Epsiode 16: Gerard Way Would Never Hurt Me If you were an angst-riddled teenager emo kids. I’m going to be standing up at between like 2003 and 2012, I don’t a stadium show for the first time in about think you ever really grow out of being an 7 years and I am likely going to complain emo kid. I still have a collection of albums about my back hurting for two full days lined up that immediately transport me afterwards, but it’s happening baby! I to the floor of my childhood bedroom have gotten the My Chemical Romance where I am staring at the ceiling silently tickets. brooding, perhaps with the single tear running down my cheek and my dad is But I don’t want to jinx it, so I’ve decided barging through my bedroom door and to channel all of my energy into digging ignoring this obvious main character through the soundtrack to my teen angst. moment to tell me that dinner is ready. And look, a lot of people have a similar I’m Alex – this is Pop Culture Boner – the nostalgic relationship with music from podcast edition – and today I’m thinking their teen years – that’s part of the joy about emo music. of it – but I do think there was something special about emo – if you liked emo you One of the things that I don’t think I needed emo. Remember the smidge of realised about emo before I started moral panic about men in eyeliner and writing this episode was that people girl’s jeans? I bloody love a bit of moral seem to be really ornery about which panic, especially one so sexy. music is actually emo, and whether or not their own band counts as emo. I think Which is why it brings me great joy to say part of this has to do with the fact that that after the failures of the pandemic, I ‘emo’ as a term was coined in the late 80s will in 2022 achieve what I was supposed hardcore scene, where bands with a more to achieve in 2020 – an achievement no personal or sensitive bent to their lyrics smaller than seeing My Chemical Romance were referred to as ‘emo-core’ usually in on my 30th birthday. It will still be my a way that was derogatory. I know it’s 30th birthday, because I am refusing to a huge shock for everyone involved, to acknowledge the two full years that have discover that the angry, angry boys of the passed between having the prospect of late 80s hardcore scene were mad when being wine-drunk screaming “I’m not someone made up a whole portmanteau OK!” cruelly ripped away by the novel to describe them having feelings in their coronavirus, and actually being wine- songs, but here we are. That kind of drunk screaming “I’m not OK!” at the top derogatory connotation has hung around of my lungs with a bunch of other ageing forever, and even the bands that kind of define that post-2000 era I’m referring to damn sure that you can’t ever leave. when I talk about emo, and who are most You won’t ever get too far from me… I people’s first thought when they hear just wanna break you down so badly in the word, spent a lot of time shit-talking the worst way”. And this vision of love the concept and trying to disassociate presented by an emo band – where themselves from the label. two people destroy each other by sheer proximity and intensity of feeling – got So, I think it’s probably worthwhile for me me thinking about the amount of psychic to clarify which brand of emo I’m going damage I dealt myself as a teenage girl to actually be talking about throughout listening to allegedly sensitive boys sing this episode. While I appreciate emo’s about crushing the life out of me. So, I roots – I love Rites of Spring and Sunny want to take a look at the heart and soul Day Real Estate – I specifically want to of emo – why’d it happen? Were these talk about what music journalists call waifish men in eyeliner having some ‘Third-wave emo’. It’s like third wave crisis of masculinity? Destroying the feminism only much, much worse. Post- patriarchy? Were they really kissing each millennium, riddled with eyeliner, box other? Or were they being rampantly hair dye, really long fringes and skinny misogynistic and getting away with it jeans. That, for me, is the sweet spot of under the guise of being sensitive? Will I teen angst. In terms of bands, there’s the end up destroying my own love of men in kind of holy trinity of emo, who are the nail polish? Would Gerard Way ever hurt mainstream face of things – My Chemical me? The answer to the last one is no, and Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! At the I won’t be interrogating it further, but Disco. And then things that are kind of everything else is fair game. Let’s get orbital to that – AFI, The Used, Thursday, into it. Brand New, Jimmy Eat World, Bring Me The Horizon etc. These bands are actually There’s actually a lot of academic writing pulling from a lot of places sound-wise – on emo – possibly because every sad girl some are screamo, some are more pop who loved a sad boy grew up to get a PhD punk – but they do tend to get lumped in an attempt to unpack their misguided under similar headings. And if there’s feelings, but more likely because the one thing we should know about me by explosion of popularity in the early 2000s now it’s that I don’t know shit about resulted in a wave of alarmist newspaper music – I am simply using my Internal articles decrying emo as a cult. The Daily Sad Boy Navigation System. Any time it Mail, ever the reputable source, published pings, I tap the ‘Emo’ sign and you can’t an article in 2006 called Emo cult warning stop me. for parents, and another in 2008 called Why no child is safe from the sinister cult With all that being said, I recently of Emo. The article refers to ‘the Black revisited some emo playlists to spend Parade’ as a place emos believe they go some time in my feelings, and Taking when they die, rather than just the title Back Sunday’s Make Damn Sure came of a My Chemical Romance album, and on – in case you don’t remember, here at one point implies that emo can’t be is a lyrical sample: “I’m gonna make same as the teenage rebellion punks had in the late 70s and early 80s because at In it she uses the argument that rock least punks had a zest for life. Ah yes, music, regardless of what form its who could forget the famously zest-filled taking, provides us with a framework for lyrics of people starving to death under acceptable heterosexual expression – not Thatcher? There’s no future in England’s that it is impossible to change, but rather dreaming. Anyway, this panic was centred that because it interacts with the culture around a couple of key concerns – concern that produces it, and because that culture for young women, that they would hasn’t made significant changes to the become so overwhelmed by the sadness value it places on those structures, what contained in the lyrics that they would we’re getting is a consistent replication slip into a self-destructive depression of socially acceptable heterosexuality. (as embodied by their wearing of all Contained within that is a preference black, and lashings of eyeliner) ; and for and privilege of masculinity, even concern for young men, that the emotive if the masculinity being represented is nature of the lyricism would soften them not that kind of jock-y archetype that so that they too were infected with this supposed to represent all men. So even overwhelming sadness (as embodied by when a subculture like emo emerges their wearing of all black, and lashings of from this scene, it’s more likely to eyeliner… or should I say guyliner, since replicate the types of patterns that were we’re quoting 2008). It’s almost like no already prevalent, even if there is a shift one writing these articles had ever met a in aesthetic, sound and presentation. hormone addled teen before. Because these structures still preference masculinist ideals even when they’re What I think is interesting about both of dressed up differently, when subcultures these perspectives on emo is that they’re emerge within music, they are tend really concerned with reinforcing the to create an alternative space for gender binary through the policing of masculinity to develop rather than a feelings and emotional expression, and space that is necessarily challenging or the way those things manifesting in music rebellious. There are two good examples and clothing. Basically, conservative of this – the first can be found in the media outlets thought that the girls hardcore scene that emo sprung from. would get more hysterical, and the boys Hardcore was an aggressive reaction to would suddenly become hysterical (as Reagan-era conservatism. It was angry, opposed to stoic and calm, like they would political and claimed egalitarianism. I say normally be). And if the men are all upset claimed because it’s demonstrably not then who’s going to keep the women in the case – there are few women visible check!? But actually, they needn’t have in the bands popular on the scene at the worried.