Emo: Difference between revisions

This article is about the musical genre of Emo as it existed from 1985 to the late 1990s to the present.

See also Emo (disambiguation) for other uses of the term Emo.

Emo is a musical genre derived from hardcore punk. The term was initially an abbreviation for "emocore", short for "emotional hardcore", and was coined to describe the music of the mid-1980s DC scene and associated bands, mainly Rites of Spring, Embrace, Beefeater, Grey Matter, Fire Party and slightly later, Moss Icon. Later, however, the "core" was dropped, largely following the rise of late-90s emo that featured less of the hardcore elements of its predecessor.

It soon became a description for bands that incorporate a larger emphasis on melody as well as emotional expression beyond punks traditional emotional palette of alienation and rage. The term addressed both the way the band connected with its audience, as well as its tendency to deal more with topics of personal and relationship politics than with the standard themes of punk music. Strangely, through the 80s and early 90s, most bands were given the tag "emo" as opposed to labelling themselves a part of the genre.

In recent years, the term has been generally accepted as meaning "emotive" or "emotionally charged", when used at its most positive. However, many acts and fans consider the word itself a pejorative, mostly because of its newfound association with a more mainstream style of music.

Given its wide-ranging history, the term "emo" has come to describe more than just one simple genre. Arguably, it describes three different genres: the original style of the 80s, the emocore of the 90s, and the sound of the present day, with the latter being the least focused of the three.

History

Origins

See also: emocore

Two seminal bands and in particular two albums of the post-punk era, Mission of Burma's album VS (1983) did much to expand rock beyond its original constraints while still retaining its raw emotional punch and Hüsker Dü's album Zen Arcade (1984) established what is considered by some to be the definitive blueprint for Emo: simple, raw guitar-oriented music with intense vocals and deeply introspective songwriting (Hüsker Dü were probably more influential on later melodic hardcore bands than on the emerging DC bands).

The roots of original Emo can also be heard in Minor Threat's final 7", a slowed down approach with more personal and doubting lyrics, instead of pushing a specific message. In fact, the music to Embrace's "Last Song" was actually practiced by Minor Threat, but was never performed live.

In Washington, D.C., Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto, veterans of the hardcore music scene there, were developing new ventures. Due to the constraints of the basic style of hardcore they played, as well as in response to escalating violence in a scene (they themselves had helped create, but had increasingly become out of hand) they reshaped their music in different directions and brought forth MacKaye's Embrace and Picciotto's Rites of Spring. Embrace and Rites of Spring started the classic DC Emo-Core sound and influenced other bands such as Moss Icon, Nation of Ulysses, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think, Fire Party, Marginal Man, Grey Matter and many other mid-to-late 80s bands that Dischord Records released. In the summer of 1985, this renewed spirit of experimentation and musical innovation came to be known as "Revolution Summer". Sometimes the groups from this era are referred to as "Revolution Summer bands", either to specifically describe the era, or to distance them from later, more muddied definitions of the word Emo itself. The original wave of DC Emo-core finally ended in late 1992 with the collapse of Hoover.

Progression of the genre

In the early 1990s, as the late 1980s hardcore revival (mainly straight edge youth crew based) found itself losing steam, many of its participants either dropped from site or continued to evolve into new sounds. Many bands were experiencing the same feelings that inspired the original DC "revolution summer" bands - lack of creativity, progression and too much violence in the scene. Because of this, the seeds of the mid to late 80s Emo sound were showing themselves in several different directions across the country, expressed regionally, but all springing from the same roots and existing concurrently. Other offshoots of emo emerged as well, including the advent of "screamo" on the east and west coast.

The most significant element of the 90s emo scene was heavily influenced by Fugazi's initial EP releases and played a style based almost directly on them. Perhaps the key moment in the advent of 90s emo was the release of the album Diary by Sunny Day Real Estate in 1994. While the band's sound represented a toned-down version of the emo that preceded it, the album received widespread national attention. While purists of the 80s emo scene argued that the new sound wasn't exactly "emo", the album served as the beginning of a new wave of emo acts.

Another major region of emo appeared in the Midwest in the mid-90s. Many of the bands were influenced by the same sources (Fugazi, Hüsker Dü), but with an even more tempered sound. These bands included Boy's Life, Christie Front Drive, and Cap'n Jazz. This brand of emo was often referred to as "Midwestern emo" given the geographic location of the bands. In ensuing years, bands such as The Promise Ring, Braid, Elliott, and The Get Up Kids emerged from the same scene and eventually gained national attention.

