The Evolution of Emo Music

 

  

 When I think of fall, flannels, vans, and warped tours I think of emo music. Let's take it all the way back to a time before warped tour and between the time when vans became a brand of shoes. Imagine this, It's 1983 and the band Rite of Springs has emerged from Washington DC playing one of their hit songs For Want Of . This is the start of the genre of emo music. Emo music is a branch off from post hardcore, or punk rock. In the beginning many bands who gained the title of being “emo” rejected the idea of their music being called that. This created tension in music spaces between hard core, emo and pop rock. While the term did not necessarily stick in the 1980’s it did set the scene for what is to come. ” People called this music “emo,” as in “emocore,” as in “emotional hardcore.” In the nineties, indie bands with more interest in melody continued exploring similar lyrical territory, and people called their music emo, too, even though it didn’t really sound the same.” 

    The second wave of emo music took place in the 1990’s. It started to spread out from the west coast and across the country, but hitting close to home in the midwest. People have described midwest emo as ”an era that captured the hearts and minds of a global youth, with a generation of teenagers quickly becoming enamored with emo’s woeful sound. Defined by an emotional intimacy between bands and their fans, emo became a fully-fledged underground movement” During this time we got bands such as Joan Of Arc and Nada Surf and American Football. 
    Third wave of emo came out of the 2000 with myspace, skinny jeans, guyliner and black box dyed hair. The lines of what “sounds emo” is blurred even further “fusing their scrappy punk chops and withering lyricism with a sense of melody and pop structure”. Bands that are still popular today like Fall Out Boy, Panic at the Disco, My Chemical Romance and Paramore. A lot of emo music purists hate to believe that this era of music is still emo however this is when the genre really started to take off. 
    Fourth wave…so what now? Emo music has taken two distinct paths. One path going down the more earlier traditional route of emo music. Bands like Modern Baseball and La Dispute have music similar to the original 1990 emo music. While the other path has gone more pop and mainstream with an emo twist like Willow Smith's song Transparent soul. 
    One of the best things about emo music is that it has evolved overtime, enough that there are subgenres. However while the music might sound different, the same over all lyrical concepts are the same. Emo is truly just short for emotional and every wave has shown how they can have differences but still fall under the same category. In the beginning it is often rough sounding with loud drums, fast guitars and an overall “scratchy sound”. Today it can sound like smooth electric guitars and synth. Emo is an overall umbrella term for emotional music and as it continues to evolve we will see new trends and sounds.
references
 

Baker, Peter C. “When Emo Conquered the Mainstream.” The New Yorker, 28 July 2023, www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/when-emo-conquered-the-mainstream.

Connick, Tom. “The Beginner’s Guide to the Evolution of Emo.” NME, 31 Mar. 2021, www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/emo-wave-guide-evolution-2302802.

Dawkins, Bryana. “From MCR to MGK: The Evolution of Emo and Its Subgenres.” Tastemakers, tastemakers, 17 Apr. 2023, www.tastemakersmag.com/features/emo-evolution.

Mullen, Matt. “The Secret History of Emo Music.” Interview Magazine, 8 Dec. 2017, www.interviewmagazine.com/music/secret-history-emo-music.