My Mixtape to Emo
- Brian Carnaby
- Jan 22, 2019
- 13 min read
Is this Emo?
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm the mixtape guy. In high school, I made many mix CD's for star crossed lovers that have since been lost to the inexorable march of time. In college, I became the party DJ, always fighting off legions of rivals that would rather listen to Of Montreal than Passion Pit (they're still wrong by the way). Amidst the moral hollowing and profound alienation of graduate school, I rediscovered my passion for the craft, using playlists to ruminate on theme ranging from the concept of home to the monstrous confirmation hearings for KKKavanaw.
People may find it strange when I slip an emo song into a playlist dominated otherwise by indie and folk. The reason is that emo embodies the raw, emotional energy that is the essence of music. If you want to represent anguish, rage, futility, or murderous glee, emo offers a vast repository from the days when emotions and hormones ruled our lives. Cold reason may make for a more stable adulthood, but it was not the core of our childhoods or the music that defined it.
And so I've judiciously picked twenty-some songs for my emo mixtape. I'm gonna walk my way through emo history and, along the way, try to construct a really kickass mix. I've limited myself to restrained 80 minutes - the length that can be put on a mix CD. The reason? A playlist can be imperfect and still convey its message, but the artform of the mixtape is lost in a world of limitless space. As punk demonstrated, sometimes less is more, sometimes constraints lead to creative breakthroughs. I had to be willing to be bold because this could not be an exhaustive list. Bands that defined the genre to some like Braid, Jimmy Eat World, Fallout Boy, and Say Anything were left out completely. The purpose here was to a) create a great mixtape and b) tell the history of emo. I chose the 20 songs I felt did that. Here they are, broken down by era:
Emotional Hardcore (1985-1990)
Rites of Spring - "For Want Of" (1985)
Dag Nasty - "Circles" (1986)
Jawbreaker - "Seethruskin" (1990)
Emo had its origins in the cutthroat factionalism of 80s D.C. scene politics. While the punk movement developed as a way to challenge the orthodoxy of what qualified as acceptable music the Seventies music industry, its own underground scenes rapidly became as doctrinaire and dismissive as the major labels it served to confront. Just to include melodic interludes, varied time signatures,and introspective lyrics (as Rites of Spring, Jawbreaker, and Dag Nasty did) was seen by some alpha-male absolutists to be a violation of what it meant to be punk. Even if Ian MacKaye (of Minor Threat and Fugazi fame) found the term to be downright idiotic, his independent label Dischord Records put out full albums by most of emo's earliest pioneers. Having a home, ambivalent or not, in one of the strongest independent labels in the country proved crucial to the incubation of the genre in those embryonic years.
Despite its reputation as a boys club, emotional hardcore challenged not just hardcore's established musical dogma, it also critiqued the most toxic elements of the larger hardcore subculture. Emo began as a homophobic barb thrown at bands that dare defy hardcore's rigid masculinist conventions. Much like the term punk, emos began to wear the insult as a badge of honor.
Indeed, emo kept punk alive in its most fragile years. As hardcore's most seminal acts disbanded or drifted into metal crossover and the low-fi pop movement offered a mellow haven for young people sick of the violent machismo of the hardcore scene, emo carried into a new era the punk ethos that music should agitate and transform rather than simply comfort and assuage. Even though later years found emo's politics frustratingly opaque, or diffused into solipsistic naval gazing, early emo had a radical message that the personal is political, and fought back against the apathy and nihilism beginning to grip the hardcore scene. In my eyes, emo nursed the punk spirit back to life when it was on its near deathbed.
