Emo
Emo is a genre of rock music that combines musical characteristics of hardcore punk with emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of hardcore punk and from the Washington, D.C., hardcore scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore. The bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, among others, pioneered the genre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop-punk bands, including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Cap'n Jazz, Mineral, and Jimmy Eat World. By the Braid, the Promise Ring, American Football, and the Get Up Kids emerged from Midwest emo, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the genre. Meanwhile, screamo, a more aggressive style of emo using screamed vocals, also emerged, pioneered by the San Diego bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow. It's dervative form pop screamo achieved mainstream success in the 2000s with bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Story of the Year, Thursday, the Used, and Underoath.
The emo subculture signifies a specific relationship between fans and artists and certain aspects of fashion, culture, and behavior. Emo fashion includes skinny jeans, black eyeliner, tight s with band names, studded belts, and flat, straight, jet-black hair with long bangs. Since the early-to-mid 2000s, fans of emo music who dress like this are referred to as "emo kids" or "emos". The emo subculture was stereotypically associated with social alienation, sensitivity, misanthropy, introversion, and angst. Purported links to depression,, and suicide, combined with its rise in popularity in the early 2000s, inspired a backlash against emo, with some bands, including My Chemical Romance and Panic! at the Disco, rejecting the emo label because of the social stigma and controversy surrounding it. There has long been controversy over which bands are labeled "emo", especially for bands that started outside traditional emo scenes; a viral website, Is This Band Emo?, was created to address one fan's opinion on this question. Emo and its subgenre emo pop entered mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the success of Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional, and many artists signed contracts with major record labels. Bands such as My Chemical Romance, AFI, Fall Out Boy, and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus continued the genre's popularity during the rest of the decade.
In the late 2000s, an emo revival emerged, when groups including Tigers Jaw, Algernon Cadwallader and TTNG drew on the sound and aesthetic of 1990s emo, rejecting the perceived commercial turn the genre had taken. This movement gained prominence in 2010s, with the success of Modern Baseball, Joyce Manor and the Hotelier, and expanded outside of simply 1990s revivalism with the various sounds of Title Fight, Basement, Citizen, Touché Amoré and La Dispute. At this same time, a fusion genre called emo rap became mainstream; its most famous artists included Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, and Juice Wrld. The emo revival movement ended in the late 2010s, giving way to the more experimental "post-emo" sounds of Origami Angel, Awakebutstillinbed and Home Is Where.
Characteristics
Emo originated in hardcore punk and is considered a form of Early emo bands used melody and emotional or introspective lyrics and that were less structured than regular hardcore punk, differentiating them from the aggression, anger, and structures of traditional hardcore punk. According to Ryan De Freitas of Kerrang: "Emo in the '90s was about scrappy, emotionally fuelled imperfection."According to Chris Payne, author of Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion, emo is "often more melodic, more vulnerable — and often really over the top. really performative aspects in emo." Sandra Song of CNN describes emo as a "softer approach to hardcore punk, with warbly vocals and evocative lyrics that have other bands derisively calling it the sound of 'teen angst.'" Em Casalena of American Songwriter stated that the genre is characterized by an "angsty yet kind of miserable vibe".
Despite being rooted in hardcore punk, emo has also been associated with other related genres, such as alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop punk. During the 2000s, it became common for bands to fuse emo with harder styles such as heavy metal and metalcore to varying degrees by incorporating metallic riffs, guitar solos and breakdowns into their songwriting. Bands who have released songs in this style include From First To Last, Bullet for My Valentine, Escape the Fate, Underoath and My Chemical Romance.
Andrew Sacher of Brooklyn Vegan has expressed his belief that the year 2001 was a "crossroads" of sorts for the genre, stating that "emo came in a lot of different varieties" during that year. He said: "There were bands who were still playing the style of second wave emo that was prominent in the 1990s, as well as bands beginning to define the sound of the third wave. Some bands leaned more towards post-hardcore, others more towards pop punk, others towards indie rock, and others towards softer, acoustic guitar and piano-based music." The New York Times described emo as "emotional punk or or That is, punk that wears its heart on its sleeve and tries a little tenderness to leaven its sonic attack. If it helps, imagine Ricky Nelson singing in the Sex Pistols." Author Matt Diehl called emo a "more sensitive interpolation of punk's mission".
Lyrics, a focus in emo music, are typically personal and confessional, or according to Merriam-Webster, "introspective and emotionally fraught". Themes usually deal with topics such as failed romance, self-loathing, pain, insecurity, suicidal thoughts, love, and relationships. AllMusic described emo lyrics as "usually either poetry or intimate confessionals". According to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians: "In its most basic sense, the term 'emo' is short for emotional, an indication that the music had left behind punk's heavily politicized public protest for more private and reflective concerns. Musically, this new emotional sense was best captured in the nostalgic and poetic lyrics of the Rites of Spring singer Guy Picciotto and his cracked, almost distraught, intense vocal style."
Emo guitar dynamics use both the softness and loudness of punk rock music. According to AllMusic, most 1990s emo bands "borrowed from some combination of Fugazi, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Weezer". Some emo leans toward the characteristics of progressive music with the genre's use of complex guitar work, unorthodox song structures, and extreme dynamic shifts.
