History of Emo: A Misunderstood Genre

For those who know me well, you know that one of my favorite genres of music is emo. When I tell people this however, I usually get misconceptions about what the genre is. When most people hear the word "emo" they think of bands like My Chemical Romance and Panic at the Disco. While both are good bands, neither would be considered "emo" in the broadest sense of the word. So in this blog, I hope to clarify the history of emo and the music that accompanied each era of this genre.

Origins: Mid 80s

Tracing emo back to its origins is thankfully an easier task than tracing the origins of other genres. Of course, this could be attributed to the fact that emo is a relatively new sub-genre of music. If we want to get into emo music, we have to talk about the hardcore scene of Washington D.C. The late 70s into the early 80s saw the start of numerous hardcore and punk bands, inspired by the sounds of the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. Hardcore was the continuation of punk music, rougher around the edges and less commercially appealing due to the lack of any perceived melodic singing and short songs. The venues were small, with the scene being rather small and involving few musicians who would break up and reform over the course of a few years.

Out of these hardcore, post-hardcore and hardcore punk bands that defined D.C. came the hardcore band of Minor Threat. Fronted by Ian MacKaye, the band only lasted three years before breaking up. However, in those three years, Minor Threat was able to define the hardcore scene of their city. The songs were short but became rallying cries for the teenagers in attendance, teenagers frustrated with the world in a post-Nixon United States. Minor Threat was also credited with starting the "straight edge" movement, where hardcore bands swore off drugs and alcohol in a response to the ugly side of punk music. While the straight edge movement could be toxic at times (even violent), the sentiment was a 180 from the culture of rock music at the time. The way that Minor Threat was able to band the members of the hardcore scene together in shared external frustration set the stage for bands to relate to the audience on their own terms.

Guy Picciotto was a big fan of Minor Threat and often went to their sets in D.C. Through Minor Threat, Picciotto was inspired to start his own band. Rites of Spring formed in 1984 and were incorporated into the D.C. scene. While heavily inspired by hardcore, their songs were noticeably longer than any hardcore song of the time. The most important difference between Minor Threat and Rites of Spring, though, was Rites of Spring's emphasis on introspective lyrics.

The contrast in lyrical content is evident in each of their most popular songs. In Minor Threat's self-titled song, the bridge contains the lyrics "Make do with what you have, take what you can get/Pay no mind to us, we're just a minor threat." In comparison, Rites of Spring's song "For Want Of" contains the lyrics "And I woke up this morning with the present in splinters on the ground/And then I drowned" in its bridge. Those lyrics emphasize the massive difference in content. Where Minor Threat's come across as a rallying cry directed at the world, Rites of Spring comes across as broken people looking for solace in others. This more emotional route was completely new to hardcore at the time and changed the scene forever. Even though Rites of Spring broke up only a year after their sole album, their influence on the hardcore genre is irreversible.

One of the defining moments of these origin years was the "Revolution Summer" movement, where bands Rites of Spring, Embrace (another Ian MacKaye band started after the break up of Minor Threat) and Dag Nasty were set on changing the culture of the hardcore movement. These bands were at the forefront of what became emo music, turning the lyrics inward and reducing the violence that occurred due to the external anger. Not only that, they also encouraged the inclusion of females into the hardcore scene and Ian MacKaye even signed the all-female group Fire Party to his own record label. While hardcore and punk are still predominately populated by men, the encouragement of diversity in the scene still holds true today.

The most important bands of this era (Rites of Spring, Embrace, Dag Nasty, One Last Wish, Gray Matter, Beefeater) broke up almost as soon as they began, averaging about a two years together each. However, their music impacted the hardcore scene forever and spawned a sub-genre that still exists today.

Second Wave: Late 80s-Early 90s

With the breakup of almost all of the original "emo" bands, Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto focusing on their new band Fugazi, and the hardcore scene of Washington D.C. slowly dying out, it was unclear how and where emo was going to continue. Numerous bands took up the call.

