Emo? Mainstream? What?!
Emo is dead (as Emo in its original sense was never really born into the mainstream). Anyone who wishes to argue otherwise is a poser. The mainstream taking Emo and making it commercially viable destroyed its identity. Go ahead, do a search, ask some friends, or even ask a couple of Emo experts. What is Emo? You won’t get a straight answer. Nobody really knows the answer anymore.
The Emo of today is not the Emo of yesterday. What most consider Emocore today is as close as you can get to the original Emo. Emocore is firmly grounded in punk, the only difference between the two is subject matter. Emo artists are nothing more than punk artists who enjoy the energy of punk music whose chosen subject matter extends beyond anarchy to intense and uninhibited emotion. Bands like Thursday, Taking Back Sunday and Underoath exemplify the current day style.
Today you will be presented with a very different “mainstream” definition of Emo. The emo of today is wholly represented by pop artists, like Fall Out Boy, who may have listened to a real Emo band once. Someday, in the not so distant future, we’ll all look back on these bands and feel that same discomfort we feel when we look back on the new wave of the eighties. We may even see the “Emo flip” nose dive like the distinctive “Flock of Seagulls” haircut.
To understand how we got here, you need only understand one thing. Emocore is not popular. Emo artists cannot make a living playing unpopular music. No artist can. So its either sellout or get a job.
Unfortunately for Emocore fans, adaptation means going mainstream. Try listening to some early Jimmy Eat World, such as their 94’ EP One, Two, Three, Four, then try one of their later albums, such as Chase This Light. While not pop, its fairly obvious that the hardcore underpinnings have left in favour of more melodic ones. Other examples of these “transitional” bands are Dashboard Confessional and Something Corporate.
Today’s Pop and Transitional Emo is enjoyable, but only at a superficial level. Emo as a genre has been robbed of its rawness and relatability. That is unless of course you feel some indescribable connection between yourself and a vapid white kiddy diddler…
All you bandwagon fans out there… its time to get off before its hair product and mascara fueled flaming remnants hurdle you off the edge.
No related posts.
[…] is Awesome/Emo is Evil 2″ In the past we have wrote about the downfalls of recent emo music, becoming mainstream or the stereotypical attitudes, and this compilation seems to sum up those sentiments. Either you […]