The news – earth-shattering or otherwise – recently emerged that two of the four members of Panic At The Disco! have decided to leave the band to pursue other musical interests. Just a mere mention of the band’s name and my cerebral cortex was suddenly emblazoned with the word ‘emo’ in flashing neon lights as a flurry of word-association kicked in. Which made me wonder… whatever happened to emo?
Only a couple of years ago, pretty much any rock music that wasn’t death metal or the Rolling Stones was being called emo. Fall Out Boy, Panic At The Disco!, My Chemical Romance, The Used, The Get Up Kids, Thrice, Coheed & Cambria, emo the lot of them. Shit, someone, somewhere probably described The Fray as emo – the lyrics certainly fit the bill.
And now it’s all over. When and if any of those bands record again, the resulting collection of songs won’t be labeled emo. Oh no. Rock, yes. Alternative, certainly. Maybe pop punk in some cases, perhaps alt.prog in others. But no longer emo. Not that any of those bands liked being called emo anyway, but when do artists ever embrace the labels thrust upon them? Grunge, nu-metal, jazz-funk, grindcore, post-punk, emo… we’re always trying to put music in neat categories, whilst the artists in question protest loudly and reject them instantly.
But unlike many musical movements that have blasted so forcefully into the mainstream, emo had been around for years in both name and style before it gained mass popularity, although naturally that style had evolved over time. Studious musical historians have decreed that emo rose from (and as a reaction to) the US hardcore scene of the 1980s, and by 1985, bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace were being called ‘emo-core’ (a term they predictably hated). Earning this tag were the deeply personal lyrics that brought an emotional honesty to the music, often detailing nostalgia, romantic yearnings and failings, and buoyed with a melancholy tinged sometimes with bitterness.
Over the course of the next 15 years, emo bubbled away in the musical ether, attracting devoted fans, but remaining hidden from the evil clutches of the mainstream and thus ensuring its continued survival. Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, Glassjaw, The Get Up Kids and Jimmy Eat World all kept the emo flag flying throughout the 1990s.
It wasn’t until the turn of the century that the secret finally got out, and emo hit the mainstream. Driven by the breakthrough success of bands like Jimmy Eat World (with monster hit ‘The Middle’), Saves The Day, Dashboard Confessional and artists such as Midtown and New Found Glory on the Drive Thru and Vagrant labels, emo burst kicking and screaming into the mainstream, paving the way for the likes of My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic At The Disco!.
As the world at large discovered the music and the label, and jumped enthusiastically on the bandwagon, emo become inextricably linked to every other facet of youth culture that could be accounted for. Emo’s original musical traits were immediately sidelined as ingredients such as clothing (the resurgence of skinny jeans in particular) and the amount of eye-liner applied became far more pertinent than any traces of emotional honesty. Just as ‘punk’ had long been used to describe certain music, clothing and lifestyle, regardless of whether anarchy was on the menu or very much off it, ‘emo’ became a mainstream, mass-perpetuated lifestyle choice that had very little to do with the factors that inspired its genesis.
Emo was no longer a subgenre that had endured for over 20 years as a particular form of musical and lyrical expression within the bigger pond of rock music; it was now a self-serving concept, a commoditised mass media buzz word to tag anything and everything.
It became the sign of the times. And times change.
Emo is dead.