The Metamorphosis (1991-1996)
Archers of Loaf - "Fat" (1993)
Sunny Day Real Estate - "Seven" (1994)
Cap'n Jazz - "Basil's Kite" (1995)
Texas is the Reason - "A Jack With One Eye" (1996)
Emo continued to develop as a distinctive genre after hardcore finally died at the end of the '80s. Post-hardcore became a catchall for a diverse set of bands that were punk in attitude even as grunge obscured just what that meant in terms of sound. Bands reached superstar status that were nurtured by underground punk scenes but obliterated the distinction between punk and metal like Soundgarden and Alice in Chains. The imprecise catchall term alternative rock would later develop as a way to help radio stations and major labels define their new found products. Despite artistic anxieties induced by 'selling out', grunge would put underground music on the map.
At first nobody really knew what emo meant. Musicians that would later define the genre cut their teeth in post-rock and post-hardcore bands. The term emo served more as an affectation that bands like Weezer fastened onto a hook-laden pop rock sound. Indie rock bands also dabbled as a way to differentiate them from the more cynical tone of acts like Pavement and the Silver Jews. And, while the Riot Grrrl Movement developed a harder edged sound at first, a wave of female fronted bands like Hole began to incorporate a distinctly feminine sentimentality. The closest thing to an emo manifesto came from Chapel Hill's indie rock darlings Archers of Loaf who screamed to the world in 1993: "WHAT DO YOU FUCKING CARE FOR ME?" While emo was still finding its identity, outside events would hasten its metamorphosis beginning in 1994.
Those events turned out to be a singular event, namely the tragic suicide of grunge messiah Kurt Cobain. I'm not sure if artists admit it, but his death really was a definitive event of 90s music history. A vast corpus of underground music that punk had inspired was finally broadcasted to mass audiences through Kurt Cobain. A lot of people did not know it, but Kurt Cobain was a music historian, his musical influences amazingly expansive, and his stardom built off decades of his schooling in the hard work of his predecessors in the 80s. His passing closed one door of music history and signaled the need for a new music to fill the void. At first it was the golden baritone of nostalgic "post-grunge" bands like Bush but this was just America in mourning for the glory days of grunge. A new giant was soon to emerge from its cocoon just as America was distracted by the collective trauma of Cobain's passing.
Sunny Day Real Estate established more concrete musical conventions for emo with their sibylline 1994 album Diary. Seattle's own never fit the grunge style of their hometown and shot like a rocket towards the opening created by Cobain's passing. The trio of hardcore lifers schooled in the melodic hardcore of the Dischord Records used its raw emotional impulse as a foundation for something new. Upon this base, Sunny Day Real Estate combined math-rock's odd time signatures with post-rock's mastery of tectonic shifts in dynamics. The result was true rock compositions that had the sophistication of progressive rock but replaced its hollow pomposity with true emotional depth.
Bands like Texas is the Place and Cap'n Jazz, coming out of those same sonically dense post-hardcore/post-rock traditions pushed the envelop further with ever more introspection and meticulously constructed architectures of sound. This novel sound had been thrown together from existing parts by a surprisingly small group of musicians who with a rare knack for bricolage. While these bands attained a certain cult status for their artistry, a new wave of young kids began to blend a poppier aesthetic with an appreciation for the master compositions of those first giants of emo's gestation.
The Salad Days (1997-2001)
The Promise Ring - "Make Me A Chevy" (1997)
The Get Up Kids - "Don't Hate Me" (1997)
Bright Eyes - "The 'Feel Good' Revolution" (1998)
Saves the Day - "Shoulder to the Wheel" (1998)
Lucero - "Kiss the Bottle" (1999)
American Football - "The Summer Ends" (1999)
At the Drive-In - "Mannequin Republic" (2000)
Drive-By Truckers - "Women Without Whiskey" (2000)
Owls - "Everyone Is My Friend" (2001)
Brand New - "Mixtape" (2001)
Sunny Day Real State's Diary, among a few others, was one of those cult albums listened to by a small yet influential group of followers. Several regional emo scenes (predominantly in the Midwest including in smaller towns like Lawrence, Kansas and Omaha, Nebraska) developed rapidly in the mid-90s that together gave birth to a true golden age of emo. It's not just density that makes this era the Golden Age of the style. Emo began to influence a vast range of adjacent musical genres. Bands rooted in different traditions like pop punk's Blink 182 began to gradually transition toward new emo-inspired identities (much to the chagrin of their earlier fans). It was obvious emo was a prince soon to be a king.
