Gen Z Is Keeping Emo Alive

I really wish that today's teenagers weren't lauding a lot of these emo records from the early 2000s..

..I really wish we could leave behind a lot of the lyrical content of those records..

 

About 6 or 7 years until the kids are rediscovering Title Fight, I reckon

 

So what are the different waves of emo?

Wave 1 is Rites of Spring and Dag Nasty and whatnot in the 80s?

Wave 2 I thought was earlier than the excerpt from this article suggests...
like, Promise Ring, American Football and whatnot.

Wave 3 would be the early 2000s stuff - Taking Back Sunday, Brand New (feels weird even bringing them up), Dashboard, Saves the Day.

Wouldn't right now be Wave 4? - Mom Jeans, Oso Oso, Snail Mail, Modern Baseball, etc.

 

I would combine wave 2/3 in your list. I actually think the Wikipedia article does a good job segmenting it. The period of mid 1990s emo was so hard to access and segmented and quite honestly, I didn't really feel like it ever was truly defined as a genre until after the fact. The later 1990s when emo added the pop punk elements that worked for the Long Island/NJ wave of that scene Saves the Day, TBS, early Brand New, FOB, the Movielife, Senses Fail, etc. is where you can clearly point to a revival and that's what sparked the second wave.

People will group Mineral, Knapsack, Weezer, American Football and The Promise Ring together as 90's emo but those bands all were vastly different.

 

I can't believe I'm reading this today. What incredibly timing. I taught my first class of the semester today, and during conversation one of my students, who is only 17 or 18, referred to My Chemical Romance as "[her] generation's screamo band."

It seemed weird to hear that about a band that peaked when I was in high school and broke up when she must have only been 10 years old, but it got me thinking about how generations lay claim to music, movies, and any other media.

The things that my generation (I'm 29) and every generation that came before it could lay claim to were, more or less, limited to what we had access to on the level that we could have a shared experience with it. To buy music in 2005, most of us walked into a Sam Goody and had comprehensive access to genres and artists that were probably no more than 10 - 15 years old. Anything older than that were typically the most well known bands of earlier generations.

This generation is really the first that doesn't face any sort of barrier to access. They don't have to wait for their friend's brother's roommate to lend/burn them a copy of some CD or song in order to hear it. MCR is one of the more popular bands of the 00's, but I could just as well tell them to listen to Poison the Well, Jawbreaker, or whatever and they could all listen to it immediately. If they all like it, it could still amount to a large enough shared experience that they may view it as something they experienced along with the rest of their generation, and therefore be inclined to refer to it as their generation's.

I always though about those shared experiences of having a rolling shelf-life of like, 10 - 15 years, but that's probably because the majority of the stuff at my finger tips could only have been about that old. I don't think current technology or culture is going to extend that lifespan indefinitely, but it certainly seems like it has the capacity to help music span a generation in a way that was previously unfeasible.

Either that or I've just been wrong about the 10 - 15 year thing. I dunno. Anyway, I'm going to share this article with my students on Monday. This is going to be a really cool start to this semester.

 

I'm just happily shocked that so much of this music still has so much appeal, and shitty lyrics and raging creepers aside, I can still find so much meaning in this music even at 26.

Maybe even more meaning - I've been in a bit of a dark place recently and when I've listened to "I'm Not Okay" or "Everything Is Alright" or "Taste Of Ink" or "Can't Be Saved" I relate to them so much more now as an adult having to navigate independence and a career than I ever could as some angsty little shitbag wearing way-too-tight black tees and a badly dyed black fringe.

 

Agreed. Nostalgia aside some of that shit is just fucking vile.

 

Problems are timeless, I think thats why a lot of this wave of emo speaks to a lot of people still today. Life can be brutal and a lot of those songs nail the feeling at times.

 

Many songs from that time frame have lyrics that pepetuate toxic behavior, particularly towards women.

Time to put MCR easter eggs on your pop quizzes

 

It's a critical thinking class, so it's very discussion oriented. Every section ends up with it's own set of inside/running jokes and themes, so there's no doubt in my mind that I'll be able to slip in some screamo references in most classes.

 

I agree, but I also know when I was younger I never had thoughts like that that stemmed from listening to bands like MCR or Saosin or something. I know there were cringy lyrics but there were a lot of good stuff that people interpreted in different ways. I could be thinking of stuff some people wouldn't even call "emo" but I dunno, I just liked catchy stuff that made me feel better.