In the nearby city of Annapolis, Maryland the band Moss Icon continued the hardcore tradition of emo. They formed in 1986 and only ever recorded one full length album that has since been merged into a compilation of their entire discography. Their songs dealt with yearning for a lost love, realizing similarities between the speaker and other people and various personal topics. Lyrics like "Would you talk to me as if I'm real to you?" show Moss Icon's affinity toward the inward reflection, even as their guitars blared rough riffs.

Jawbreaker formed in 1986 in California, emerging from the same scene as Black Flag and influenced by the New York scene of 1987 while at New York University. The early music of the band was defined by hardcore, with Blake Schwarzenbach taking up the lyrics and singing lead vocals. While Jawbreaker was primarily hardcore, they incorporated post-punk influences that made their music far more accessible. After their rougher first three albums, they were signed to a major label and put out an album in 1995 with higher production value and a more melodic sound. Their fans shunned the record, feeling it to not be as authentic. Jawbreaker broke up soon after that, only recently getting praise for their last record and its emo classic "Accident Prone".

Indian Summer was a band formed in Oakland, California in 1993. Inspired by hardcore and the recent explosion of the loud-soft dynamics in grunge, Indian Summer made emo more melodic. They never put out a full album while together, only releasing their complete discography almost ten years after their 1994 breakup, but their live shows kept fans coming back. During their shows, they would play a Bessie Smith vinyl underneath their songs, incorporating blues music into their emotional songs. Their seminal song "Angry Son" (sometimes known as "Woolworm") has Bessie Smith crooning her song "See if I'll Care" before lead singer Adam Nanaa wails about his father abandoning him and his brother/bandmate Seth Nanaa.

Native Nod also helped to merge the gap between the hardcore of Rites of Spring with the next wave of emo when they formed in 1992. They only released nine songs in their three years in the New York hardcore scene, but the speak-singing of the band before the dynamic sounds of the chorus also seem inspired by the loud-soft dynamics of the grunge scene. Across the river, the New Jersey outfit of Lifetime formed in New Brunswick in 1990. They were heavily inspired by the hardcore scene that surrounded New York and New Jersey at the time. They were another band that incorporated more punk into the hardcore sound, making it far more accessible. Most consider their later work to be the primary influence of the emo-pop movement that came about ten years after they formed.

This second wave of emo helped to form the bridge between hardcore and punk. While many of these bands were still very grounded in the hardcore scenes of their respective areas, the punk influences were also present in some of these bands and helped lead the way into the Midwest Emo movement.

Chaotic Emocore: Mid-90s

I'd be remiss to not give this movement a passing mention. Out of the punk and hardcore scenes of California, a new genre of music was emerging. Inspired by many D.C. hardcore bands, these new bands of California went on to incorporate more screaming into their songs. Not only that, but this hardcore was far faster than their D.C. counterparts, garnering the moniker of "chaotic". The bands of this time popularized the San Diego sound, showing off the experimentation of the hardcore and punk artists of the time. Most of these bands had a profound impact on post-hardcore and the emerging screamo sub-genre.

If you're interested in louder, crunchier, faster emotional hardcore, the bands Antioch Arrow, Swing Kids, Portraits of the Past and Heroin are great starting points. Due to my own personal tastes, I don't know too much more about this sub-genre but it has very strong merits in its own right.

Midwest Emo: Early to Late 90s

Midwest Emo was a form of emo that mostly came from, you guessed it, the midwest United States. The sound of this era combined the traits of hardcore music with the emerging indie rock scene. This music was far more melodic than even the previous second wave of emo, with the sound focusing more on power chords and more discernible lyrics.

The first of these bands to emerge was Sunny Day Real Estate, formed in 1992 in Seattle, Washington. Within the center of the grunge scene, Sunny Day Real Estate found a sweet spot between grunge and hardcore while including the higher and softer voice of Jeremy Enigk. The loud-soft dynamics of their first album recalled the grunge of their hometown while featuring extremely emotional lyrics like "I dreamed to heal your wounds, but I bleed myself". Sunny Day Real Estate was defined by their break ups, never staying together for longer than three to four years at a time. Yet the four albums they produced over the course of their break ups and reunions capture lightning in a bottle and defined emo of this wave and even inspired some of the next.