And it wasn't just pop-punk that genuflected at the altar of emo in these years. A new sub genre called alt-country grew out of an infectious combination of Americana and punk. Memphis cowpunk's Lucero covered Jawbreaker's "Kiss the Bottle" in 1999 as a subtle nod to emo as part of an expansive musical kinship system. In ways few people appreciate today, emotional hardcore helped play a role in opening the floodgates to more diverse sounds and styles in the underground scenes of the 80s. On a personal level, the band that finally got me off my Brand New kick when i discovered them in 2003, Drive-By Truckers should really be understand as an Alabaman Emo band. They may sound like Lynyrd Skynyrd but their lyrics speak to what is essentially an emo attitude (see "Women Without Whiskey")
Buddha taught that spiritual nirvana came from leading a life of balance. The greatest emo bands of this era applied this lesson to their music. Artists that got too self-serious, too saccharine, too anything would wear on listeners quickly. I still marvel at the delicate balancing acts that artists perfected during these years. Sarcasm blended seamlessly with sincerity in Brand New's 2001 debut album (see "Mixtape"). Connor Oberst's emo-folk (the 'Feel Good' Revolution) had a knack for levity just when things got a little too heavy. The best of the 2000s-era emo bands remembered this lesson well. Cavernous soundscapes of doom were balanced with infectiously catchy choruses; cries of bloodcurdling anguish had to be delivered between sappier hooks (See Get Up Kid's "Don't Hate Me"). Some bands, like Owls (see "Everyone Is My Friend, even continued to carry on the tradition of crafting beautifully cacophonous math rock of earlier groups like Cap'n Jazz.
And, most importantly, emo showed its emotional maturity, reflecting on lost love in ways that were less malicious than later acts like Taking Back Sunday or Senses Fail. If I had to pick one emo album to take with me to the proverbial desert island it would be American Football's self titled 1999 album. The group crafted what will forever be, in my eyes, the greatest breakup album of all time. The group really uses this personal tragedy as an opportunity for reflection. You leave this album with a real sense the band members grew from this hardship, that they took the good with the bad, that they were learning from their torturous heartbreak. The zen I feel when the last dulcet tones of Wurlitzer organ and trumpet fade away on Football's final track are indescribable. There may be some nostalgic longing for the past on here but mostly its a careful study in jazzy-math rock that provides the soundtrack to a lesson we must all learn, that love is fleeting, that it is mortal, that to quote Rolling Stone's Suzy Exposito "your days are numbered from the start."
My final argument for why this era is Emo's Golden Age is that artists began to develop the radical impulses of emotional hardcore into a coherent critique of American political apathy, capitalism's moral malaise, and the horrors inflicted upon the world by Western imperialism. A true successor to Gang of Four's Entertainment!, At the Drive-In's Relationship of Command (2000) touches on all these themes and more in what can only be described as an aural assault on the status quo. While Thursday is a rare band that continued the tradition of political emo, most 2000s emo bands could not match At the Drive-in's knack for blending emotional anguish with trenchant political analysis of a nation that had degenerated into a zombie democracy ("Mannequin Republic").