The area around Phoenix, Arizona became another major scene for emo. Inspired by Fugazi and Sunny Day Real Estate, former punk rockers Jimmy Eat World began stirring in emo influences into their music, eventually releasing the album Static Prevails in 1996. The album was arguably the first emo record released by a major label, as the band signed with Capitol Records in 1995. In later years, the band's emo tag became a source of controversy within the genre.

Other bands that followed the Sunny Day Real Estate model of emo included New York's Texas Is the Reason, California's Knapsack and Sense Field, and Austin's Mineral.

Emo influence

In California, particularly in the Bay Area, bands like Jawbreaker and Samiam were mixing the DC influence with pop punk to come up with their own take on the classic DC Emo-core sound. These bands tended to employ alot of the rough vocal styling associated with Ian MacKaye's bands. The vocals of Blake Schwarzenbach of Jawbreaker are particularly of interest because of his gruffer crooning than gruff yelling. This development leads to a more emotional feeling of loss than the desperation and franticness of MacKaye's voice. On Jawbreaker's album Bivouac, there was an evolution from traditional Hardcore vocal sound into a more melodic crooning, regardless of whether or not the vocalist was in tune, the vocalist attempted to embody raw emotion of the music. In Southern California, Still Life had their own take on the same ideas of rough melody. NJ's Garden Variety had a Jawbreaker-esque combination of Emo and rough indie pop/pop punk. This style has continued to evolve up to present day in the sound of bands like Avail and Hot Water Music. However, by and large, the more-or-less "pop punk emo" was considered more "emo" by association than by sound.

Also in the early 90s, hardcore kids in bands like Lifetime were reacting in their own way to the demise of youth crew styled straight edge hardcore and desire to seek out new directions. While their music is often classified as Emo, a better description would probably be melodic hardcore. In response to the more metal direction their hardcore peers were taking, Lifetime initially decided to slow their music down and make it softer with more personal lyrics. A couple of EPs and an LP were released in this style, which was appreciated by some, but not hugely successful. The band went back to the drawing board and then really hit their stride with the Tinnitus EP in 1994, which was a blend of speed, aggression and melody which would inform and be further refined on their next two albums, Hello Bastards and Jerseys Best Dancers. Hello Bastards draws the line directly back to pre-melodic hardcore innovators Hüsker Dü, by covering "It's Not Funny Anymore". These records' sound, lyrics and style were a virtual blueprint for bands such as Saves The Day and The Movielife.

The end of indie emo

As the wide range of emo bands began to attract notoriety on a national scale, a number of indie labels attempted to document the scene. Many emo bands of the late 90s signed to indie labels including Jade Tree Records and Big Wheel Recreation. California's Crank Records released what many considered the defining compilation of 90s emo in 1997, titled (Don't Forget to) Breathe, which featured tracks by The Promise Ring, Christie Front Drive, Mineral, Knapsack, and Arizona's Seven Storey Mountain. In 1998, Deep Elm Records released the first in a series of compilations called Emo Diaries, which featured tracks from Jimmy Eat World, Samiam, and Boston's Jejune. In 1999, famed 70s compilation label K-Tel even released an emo compilation titled Nowcore: The Punk Rock Evolution, which, regardless of its source, was surprisingly comprehensive.

With the late-90s emo scene being more national than regional, major labels began to turn their attention toward signing emo bands with the hopes of capitalizing on the genre's popularity. Many bands resisted the lure, citing their loyality to the independent mentality of the scene. Several bands cited what they saw as mistreatment of bands such as Jawbox and Jawbreaker while they were signed to majors as a reason to stay away. The conflict felt within many of the courted emo bands resulted in their break-ups, including Texas Is the Reason and Mineral.

By the end of the decade, the word "emo" cropped up in mainstream circles. In the summer of 1998, Teen People magazine ran an article declaring "emo" the newest "hip" style of music, with The Promise Ring a band worth paying attention to. The independent nature of the emo scene recoiled at mainstream attention, and many emo bands shifted their sound in an attempt to isolate themselves from the genre. In the years that followed, Sunny Day Real Estate opted to shift to a more prog-rock direction, Jejune aimed for happy pop-rock, and The Get Up Kids and The Promise Ring released lite-rock albums. As such, the 90s version of emo almost entirely ceased to exist.

