Now we're starting to mix emo with pop/punk, the latter being what I consider AAR to really be. Pop/punk and emo share some characteristics but I think they're definitely different.
Yeah, I mistakingly considered every band I listened to when I was a teenager as emo, even though were mostly pop punk. Toward the end of the 90's/early 2000's, there was definitely some crossover though with bands like the Get Up Kids, Saves the Day, and the Promise Ring.
The earliest emo bands were influenced by indie rock and post-hardcore. There are a lot of soft/loud clean broken-chord/overdriven power chord dynamics in the music and the lyrics are typically very personal.
Now we're starting to mix emo with pop/punk, the latter being what I consider AAR to really be. Pop/punk and emo share some characteristics but I think they're definitely different.
When I think of the perfect example of an emo song, I think of this:
And yet Gerard Way insists that they aren't (weren't) emo. But should the band have any say in how they're classified?
I seem to recall Massive Attack hating being refered to as trip-hop but it'd would be difficult not to think of them as one of the bands that defined that genre.
Now we're starting to mix emo with pop/punk, the latter being what I consider AAR to really be
I mean, they released that song on an album with this cover:
I know that The Black Parade and the album after that weren't emo at all, but before that, yea, they were pretty emo.
Although if you want THE best example of an emo album, look no further than this:
With songs like these:
Now THAT is the emo movement in a nutshell, at least, the popular emo movement.
No no no no no.
Rocky, I like you, but everything about that "emo" post is objectively wrong on all fronts. I'm actually sick and tired how mall-scene pop-rock got labeled as something that was still making music in it's actual format. Emo is poetic with a lot of soft/harsh jumps in a punk rock atmosphere with harsh outward vocals.
Emo is not and was never in any capacity Blink182-inspired pop music. The only reason those bands were ever called emo was due to ignorance and those bands liking early Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day Real Estate, and basically all of those indie rock bands that were influenced by aspects of the actual genre of emotive hardcore.
Rocky, I like you, but everything about that "emo" post is objectively wrong on all fronts. I'm actually sick and tired how mall-scene pop-rock got labeled as something that was still making music in it's actual format. Emo is poetic with a lot of soft/harsh jumps in a punk rock atmosphere with harsh outward vocals.
Emo is not and was never in any capacity Blink182-inspired pop music. The only reason those bands were ever called emo was due to ignorance and those bands liking early Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day Real Estate, and basically all of those indie rock bands that were influenced by aspects of the actual genre of emotive hardcore.
I would venture to say that there is a distinct difference between emo as we know it, the musically educated (the legitimate genre), and emo as the general public knows it, the musically uneducated (the cultural movement, if you can call it that). I was referring to the latter, of which I experienced a lot of in my early teens, knowing a lot of people very much involved in it.
Emo is most certainly a legitimate genre that continues to the present, I'm very much aware of that, however it was also the name of (whether correctly or incorrectly) a major pop culture movement that occurred in the early to mid 2000s. That's why I referred to it in my prior post as the popular emo movement. _________________ 2023 Chart
The entirety of the comments above greatly disappoint me as well as nearly drive me to the brink of a silent rage. Let me give you some background here, the musical history and an understanding of “emo” is something I am very much familiar with as it was one of the earliest things I researched back to the start and the root of all of it. I’ve discussed it at length with people who’ve been with the scene since the early nineties and some of them even go all the way to the start. Before I sort of start here I will say this much; for a community that prides itself against ignorance and being informed it has extremely dropped the ball here—and I’m not thrilled about it, actually, I’m rather emotional about it.
Emo was originally coined by an idiot journalist from Thrasher magazine, if I remember correctly, which Ian MacKaye of Embrace had a big thing to say about it.
“Okay, I must say one thing. I must say emo(core) is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. I read in my Thrasher the other day—that in fact, what my band, along with other bands from the city was playing emo(core). I’m thinking… Emo? Emo Phillips, comedian? I know emotional hardcore… as if hardcore wasn’t emotional to begin with. It’s ca-ca.” – 1986, Ian MacKaye
Despite this “stupid as shit” terminology it stuck and these punk bands who were more personal than political began to be called emotional hardcore which was eventually shortened to emo. Later in the 1990s a bunch of small time rock bands with pop sensibilities began to pick up on the style and added the harsh sort of personal clutched vocal delivery as well as the sloppy, almost deconstructive noise punk guitar sections. At the same time bands in another area (which became ‘emo-violence’) took the harshness of the style of punk music in another direction, sort of continuing where Embrace left off whilst the Midwest Emo scene (which was just indie rock with emo influences) began to cook.
Why did pop-rock bands that sound more like Blink-182 than any of the things I mentioned get labeled as emo (see: scene emo/mall emo)? Simply because Gerard Way and a bunch of others happened to like bands like Jimmy Eat World, The Get Up Kids, and Sunny Day Real Estate. All of which being from the previously mentioned Midwest emo scene. But nothing in these bands (My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights) represented anything from “emo” music. It’s not that they were commercial or polished; but simply did not hold ANY attributes of what at that point made an actual band in the style. But journalists began to joke around and reach for idiotic conclusions like they tend to do. So… history was made.
Quote:
I would venture to say that there is a distinct difference between emo as we know it, the musically educated (the legitimate genre), and emo as the general public knows it, the musically uneducated (the cultural movement, if you can call it that). I was referring to the latter, of which I experienced a lot of in my early teens, knowing a lot of people very much involved in it.
Emo is most certainly a legitimate genre that continues to the present, I'm very much aware of that, however it was also the name of (whether correctly or incorrectly) a major pop culture movement that occurred in the early to mid 2000s. That's why I referred to it in my prior post as the popular emo movement.
I find that a bad excuse and only lends to the purpose of continuing to keep those who don’t know about any of that ignorant or misinformed. The above of which I wrote I was going to edit in my post, but I saw you replied. But you are right in the sense that blatantly incorrect pop culture history was made and that it is generally unrepairable. But it is forgettable, if we start remembering to call it a different name or perhaps what it is (pop-rock) then it’s a much more preferable start.
I’ve been on music websites for a long while and calling My Chemical Romance and their peers as emo-anything simply reinforces bad knowledge.
It also makes me upset and drives me to quit forums quicker than a troll post hating ambient music does.
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