Cap'n Jazz was one of the more influential bands to come out of this time, forming in 1989 in Chicago. They released one album in 1994 before splitting in 1995. However, their simple guitar playing that backed up lyrics like "And you are colder than oldness could ever be" distinguished them in this era. Their music resembled the up and coming pop punk genre, relying primarily on power chords. Yet even still, you could still hear the hardcore influence in many of their songs to link them to their predecessors. What makes Cap'n Jazz even more influential is that their members continued to make emo music even after they broke up in the influential bands American Football, The Promise Ring and Owen.

Christie Front Drive was a band formed in Denver in 1993 and inspired by Jawbreaker. "Instant Romance" is a perfect midwest emo song. The guitars also feature a similar playing style to that of Indian Summer, combining the hardcore and indie rock influences into this new sound. Boys Life was a from Kansas City, Missouri formed in 1993 who relied more heavily on the hardcore aspects of emo. The 7" split from Christie Front Drive and Boys Life was an important album of this time, especially since neither band put out too much music. (Even though the above song claims to be "Sight Unseen", it's actually "Instant Romance" and Spotify messed it up. Or everyone else has. In any case, it's the song I'm talking about in this paragraph.)

The Appleseed Cast formed in Kansas in 1997. They relied on the indie rock of the time. I like to think they were the precursors to American Football due to their similar sounds. However, even with the interposing guitars, there are heavy hardcore influences here with the rough guitars in the space between verses. This band was heavily influenced by Sunny Day Real Estate and there are times where you can hear that influence in their song "Fishing the Sky".

Texas is the Reason came from New York City in 1993. They brought a more punk influenced sound to emo and garnered a lot of praise for their only album "Do You Know Who You Are?". Their music sounds way more commercial than even Sunny Day Real Estate of a few years prior, the indie rock helping to make emo more accessible. A similar sounding band came from Austin, Texas in Mineral. Mineral also utilized alternative rock in their emo, releasing two albums before their breakup in 1998. Loud-soft dynamics are utilized in their song "Gloria" and the hardcore influence is very hard to hear at all with this song sounding more alternative rock than anything else. It was also one of my top five played songs of 2019, in case you were wondering.

Knapsack was also an important band of this time, coming from California. The first time I heard their music, I felt they sounded a few years ahead of the alternative rock radio of the 2000s. The power chords are very similar to pop punk and straight punk mixed with alternative rock. Penfold of New Jersey also combined softer guitars in the verses before building up to a cathartic conclusion. They were known for their basement shows where the audience became just as much a part of the show as the band. Their song "I'll Take You Everywhere" is one of my favorites of the genre.

Overall, this era of emo music made the music sound more accessible to the average listener. Melodic verses and choruses mixed with alternative rock and indie rock influences made these bands far easier to get into than the previous waves. While the straight hardcore influence wasn't as noticeable, the one thing that linked all of these bands together was their lyrical content. These bands all focused on the inward feelings of the lyricist, focusing on emotional struggles instead of external ones. In this way, the emo genre was preserved in its own right.

Emo Pop: Late 90s-Early 00s

With the increased popularity of Green Day, Blink-182 and Wheezer, emo incorporating pop punk seemed inevitable. With the previous wave of emo artists making the genre more accessible by introducing alternative and indie rock and melodic singing, this era made emo more accessible through standard hooks and choruses that were featured in pop and pop-punk.

One of the first bands to incorporate this sound was The Promise Ring. Featuring the previous guitarist of Cap'n Jazz, Davey Von Bohlen, the band formed in 1995 and released "Nothing Feels Good" in 1997. The album featured power-pop, pop-punk and indie rock stylings under traditional emo lyrics. The album mostly dealt with love and lyrics on depression.The album was influential in defining this era of emo music.

The Get Up Kids from Kansas City, Missouri formed around the same time and put out "Something to Write Home About" in 1999. The album mixed the midwest sound of the previous era with the power-pop and pop-punk of recent popularity. The catchy hooks made this album easy to display on MTV and earned them an opening spot on tour with Green Day. The Get Up Kids took the sound of The Promise Ring and built on it, using the themes of love to define their album. Their song "Action & Action" is a defining song of this era.

