Coordinates | 28°36′36″N77°13′48″N |
---|---|
name | Emo |
color | white |
bgcolor | crimson |
stylistic origins | Hardcore punk, indie rock |
cultural origins | Mid-1980s Washington, D.C. |
instruments | Vocals, guitar, bass guitar, drum kit |
popularity | Early 2000s–present |
subgenres | Screamo |
regional scenes | Washington, D.C. Midwestern and Central United States New Jersey and Long Island |
other topics | List of emo artists timeline of alternative rock }} |
Emo () is a style of rock music characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace. As the style was echoed by contemporary American punk rock bands, its sound and meaning shifted and changed, blending with pop punk and indie rock and encapsulated in the early 1990s by groups such as Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate. By the mid 1990s numerous emo acts emerged from the Midwestern and Central United States, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the style.
Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the platinum-selling success of Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional and the emergence of the subgenre "screamo". In recent years the term "emo" has been applied by critics and journalists to a variety of artists, including multiplatinum acts and groups with disparate styles and sounds.
In addition to music, "emo" is often used more generally to signify a particular relationship between fans and artists, and to describe related aspects of fashion, culture, and behavior.
The "emocore" label quickly spread around the Washington, D.C. punk scene and became attached to many of the bands associated with MacKaye's Dischord Records label. Although many of these bands simultaneously rejected the term, it stuck nonetheless. Scene veteran Jenny Toomey has recalled that "The only people who used it at first were the ones that were jealous over how big and fanatical a scene it was. [Rites of Spring] existed well before the term did and they hated it. But there was this weird moment, like when people started calling music 'grunge,' where you were using the term even though you hated it."
The Washington, D.C. emo scene lasted only a few years. By 1986 most of the major bands of the movement—including Rites of Spring, Embrace, Gray Matter, and Beefeater—had broken up. Even so, the ideas and aesthetics originating from the scene spread quickly across the country via a network of homemade zines, vinyl records, and hearsay. According to Greenwald, the Washington, D.C. scene laid the groundwork for all subsequent incarnations of emo:
What had happened in D.C. in the mid-eighties—the shift from anger to action, from extroverted rage to internal turmoil, from an individualized mass to a mass of individuals—was in many ways a test case for the transformation of the national punk scene over the next two decades. The imagery, the power of the music, the way people responded to it, and the way the bands burned out instead of fading away—all have their origins in those first few performances by Rites of Spring. The roots of emo were laid, however unintentionally, by fifty or so people in the nation's capital. And in some ways, it was never as good and surely never as pure again. Certainly, the Washington scene was the only time "emocore" had any consensus definition as a genre.
MacKaye and Piccioto, along with Rites of Spring drummer Brendan Canty, went on to form the highly influential Fugazi who, despite sometimes being connected with the term "emo", are not commonly recognized as an emo band.
Jawbreaker has been referred to as "the Rosetta Stone of contemporary emo". Though they were often obscure and cloaked in metaphors, their specificity to Schwarzenbach's own concerns gave the words a bitterness and frustration that made them universal and magnetic to audiences. Schwarzenbach became emo's first idol as listeners related to the singer more than the songs themselves. The band signed to major label Geffen Records and toured with Nirvana and Green Day, but their 1995 album ''Dear You'' sold poorly and they broke up soon after, with Schwarzenbach later forming Jets to Brazil. Their influence lived on, however, through later successful emo and pop punk bands openly indebted to Jawbreaker's sound.
Though the emo style of the mid-1990s had thousands of young fans, it never broke into the national consciousness. A few bands were offered contracts with major record labels, but most broke up before they could capitalize on the opportunity. Jimmy Eat World signed to Capitol Records in 1995 and built a following among the emo community with their album ''Static Prevails'', but did not break into the mainstream despite their major-label association as their music was mostly lost amongst the popular ska movement of the period. The Promise Ring were the most commercially successful emo band of the time, with sales of their 1997 album ''Nothing Feels Good'' topping out in the mid-five figures. He refers to mid-1990s emo as "the last subculture made of vinyl and paper instead of plastic and megabytes."
As the '90s wore to a close, the music that was being labeled emo was making a connection with a larger and larger group of people. the aspects of it that were the most contagious—the sensitivity, hooks, and average-guy appeal—were also the easiest to latch onto, replicate, and mass market. As with any phenomenon—exactly like what happened with Sunny Day [Real Estate]—when business enters into a high-stakes, highly personal sphere, things tend to go awry very quickly [...] As fans threatened to storm the emo bandwagon, the groups couldn't jump off of it fast enough. The popularity and bankability of the word—if not the music—transformed an affiliation with the mid-nineties version of emo into an albatross.
