When Emo Conquered the Mainstream
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
First, is its intersection with the internet. The genre cannot be understood without myspace and limewire and the like. It's the sound of that time.
Second, is how (like grunge) it was a media phenomenon that tried to unified very different bands. My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Taking Back Sunday are all labeled "emo" but sound nothing alike. But they did brush elbows and were in the same place at the same time. Taking Back Sunday even did a stint opening for MCR in their return tour.
Mostly agree, but there will always be within-group variation within the poor art form of taxonomising music scenes, and there were certainly similarities in the emo scene. For example, they almost all had the traditional structure of a guitar based band (guitarist, bassist, drummer) with big, melodic sounds well suited to stadium tours, and their lyrics shared similar emotional tones. You can point to most music scenes - grunge, Britpop, punk, post-punk, the 2000s garage revival, early 60s folk, etc - and I suspect you'd find more similarities than differences.
Off the top of my head, here are a few of my favorite albums from the genre:
• Origami Angel :: Gami Gang
• A Lot Like Birds :: No Place
• Dance Gavin Dance :: Downtown Battle Mountain
• Mars Volta :: De-Loused in the Comatorium
• Taking Back Sunday :: Where You Want To Be
• Underoath :: Define the Great Line
• Sky Eats Airplane :: Sky Eats Airplane
• From Indian Lakes :: The Man with Wooden Legs
• Circa Survive :: Blue Sky Noise
• Mew :: Frengers
• Other Men :: Wake Up Swimming
good mentions: hot mulligan, mom jeans, oso oso, free throw
I got into emo quite late (in my late 20s, mostly due to Spotify discovery queue), but found it really fun to listen to.
Would also recommend Football etc, Adventures and Rainer Maria.
- Alexisonfire :: self titled
- Thursday :: Full Collapse
- Taking Back Sunday :: Tell all your friends
- The Used :: self titled
- From First To Last :: dear diary
Fun fact: The lead singer of the last band went on to become Skrillex.
Interesting, this one to me was always more post-punk (from the ATDI era) transitioning into prog rock (everything TMV did after their first album). Haven't really considered it to be "emo", but then again, I'm not an expert when it comes to musical genres.
• Thursday - Full Collapse
• Student Rick - Soundtrack for a Generation
• Saves the Day - Stay What You Are
• Dashboard Confessional - The Places you have come to fear the most
• Armor for Sleep - Dream to make believe
• Silverstein - When broken is easily fixed
Best I can do is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGxDVXGRQpY
I'd probably argue anything with introspective, sentimental, or self-motivating lyrics is on the emo spectrum.
Have Heart & Ruiner sound like typical Bridge 9 hardcore, but the lyrics are sad as shit.
http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/ruiner/adheringtosuperstition....
http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/ruiner/gettingovertheovers.htm...
http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/haveheart/lifeishardenough.htm...
If anything I’d say sadboy is a vibe that contains a lot of music, including emo. I’d say I listen to a lot of sadboy rock that is decidedly not emo as it doesn’t share much musically or lyrically with emo / emo-punk. Then you get your sadboy / sadgirl pop / hip hop, etc. too.
> I’d say sadboy is a vibe
Yup, exactly. That's what I said about emo in another comment. Emo/sadboy/sadgirl are the same word from different eras.
> I’d say I listen to a lot of sadboy rock that is decidedly not emo as it doesn’t share much musically or lyrically with emo / emo-punk. Then you get your sadboy / sadgirl pop / hip hop, etc. too
Yup, and in another era, those would have been lumped with emo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emogame
Flash beat-em-ups where you control control popular emo artistes of the day. For example, helping At The Drive-In’s bouffant Cedric Bixler battle a human centipede version of Puddle of Muddddd before taking on the end of level boss in the form of a pixelated Fred Durst while rocking out to Alkaline Trio etc.
Happy memories. I found a lot of bands through those games.
It’s incredible (and so is the album)
When you explore music in this genre, there are honestly just countless small acts that put out some really intense and well orchestrated music. Most people think of like, evanescence when they think of screamo, but its actually something entirely different that is closer to like 90s black metal.
If you liked the sound of Raein, there are some other suggestions I’d like to offer.
These are (were, sadly) all, like Raein (Italy), European screamo bands and while often named together with their American contemporaries (bands like City of Caterpillar, Circle Takes The Square, Neil Perry, …), I’ve always felt their sound is quite a bit different.
France: Daïtro, Sed Non Satiata, Aussitôt Mort, Belle Epoque, Amanda Woodward, Mihai Edrisch
Italy: Raein, La Quiete
Germany: Louise Cyphre, Tristan Tzara, Zann
It kind of defeats the point of a genre.
Listen to some reggae and some older dub, then traditional dubstep, and you will see why it's useful to have different terms.
“What's the meanest you can be to the one you claim to love / And still smile to your newfound friends?”
Is that why it also exists as a genre of gay porn?
Jake just hit a wall, he was ambitious to a fault. One Vyvanse a day, helps him work for the wage. His dreams went out the door, after they cancelled Warped Tour. Was going to tour with the band, instead he's home late cleaning the dirty pans.
I love some of the elements that band put out eventually carried over into the era of Warped Tour I knew best when Pop-Punk was having it's day - which is also having a renaissance of sorts :)
I would guess the average age is 20s readers or 40s commentators