A sweeping look at rocks most misunderstood genre.
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Rites of Spring existed well before the term did, and they hated it.
Ian MacKaye on emo-core in 1987
Lets just blame it all on Washington, D.C. it never gets old.
Its now a fixed concept within popular culture and a resilient mode of expression.
Anyone or anything can be emo, and yet almost nobody claims making it.
Go to your average Emo Night and you might wonder why Linkin Park or Evanescence are missing.
The breakup of Capn Jazz in 1995 propagated a family tree of emo.
Guitarist Victor Villareals Ghosts and Vodka project anticipated emos absorption into instrumental post-rock.
Meanwhile, Capitol scooped up Jimmy Eat World, only to drop them after two commercially underwhelming LPs.
Fall Out Boy, Panic!
Near the end of the decade, emos biggest bands were starting to plateau or disintegrate.
Panic at the Disco dropped the exclamation point and released the mildly received Beatles cosplayPretty.
But for now, we present a brief history of emo shaped by our 100 favorite songs.
Of the continents new crop, Singaporean trio Forests have the most infectious spirit of the bunch.
Its the perfect example of a non-American emo band loving our sophomoric humor (Fuck you!
Sleep now moon, Marsh sings, as if to someone too remote to reach.
Signed to Pete Wentzs Decaydance record label before theyd even played a show, Panic!
The Southern California band didnt exactly experiment with the genre, but rather gave itself permission to slow down.
No song sees them deliver on this quite like Waltz of Gibraltar.
The group alternates time signatures and softens pull-offs without demanding attention.
claims inspired the most tattoos and Tumblrs.
For nearly five uninterrupted minutes of tidal post-rock, Gareth Campesinos!
Its as densely referential and verbally excitable as You!
(I Was a Lonely Estate).
Whereas most of E!E!
/ Go it your own!
As much as Hoover could resemble Fugazi, Fugazi never got this far out.
Its not exactly inaccurate.
The best visual description is the Coheed and Cambria logo).
What about their forays into boundless ambient or concise alt-rock?
Or, how about just On Reflection,which answers all of the above.
The studio version serves as a six-minute deep dive into the dual infinity pools ofLow Level Owl, Vol.
But, as many bands on this list will attest, longevity is no substitute for influence.
My Better Half is a playful take on the kind of jangly pop music that the Smiths and R.E.M.
popularized, and it almost sounds like the launch point for modern Joyce Manor records.
Theres something numbing about the way Terrin Durfey, the bands singer and bassist, stretches his words.
Nina Corcoran
- mewithoutYou, Wolf Am I!
(And Shadow) (2006)
Give self-loathing the stage and it will wreck everything in sight.
As one of mewithoutYous most underrated and intense songs, Wolf Am I!
(And Shadow) articulates that complex tension.
All the while, he remains self-impressed by the ways he puts himself down.
Wolf am I, he sings.
Guttural bass slides and ominous guitar lines collide, swarming around Weiss like hostile bees as he hollers.
The whole song is autumnal, a portrait of a slow-motion, rust-colored emptiness.
Thats emo summarized: a stretched-out feeling of longing that then collapses into a nervous breakdown.
you’re able to hear that throughout the entirety of In Love With an Apparition.
They still use it to close out nearly every show.
If you arent sure, let Gray Matter front man Geoff Turner scream that question into your ears again.
They, too, prioritized intensity over speed, but Turner actually made an attempt to sing.
What a difference that would make.
Leave it to emo to convince someone to take a breather and enjoy themselves for once.
Meanwhile, the songs bouncy drumming gives Elmore room to lean into her pop-punk guitar lines.
The secrets in the sacrifice!
Had they formed a few years later, Knapsack wouldve been Jimmy Eat World.
Police ruled it a death by misadventure.
Where do you go when youre teeming with angst and have nowhere to vent it out?
If youre Brian Jones, you go to the pool.
Reading through the lyrics in plain text, the creepiness of whats being suggested becomes rather vivid.
In the face of certain death, he makes the unthinkable truly believable.
Essentially theyre the Steely Dan of emo: niche in crowd, but great in importance.
Its audaciously honest, dripping with gallows humor and, yes, top-shelf emotional bullshit.
Its this dreamy layering that gives their music a kind of remembered feeling.
The D in Detroit is a song you feel like you knew before you ever heard it.
The following year, ex-members of Faith, Gray Matter, and Soulside formed Ignition as D.C.s first supergroup.
I may be blind in my actions / And have no control of my rage, he sings.