In 1997 Deep Elm Records launched a series of compilation albums entitled ''The Emo Diaries'', which continued until 2007 with eleven installments. Featuring mostly unreleased music from unsigned bands, the series included acts such as Jimmy Eat World, Further Seems Forever, Samiam, and The Movielife. The diversity of bands and musical styles made the case for emo as more of a shared aesthetic than a genre, and the series helped to codify the term "emo" and spread it throughout the community of underground music. Writing in 2003, Andy Greenwald called it "one of the most fiercely beloved rock 'n' roll records of the last decade. It is name-checked by every single contemporary emo band as their favorite album, as a mind-bending milemarker that proved that punk rock could be tuneful, emotional, wide-ranging, and ambitious." Nevertheless, the album gained steady popularity via word-of-mouth and was treasured by fans, eventually selling over 70,000 copies. Jimmy Eat World self-financed the recording of their next album ''Bleed American'' (2001) before signing to Dreamworks Records. The album sold 30,000 copies in its first week and went gold shortly after. In 2002 it went platinum as emo broke into the mainstream.
Drive-Thru Records, founded in 1996, steadily built up a roster of primarily pop punk bands with emo characteristics such as Midtown, The Starting Line, The Movielife, and Something Corporate. Drive-Thru's partnership with major label MCA enabled their brand of emo-inflected pop to reach wider audiences. The label's biggest early success was New Found Glory, with the single "Hit or Miss" reaching #15 on Modern Rock Tracks. Drive-Thru's unabashedly populist and capitalist approach to music allowed its bands' albums and merchandise to sell heavily through popular outlets such as Hot Topic:
In a world where cars are advertised as punk, Green Day members are platinum rock stars, and getting pierced and tatted up is as natural as a sweet-sixteen party, everyone is free to come up with their own definition of punk—and everyone is ready to embrace it. Emo had always connected with young people—it had just never aggressively marketed itself to them.
Independent label Vagrant Records was behind several successful emo acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Get Up Kids had sold over 15,000 copies of their debut album ''Four Minute Mile'' (1997) before signing to Vagrant, who promoted the band aggressively and put them on tours opening for big-name acts like Green Day and Weezer. Their 1999 album ''Something to Write Home About'' was an independent success, reaching #31 on ''Billboard'''s Top Heatseekers chart. Vagrant signed and released albums by a number of other emo and emo-related acts over the next two years, including The Anniversary, Reggie and the Full Effect, The New Amsterdams, Alkaline Trio, Saves the Day, Dashboard Confessional, Hey Mercedes, and Hot Rod Circuit. Saves the Day had built a large following on the east coast and sold almost 50,000 copies of their second album ''Through Being Cool'' (1999) reached #100 on the ''Billboard'' 200, and went on to sell over 200,000 copies. In the summer of 2001 Vagrant organized a national tour featuring every band on the label, sponsored by corporations such as Microsoft and Coca-Cola. This populist approach and the use of the internet as a marketing tool helped Vagrant become one of the country's most successful independent labels and also helped to popularize the term "emo". According Greenwald, "More than any other event, it was Vagrant America that defined emo to masses—mainly because it had the gumption to hit the road and bring it to ''them''." Jimmy Eat World's ''Bleed American'' album went platinum on the strength of "The Middle", which reached #1 on ''Billboard'''s Modern Rock Tracks chart. Dashboard Confessional reached #22 on the same chart with "Screaming Infidelities" from their Vagrant Records debut ''The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most'', which was #5 on Independent Albums, and became the first non-platinum-selling artist to record an episode of ''MTV Unplugged'' New Found Glory's album ''Sticks and Stones'' debuted at #4 on the Billboard 200. Saves the Day toured with Green Day, Blink-182, and Weezer, playing large arenas such as Madison Square Garden, and by the end of the year had performed on ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'', appeared on the cover of ''Alternative Press'', and had music videos for "At Your Funeral" and "Freakish" in heavy rotation on MTV2. while the word "emo" began appearing on numerous magazine covers and became a catchall term for any music outside of mainstream pop. Andy Greenwald attributes emo's sudden explosion into the mainstream to media outlets looking for the "next big thing" in the wake of the September 11 attacks:
The media business, so desperate for its self-obsessed, post-9/11 predictions of a return to austerity and the death of irony to come true, had found its next big thing. But it was barely a "thing," because no one had heard of it, and those who had couldn't define it. Despite the fact that the hedonistic, materialistic hip-hop of Nelly was still dominating the charts, magazine readers in the summer of '02 were informed that the nation was deep in an introverted healing process, and the way it was healing was by wearing thick black glasses and vintage striped shirts. Emo, we were told, would heal us all through fashion.