Jimmy Eat World was an underground artist of the emo scene for numerous years in Mesa, Arizona. Their first major label album "Static Prevails" had much in common with the midwest emo scene and they were influenced by the likes of Indian Summer. However, their genre defining work would come in "Clarity" in 1999. The album combined alternative rock, power pop and pop punk with synths and strings. The album pushed the idea of what emo could be and what it could include. What defined it as an emo album? It's poetic lyrics about the inner thoughts of life. The second and third to last songs are also very heavily hardcore influenced and you can see the link between Jimmy Eat World and their emo peers.

American Football was one of those magical bands who just came together at the right moment to create a perfect album. Originally formed in 1997 in Illinois, and featuring Mike Kinsella of Cap'n Jazz, American Football put out one album in 1999 before calling it quits. The self-titled album was a master class in math rock emo with the opener's lyrics featuring "So let's just pretend/everything and anything between you and me/Was never meant". If that doesn't scream emo, I'm not sure what does. The album features some interesting experimentation, including using a Wurlitzer and trumpet in some songs, as the drummer of the band was interested in jazz. The band reformed in 2016 to put out more music.

Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday and Brand New all sprang up from the New York/New Jersey hardcore/punk scene. All three bands were more heavily influenced by the hardcore sounds of their scene but mixed it with the pop-punk sound of the radio to make it more accessible. Saves the Day incorporated the bitterness toward ex-lovers more akin to pop-punk into their own sound. Taking Back Sunday incorporated pop-punk and had dual vocalists like hardcore. They became commercially successful fairly soon after their first album came out in 2002. Their cross city rivals Brand New were a heavier band, leaning more heavily into the alternative rock scene. All three of these bands helped to shape the scene in New York and New Jersey.

Chris Carrabba formed Dashboard Confessional in this time, forming in 1999 and putting out the first album in 2000. Dashboard Confessional was a primarily acoustic project, focusing on a lovelorn singer. Carrabba made emo a more pop affair than previously shown to be. 

Another band worth mentioning during this time is the New Jersey band Thursday. They're not a band that necessarily falls into the "emo-pop" genre but formed around this time in 1997 and played with Saves the Day in basement shows. Thursday kept the hardcore influence alive in emo with their music. Their post-hardcore featured dual vocalists, an absence of melodic singing akin to pop, and heavy guitars in their choruses. 

Emo pop was the first explosion of popularity for the emo genre. With the combination of alternative rock and more accessible themes within the lyrics (though keeping with the internal dialogue known to define emo), emo became a marketable genre, leading to numerous bands signing to labels with similar sounds.

Mall Emo: Mid to Late 00s

This era of "emo" is more emo adjacent than actual emo. With the explosion of the previous era, record labels looked everywhere for bands with similar sounds in order to capitalize. Unfortunately, this meant that a lot of bands that were straight pop-punk or played in the cross-country summer Warped Tour got lumped into the emo genre, even if they had very little to do with the genre itself. However, I feel like the artists of this time should still be mentioned alongside the legitimate emo groups putting out music.

Two of the biggest bands who can be categorized in this group are My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. Both of these bands had emo influences and each of their first albums can be traced to the New Jersey and Chicago hardcore scenes respectively. With their increased popularity, however, both of these bands steered into the alternative rock and pop punk genres. In cases like Fall Out Boy, even straight pop. Both bands served as entry bands into the emo scene though because of the bands and festivals they would tour with, including doing stints on the pop-punk and hardcore heavy Warped Tour. In this way, the sounds of hardcore and punk became more accessible to teens of time, even being featured on MTV. If you want true emo though, their first albums are really the only ones worth listening to. (The rest of their albums are good by the way, just not emo.)