And when that chorus lands, its shocking and as satisfying as having that wish reciprocated.
The proof is in Tinfoil, the opening song off the trios debut LP.
De Marrais is angry and shes short and shes not letting anyone else narrate her story.
As is often the case with uncategorizable bands, its the vocalist who provides a throughway.
Twenty-three years on from their inception and Moss Icon still sound ahead of their time.
Pull quote, Conor Oberst doesnt know what emo is, joked his new bandmate Phoebe Bridgers.
Vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala anchors it all, sounding delightfully unhinged as he guides the song toward its triumphant finale.
The song is hypnotically struggling in place.
When that squall of guitars storms in toward the end, it feels like a creative breakthrough.
You also probably liked the music video for Im Not Okay (I Promise).
My Chemical Romance made the misunderstood look familiar, the goths look friendly, and depression look flattering.
Theres a reason they were major-label darlings back then.
it’s possible for you to practically see the venom leave his lips as he spits them out.
That is, with the exception of its most beloved song, Everyone Is My Friend.
Its surge is so constant it intrudes on shoegaze from another dimension.
Its an inventively simple song, a basic four-chord progression that somehow seems to move the earth around it.
It moved the earth around the band too; when the song peaked at No.
8 on The Hot 100, they, and emo, became pop.
The glory is the silence, Simpson yells at the end, but the salvation is in the screaming.
Cursive, The Recluse (2003)
Awake, alone in a womans room I hardly know.
Howd I end up here to begin with?
I dont know, Kasher later elaborates, butweknew how.
God bless if youve never related to this song.
Motion City Soundtrack, L.G.
FUAD reformats his hyperspecific storytelling into a one-of-a-kind congenial melodrama.
He finds himself on the brink of a breakdown, and hes warning everyone in sight of such.
With its comedically timed ellipses and overall air of dark humor, L.G.
Transistor, in particular, reveals itself to be an apotheosis in the genre.
Its tight and sloppy all at once because passion is the driving force.
In the weekend-less gig economy, there is no escape.
But it was the inimitable Drive Like Jehu that had the biggest impact.
And were all better off because of it.
But relationships never sourthatquickly, and Options condenses years worth of grudges into a four-minute death march.
City of Caterpillar arent soundtracking an emotional moment so much as theyre soundtracking the evolution of a feeling.
First dates carry ample weight when youre young because theyre filled with firsts, big and small.
Have I run through the rain, jumped over a gate, and kissed my crush?
No, but damn, does Carrabba make me wish I did.
Hands Down is the Xanga-era fantasy every hopeful romantic dreams of.
And yet, its not just based on a true story its about a fucking Coldplay concert.
Piebald, American Hearts (2002)
American Hearts is an emo rarity in that it looks outward.
An electric guitar stirs through a narrow set of notes unrelated to the song the voice is singing.
Then the voice disappears and the band swells in like unnoticed shadows.
And still he moves on.
This is the moment!
This is emos best slow dance.
Jawbox, Savory (1994)
The line between emo and post-hardcore has always been fairly thin.
Savory is a prime example of the bands ability to take pummeling riffs and use them for introspective means.
The Promise Ring, Is This Thing On?
(1997)
Is This Thing On?
sounds like Superchunk on uppers.
Not in a nihilistic South Parkgoths kind of way but as a necessary part of the human experience.
The faint remnant of a distortion pedal clicking off precedes the first verse.
My Chemical Romance, Helena (2004)
Few emo bands matched My Chemical Romance for pure kinetic energy.
And theres nothing it’s possible for you to do about it.
A combination of dramatic statements and half-rhetorical, half-desperate questions, Deeper Than Inside is absolutely tormented.
The world is my fuse, then, comes as both antagonism and a catalyst for positive change.
The almost dubby guitar echoes in the verses make them sound like the upward bubblings of carbonation.
Pain make your way to me, she sings, and Ill always be just so inviting.
Everything and everyone that came afterDiaryfollowed its lead.
Little League is a cry from deep within the throes of romance, with all its hopes and pitfalls.
But there is reason in their chaos, and Little League is a prime example of that.
Instead, its almost compulsively shaken off.
And, right on cue, the fiercely independent scene they were a part of quickly revolted against them.
At least for a few seconds, that is.
And yet … thats literally what happened on American Footballs self-titled debut.
Nearly every song onAmerican Footballis at an enviable peace over the drastic changes that await anyone entering their 20s.
Lets just be grateful that this beautiful fling happened rather than sad that it ended.
Ian Cohen
