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Emo. The elephant in the room. To the mainstream media its what metal was in the 80s and goth was in the 90s, a scapegoat for absent parents to feel less shitty about ignoring their kids and something to blame for any social akwardness that comes from finding solace in the music community other than striving to be the perfect kid.

But What exactly is emo? Ask any self respecting band this question today and they will deny that moniker until the day they die (story of the year reference). So if no bands claim to be Emo then how can it be a genre? thats simple, because the term Emo is a put down and diss that has been running in the game longer than most of the kids that run with that term have been alive. The origin of the word is not rooted in the dashboard confessional pussy rock that now dominates the false genre, but actually in 80s DC hardcore. Ian MacKaye was running out of steam with the political balls to the walls life he was leading as front man for hardcore forefathers Minor Threat, so he founded the post hardcore elite super group Fugazi.

FROM THIS...

Fugazis bread and butter were emotions, the kind of wear your heart on your sleeve subject matter that was fresh as hell back in the day. It was rare to hear someone talking about love hurting so much that self mutilation was comparable and as innovative as it was at the time MacKaye was still catching shit for it, not from the mainstream media cause they couldn’t give a shit about him, but from his family that was still active in the hardcore circles. They labeled his new style of musical choices as “EmoCore” which was short for emotional hardcore. It was an in-joke, a jab, and a cute little back and forth between buds. But in reality it was the birth of a fucking monster.

But as always the music caught on and similar bands started popping up on the radar including Rites Of Spring, Embrace, and Fire Party started to build their own little scene. Then the nation started to catch on with acts like Seattle’s Sunny Day Real Estate and New Yorks Texas Is The Reason, these bands also rooted their lyrics and manners in Emotionally charged subjects so they were tagged like a Brooklyn metro train.

Finally Saves The Day who awkwardly enough started as a lifetime influenced punk band ushered in a new wave a finger pointing but this time it stuck and for good it did. Emo was now a buzz word following bands that were mixing their pop and romance so tightly that their entire aesthetic was based on heartbreak, and soon enough the term watered down to the point where if you had distortion and sung about either violence and love in the same song than you were one of those prissy Emo bitches. It was at this phase were bands like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Senses Fail, And Thursday that were trying to make some god honest Post hardcore music.

TO THIS?

The bands that came in the next wave like Hawthorne Heights, Hellogoodbye, and Alesana never had a chance. while some of them used the term for publicity (Hawthorne Heights) others just got caught up in the romance and money just started getting numb to the term. And then things really started getting out of hand. Pop punk started getting sucked into the Emo machine and now all of a sudden Fallout Boys brand of quick witted anthems that were so obviously pop punk in nature now fell under the umbrella of Emo’s spindly fictitious fingers. So if someone calls Fallout Boy Emo than that means All time low is Emo and all other current pop punk bands too.

WELL WHAT THE FUCK.

This isn’t real, none of this is real. Some dudes were throwing some words at one of their friends to give them shit and all of this is the result. Its the biggest fucking joke to ever hit the music scene and its a damn shame that a majority of kids today keep getting sucked into the obvious quicksand of stupidity. Hell they embrace the term. I will take this one thought to my grave though. I remember a world before cellphones that relied on landlines, a world before the internet that relied on word of mouth, and a world before Emo where kids were smart enough to stick the basics of metal, punk, and rock.

Sure genres are necessary to a certain degree, if i want to find a band that sounds like Some Girls i would like to know that their are bands that are similar and referred to as grindcore, And if Blink 182 isn’t enough for me than i sure thank god that pop punk was coined, but to feed into this stupid bullshit joke for this many years and to take it to the level where the nightly news runs special reports on kids being in danger of self from their Emo personalities than i say fuck genres get a mixtape and start to ignore those three sub categories under the band names on myspace.

P.S. sorry to the dudes in the bands Motionless In White(front page image) and Alesana(the after of the before and afters above) for using their picture to make my point but god damn those haircuts. They were asking for it.