Paramore and Panic at the Disco were two bands signed by Fueled by Ramen who were labeled emo by association. When Paramore cited emo artists Jimmy Eat World, Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate as influences, it was easy for high profile magazines to lump them into the same world. However, Paramore's work was more emo-adjacent than emo itself. The closest emo album they ever put out was their first album, which leans heavily into alternative rock and uses pop-punk lyricism. A solid album, but not emo. The same goes for Panic at the Disco, who released a pop-punk album while being friends with Fall Out Boy. While some lyrics could be associated with emo, the music itself wasn't near to the hardcore roots of the genre. Both of these bands were popular in stores like Hot Topic and at Warped Tour, leading to a muddling of their scene.

Many pop-punk bands of this era were incorrectly given the moniker of emo because of their association with certain labels and festivals or the way that they dressed while on stage. During this time, the difference between emo and pop-punk became very blurred, making it hard to determine if any of them had any emo influence at all. When bands like The All-American Rejects, who were straight radio pop-punk, were labeled as emo, you knew the mainstream had gotten way too carried away with the label. When looking at this era, it's best to think of them as pop-punk/alternative rock groups until proven otherwise.

Why is this emo-adjacent era called "mall emo"? Mostly because of the popularity that associated these bands, leading them to be played at places like the mall in different stores like Hot Topic. Emo has always been known as a more DIY genre, which made the popularity of this era feel inauthentic to the genre itself. This is why, even though there are some shared influences within this era, most don't consider this era to be included in the grand scheme of the genre. With many of the bands of this era steering toward pop and indie pop, these bands are no longer associated with the emo label.

Emo Revival: Late 00s to Present

With the mainstream getting in on what they perceived to be emo, the actual emo artists were even more underground than ever. In that meantime, emo artists were starting to shape the genre back into the 90s midwest emo sound.

One of the first instances of this was the 2004 release of Say Anything's "...Is a Real Boy". The album was a collection of indie rock with ironic and satirical lyrics, inspired by Saves the Day's "Through Being Cool". The album as a whole dealt with anxiety, depression and self-loathing, masked in upbeat melodies. The album acted as a bridge between the emo-pop era and the emo-revival that would come a few short years afterwards.

Algernon Cadwallader would release "Some Kind of Cadwallader" in 2008. The guitars reminded of The Appleseed Cast, the vocals of Cap'n Jazz. It was through this album that emo had found one of its new sounds. It was indie, it was hardcore inspired and affected the listeners emotionally.

 

Tigers Jaw of Scranton released their self-titled album that refrained from power chords, using guitar riffs akin to math rock. Empire! Empire! I Was a Lonely Estate of Michigan was a short-lived band who used similar guitar techniques and soft vocal styles to make their sound more intimate before building to a crescendo and emotional payoff. Snowing of Philadelphia, a band that only lasted three years in their original run, incorporated the sounds of post-hardcore into Cap'n Jazz-style vocals. The World is a Beautiful Place and I'm No Longer Afraid to Die of Connecticut is another band who incorporated more "twinkly" guitars alongside post-hardcore influences.

While a lot of the emo revival is indie rock influenced, there are still some bands who incorporate pop-punk and alternative rock into their music. Modern Baseball of Philadelphia is one of those bands that lasted a few years and put out some solid pop-punk/emo fusion albums. Sorority Noise of Connecticut released emo albums heavily influenced by pop punk sounds before their hiatus. The Hotelier of Massachusetts released their album "Home, Like No Place is There" that incorporates indie rock and pop punk. It's an album that most would agree is one of the top five emo revival albums.

Even with the indie rock movement in emo, hardcore influences are still heard. Microwave from Atlanta, Georgia are incorporating post-hardcore into their sound. Tiny Moving Parts from Minnesota also combine indie rock and post-hardcore into their sound.

The emo revival is probably the era of emo that has the most variety in its sound. Whether you like math rock, indie rock, pop-punk or post-hardcore, you can find it in this era of emo. There's even arguments that emo-rap has emerged in this era with Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, and Lil Uzi Vert citing emo and alternative rock artists as influences. With so many different varieties of music within emo, the genre is at an all-time high in creativity.

It's unclear which way emo will go after this decade but what can be guaranteed is that it will always have its roots in rock. What kind of rock it'll be, who knows? What I do know is that emo will always continue to be an escape, even for a short while.