In the wake of this success, many emo bands were signed to major record labels and the style became a marketable product. Dreamworks Records senior A&R; representative Luke Wood remarked that "The industry really does look at emo as the new raprock, or the new grunge. I don't think that anyone is listening to the music that's being made—they're thinking of how they're going to take advantage of the sound's popularity at retail." The depoliticized nature of emo, coupled with its catchy music and accessible themes, gave it a broad appeal to young mainstream audiences.
At the same time, a darker, more aggressive offshoot of emo gained popularity. New Jersey–based Thursday signed a multi-million-dollar, multialbum contract with Island Def Jam on the strength of their 2001 album ''Full Collapse'', which reached #178 on the ''Billboard'' 200. Their music differed from the prominent emo bands of the time in that it was more politicized and lacked dominant pop hooks and anthems, drawing influence from more maudlin bands such as The Smiths, Joy Division, and The Cure. However, the band's accessibility, openness, basement-show roots, and touring alongside bands like Saves the Day made them part of the emo movement.
Some bands that formed in the United States during the late 1990s and remained active throughout the 2000s, such as Thursday, Thrice, and Poison the Well made screamo much more popular. Many of these bands took influence from the likes of Refused and At the Drive-In. By the mid-2000s, the over-saturation of the screamo scene caused many bands to purposefully expand past the genre’s trademarks and incorporate more experimental elements. Even bands that weren’t necessarily screamo would often use the style's characteristic guttural vocal style. Derek Miller, guitarist for the post-hardcore band Poison the Well, claimed that the term screamo "describes a thousand different genres." According to Jeff Mitchell of Iowa State Daily, "there is no set definition of what screamo sounds like but screaming over once deafeningly loud rocking noise and suddenly quiet, melodic guitar lines is a theme commonly affiliated with the genre." Juan Gabe, vocalist for the band Comadre, alleged that the term "has been kind of tainted in a way, especially in the States."
As emo became more successful in the mid-1990s due to the rise of grunge, emo pop was developed by bands such as The Wrens, which pioneered a form of emo-pop on 1996's ''Secaucus'', and Weezer, which in 1996 released the definitive emo pop album ''Pinkerton''. Other bands which put out emo pop releases in the 90s included Sense Field, Jejune, Alkaline Trio, and The Get Up Kids. As emo became commercially successful in the early 2000s, the emo pop movement was birthed by Jimmy Eat World's 2001 release ''Bleed American'' and the success of that album's single "The Middle". Genre pioneers Weezer and The Wrens both saw great success in this new movement, the former with its release ''The Green Album'' and the latter with ''Meadowlands'', which "reinvented punk-pop for the new generation". As the genre coalesced, the record label Fueled by Ramen became a center of the movement, releasing platinum selling albums from bands like Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, and Paramore. Two main regional scenes developed; in Florida the scene was created by the label Fueled by Ramen and the band Dashboard Confessional, and in the Midwest emo-pop was promoted by Pete Wentz, whose band Fallout Boy rose to the front of the style in the mid-2000s. In 2008, the band Cash Cash released ''Take It to the Floor'', which Allmusic stated could be "the definitive statement of airheaded, glittery, and content-free emo-pop. Allmusic further stated that with this release "the transformation of emo from the expression of intensely felt, ripped-from-the-throat feelings played by bands directly influenced by post-punk and hardcore to mall-friendly Day-Glo pop played by kids who look about as authentic as the "punks" on an old episode of ''Quincy'' did back in the '70s was made pretty much complete with the release of Cash Cash's ''Take It to the Floor'' album."
The emo fashion is also recognized for its hairstyles. Popular looks include long side-swept bangs, sometimes covering one or both eyes. Also popular is hair that is straightened and dyed black. Bright colors, such as blue, pink, red, or bleached blond, are also typical as highlights in emo hairstyles. Short, choppy layers of hair are also common. This fashion has at times been characterized as a fad. In the early 2000s, emo fashion was associated with a clean cut look, but as the style spread to younger teenagers, the style has become darker, with long bangs and emphasis on the color black replacing sweater vests.
Emo has been associated with a stereotype that includes being particularly emotional, sensitive, shy, introverted, or angst-ridden. It has also been associated with depression, self-injury, and suicide.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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