling Stone reviewer Laura Sinagra noted Mascherino and Rubano as assisting "the will to power in Lazzara's Cure-like croon.

[57] Spin writer Andy Greenwald wrote that nearly every song on the album "begins in the moment just before a fight or a tear-filled breakdown.

"[61] Citing "New American Classic" and "This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)," Greenwald noted Adam Lazzara's use of "anthemic choruses like 15-year-olds use emoticons: as sweeping shorthand placeholders for feelings too complicated to puzzle out and express.

"[61] Sputnikmusic reviewer John Hanson called the album "extremely repetitive, with many songs sounding exactly the same.

"[31] Edna Gundersen of USA Today wrote that the group "cobbled together a host of emo clichés" to create a record that is "miraculously, more winsome than generic.

"[58] Despite some "bittersweet confessional" songs which "resort to tired teen-angst whines," "an arresting tug-of-war between raw emotions and charged rhythms" pushes the band beyond "the everyday emo-rock ensemble.

"[71] Band manager Jillian Newman responded, "I don't understand how a label gets victimized by receiving a sales award.

[73] In 2005, JJ Koczan of The Aquarian Weekly wrote that Where You Want to Be might "perhaps go down in pop culture history as the record that broke the emo scene commercially.

Calling it "catchy" in comparison to Tell All Your Friends, the album "matured the words past freshman year and flexed the rhythm guitar to a new level.

According to Jason Lipshutz, the album "still smacks harder" than the band's other releases due to "a masterful sequencing, tighter hooks and most transcendent single ("A Decade Under The Influence").

[78] To help promote the tour, a career-spanning compilation Twenty (2019) was released,[79] which included "A Decade Under the Influence", "Set Phasers to Stun" and "One-Eighty by Summer" from Where You Want to Be.

[81] The album was an influence on As It Is as frontman Patty Walters explained: "Everything that our band knows - the riffs, the lyrics, the mic swings - we learned it all from Taking Back Sunday".