Modern emo

At the end of the 1990s, the underground emo scene had almost entirely disappeared. However, the term "emo" was still being bandied about in mainstream media, almost always attached to the few remaining 90s emo acts, including Jimmy Eat World.

However, towards the end of the 1990s, Jimmy Eat World had begun to shift in a more mainstream direction. Where Jimmy Eat World had played emocore-style music early in their career, by the time of the release of their 2001 album Bleed American, the band had almost completely removed its emo influences. As the public had become aware of the word "emo" and knew that Jimmy Eat World was associated with it, the band continued to be referred to as an "emo" band. Newer bands that sounded like Jimmy Eat World (and, in some cases, like the more melodic emo bands of the late 90s) were soon included in the genre.

In turn, the term "emo" shifted to describe a form of music entirely different from its forebearers. The most apparent ascension of "new emo" came in 2003 with the success of Chris Carrabba and Dashboard Confessional. Carrabba's music featured lyrics founded in deep diary-like outpourings of emotion. Where earlier emo had featured lyrics of a more dark and painful direction, Carrabba's featured a greater focus on love won and lost and the inability to cope. While certainly emotional, the new "emo" had a far greater appeal amongst teenagers experiencing love for the first time, who found solace in Carrabba's words and music.

Since the new "emo" was so well-received by teenage audiences, the term soon began to be used disparagingly in certain circles. Some equated new "emo" to similarly melodramatic teen music such as the Backstreet Boys and N-Sync. At the same time, fans of the earlier years of emo took offense to the new style, criticizing it for seemingly hijacking the label to shill an entirely different type of music to a new audience. However, it was hard to ignore the new "emo"'s popularity, and many bands began to jump on the emo bandwagon. Having failed to capitalize on the emocore sound of the 90s, major labels were more than eager to sign and develop acts that adhered to the new emo sound.

As major labels became more involved in developing emo acts, the term itself began to describe a wider and wider range of bands, many of whom had little to nothing in common. Many of the remaining emo acts of the 90s, including the Get Up Kids, began to dissociate from the term.

"Nobody in their right mind wants to be called Emo," Pryor (of the Get Up Kids) said. "It's got such a whiny connotation that everybody's like, 'We are not an Emo band.' I think a lot of these bands are going to get bigger, but I don't think the movement will be anything monumental when we look back at it."

Today, "emo" is often used (correctly or not) to describe such wide-ranging bands as Coheed and Cambria, Taking Back Sunday, The Starting Line, Thursday, A Static Lullaby, From First To Last, Finch, Silverstein, From Autumn To Ashes, Underoath, and Alexisonfire.

In a strange twist, screamo, a sub-genre of the new emo, has found greater popularly in recent years through bands such as Thrice. The term "screamo", however, was used to describe an entirely different genre in the early 1990s, and Thrice themselves more resemble the emocore of the 1990s.

Whether the apparent misappropriation of emo-related terms is the fault of the major labels or simply due to the lack of popular knowledge about the earlier scenes is unclear. As the old proverb says, "History is written by the victors," and it remains to be seen which version of the genre will be accepted as the popular consciousness of "emo".

Emo groups

Main articles: List of early Emo groups and List of Emo groups

See also

• Art rock
• Emo fashion
• Emo Violence
• Hardcore Emo
• Math rock
• Pop hardcore
• Scene kids
• Screamo
• Straight edge (sXe)
• Youth crew

Criticisms

Emo has been subjected to an unusually high level of criticism when compared to other musical genres, sub-cultures or trends. The vitriol aimed at the term "emo" even exceeds that aimed at the similarly popular nu metal trend during its peak popularity.

Emo is critized by rock purists and punk fans as being too sappy and, one could argue, annoying, as most emo bands have singers who have high pitched nasally voices, many "anti-Emo" rock fans (who have become their own subculture) believe that emo sounds the same and that it is tidieous and boring, as well as too soft, and most of all, too whiny.

An entire subculture of these "anti-Emo" rock fans has emerged, a good portion of them are adult rock purists, but many of them are emo's target audience, teens, and fans of full-fledged punk rock. This subculture has grown strong in prescense and have started 70's-80's style rock, hardcore punk, and alternative bands int heir opposition to emo.

Sources

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External links

• Emo-ology — an attempt to create an Emo discography
• "what the heck *is*Emo anyway?" a semi-comprehensive FAQ/parody on the subject
• how to be Emo parody upadating news site on new Emo developments.