Etymology
Although the origins of the word "emo" are uncertain, evidence shows that the word "emo" was coined in the mid-1980s, specifically 1985. According to Andy Greenwald, author of Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo, "The origins of the term 'emo' are shrouded in mystery ... but it first came into common practice in 1985. If Minor Threat was hardcore, then Rites of Spring, with its altered focus, was emotional hardcore or emocore." Michael Azerrad, author of Our Band Could Be Your Life, also traces the word's origins to the mid-1980s: "The style was soon dubbed 'emo-core,' a term everyone involved bitterly detested". Steve Niles and Brian Baker, of Minor Threat and Dag Nasty, say the term "emotional hardcore" was coined by Baker during emo's formative years. Baker used the term disparagingly, referencing what he perceived as being an "ancillary" and "posturing" nature to the bands. The term was quickly adopted by Thrasher magazine. Other accounts attribute the word to an audience member at an Embrace show, who shouted as an insult that the band was "emocore". Others have said that MacKaye coined the word when he used it self-mockingly in a magazine, or that it originated with Rites of Spring. The "emocore" label quickly spread through the DC punk scene, and was associated with many bands associated with Ian MacKaye's Dischord Records. Although many of the bands rejected the term, it stayed. Jenny Toomey recalled, "The only people who used it at first were the ones that were jealous over how big and fanatical a scene it was. existed well before the term did and they hated it. But there was this weird moment, like when people started calling music 'grunge,' where you were using the term even though you hated it."The term "emo" has been the subject of debate and disagreement amongst artists, critics, and fans alike. Some find the label to be loosely defined with the term at times being used to describe any music that expresses emotion. "The mainstream success of emo and its related subculture caused the term to be conflated with other genres. Additionally, fans of traditional emo music have expressed distaste for the genre's expanding definition, and what they perceive as "commercialization" of the genre.
Chris Payne, author of Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion, assessed: "Emo has a lot of different definitions for different people. For me, it can be like the old DIY stuff, like Cap'n Jazz American Football, and then also the more popular stuff like … My Chemical Romance, Paramore and even the emo-rap stuff like Lil Peep."
Many bands labeled as emo rejected the emo label. Ian MacKaye, after an article in Thrasher magazine referring to Embrace and other Washington, D.C., bands as "emo-core", he called it "the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire life" during a live performance. Sunny Day Real Estate's members said they consider themselves simply a rock band, and said that back in the early days, the word "emocore" was an insult: "While I don't disrespect anyone for using the term emo-core, or rock, or anything, but back in the day, emo-core was just about the worst dis that you could throw on a band."
In Chris Payne's book Where Are Your Boys Tonight?, Bayside vocalist Anthony Raneri stated that he believed emo became "a dirty word" around the time of its mainstream success in the 2000s. He explains this derogatory use of the word derived from hipsters adopting the term to demean rock artists they saw as being "not as cool as" the popular indie rock groups of the time, namely the Strokes. My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way said in 2007 that emo is "a pile of shit I think there are bands that we get lumped in with that are considered emo and, by default, that starts to make us emo. All I can say is that anyone actually listening to the records, putting the records next to each other and listening to them, actually no similarities." Additionally, Quinn Villarreal of SiriusXM stated that "having 'feelings' in the 2000s and 2010s wasn’t 'cool.' So, the term 'emo' became a pejorative, which is why it’s oftentimes rejected by bands and fans."
Brendon Urie of Panic! at the Disco said : "It's ignorant! The stereotype is guys that are weak and have failing relationships write about how sad they are. If you listen to our songs, not one of them has that tone." Adam Lazzara of Taking Back Sunday said he always considered his band rock and roll instead of emo. Guitarist of the Get Up Kids, Jim Suptic, noted the differences between the 2000s mainstream acts when compared to the emo bands of the 1990s, saying, “The punk scene we came out of and the punk scene now are completely different. It's like glam rock now. We played the Bamboozle fests this year and we felt really out of place... If this is the world we helped create, then I apologise.” Vocalist of AFI, Davey Havok, described emo as "such a strange and meaningless word". Early emo musicians also have rejected the label. Guy Picciotto, the vocalist of Rites of Spring, said he considers the emo label "retarded" and always considered Rites of Spring a punk rock band: "The reason I think it's so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren't emotional? What - they were robots or something? It just doesn't make any sense to me."
The term “mall emo” has been used to separate mainstream bands like Paramore, Hawthorne Heights, My Chemical Romance, Panic! at the Disco, and Fall Out Boy from the less commercially viable bands that proceeded and succeeded them. The term "mall emo" dates back to around 2002, when many emo fans did not like the change emo was going through at the time when the genre became mainstream.
Tom Mullen, editor of the Anthology of Emo book, created the website Washed Up Emo in 2007 in response to the mainstream perceptions of the genre, intending to impart information about the genre's history. He later created the website Is This Band Emo? in 2014, which explains whether various bands are classified under the genre alongside humorous responses.