Emo Mania and the Curtain Call (2002-2008)
Taking Back Sunday "Bike Scene" (2002)
The Used - "Take It Away" (2004)
Senses Fail - "Can't Be Saved" (2006)
Algernon Cadwallader - "Motivational Song" (2008)
I don't think it is a total coincidence emo skyrocketed to a national phenomenon after September 11th, 2001. The music started to get downright macabre just as the Bush era laid bear the brutality of the American Empire. The death cult of the early 2000s (the 9/11 attacks or the horrors of the Iraq War both apply, pick your poison) found deep resonance in emo. With access to major record label resources, the hooks became even catchier, the band members even cuter, and the references to suicide even more explicit. Hell, the Used's 2004 album begins with the actual sound of a shotgun cocking; the ominous first note serves as a fatal blast into oblivion (see "Take It Away"). Something about this era derailed all our minds, and emo provided an emotionally resonant soundtrack to the collective tragedy.
Even as some emo bands got a little less serious in the mid 2000s like Fallout Boy and Say Anything, troubling trends outside any individual artist's control caused the music to lose much of the previous era's hopefulness, innocence, and integrity. Emo become a media driven cultural phenomenon and, as a result, the authenticity of music would always be called into question. Aesthetics and consumerism began to overshadow the message, a very old refrain in capitalism's long history of commodifying radical music. But perhaps the greatest tragedy was the general disappearance of radical political critiques from emo's biggest acts.
The early 2000s was one of the most reactionary periods in American history, so it made sense emo followed suit. Music need not be utopian to be political in my eyes, but the rise of bitterness and toxic behavior among youth is something to always look out for. And it wasn't just apathy that emo brought out in people. Even as the music became more ubiquitous in movies, in television, and in music videos on MTV, a new era of homophobia grew alongside emo's mass appeal. Bad Religion called this period "the new dark ages" on their appropriately titled 2007 album New Maps of Hell. Maybe they had a point.
And then, the magic of the music finally ended for me in 2008. In what was called the emocalypse by the Guardian, violent mobs descended upon emo fans in Mexico City. We had finally completed the perfect circle; it was punks vs emos again. I resigned myself to the demands for self-reliance and individual responsibility dictated to me by the neoliberal order. Any sort of radical collectivist utopia suggested to me by my favorite bands could not create an alternate world better for me than 4 years at a state university on a full ride "merit-based" scholarship.
Upon further reflection, it should have been obvious that the genre's breakthrough would also beckon its manipulation by the media. The major labels were learning how to craft a band's sound to appeal to the basest of sentiments in the adolescent male population (see Taking Back Sunday's "Bike Scene"). This is the reason why fewer bands reached the maturity of an American Football: Alkaline Trio's vitriol would always be more marketable to the widest of youth audiences. It really did not matter if a band signed to a major, hybrid, or small independent label, the music as a whole drifted further and further away from its radical past. In addition, the market continued to be flooded with a glut of unexceptional bands. The smartest of the aging emo artists planned their exit strategy, venturing into more exploratory sounds as they heard the curtain call.
Some excellent albums still came out in this era though. One of the greatest in fact came out after I had long moved on from emo. Algernon Cadwallader's 2008 debut reached back to the past to reclaim emo's adventurous spirit. The rhythms vary widely within single songs and time signatures shift with razor sharp precision; latticeworks of meticulous guitar-work are layered to create densely lush soundscapes; and, most importantly, a semblance of hope had been restored (see "Motivational Song") to a genre that had devolved into a morbid grotesquerie. All was not lost by the end of emo's big breakthrough, but I like to see Algernon's debut album as a lovely swan song to the genre's storied history. It was time to for me and many others to move forward.
Learning from Emo (2009-?)
Hop Along - "Some Grace" (2012)
Screaming Females - "Hopeless" (2015)
Vagabon - "The Embers" (2017)
From the general public's perspective, emo rose and fell from prominence with extreme rapidity. To those that lived the music, emo had a decade long arc of masterful music, only to be milked dry by a disingenuous music industry and media class. All of us had to transition away from the genre at some point. For those of us fortunate enough to afford it, college brought not just a change of location but more urbane interests. We were told (and told ourselves) that it was time to put those sad, quaint songs away and grow up, whatever that meant. We might dust off those CDs or tapes at times, but a desire for the warm nostalgia of the past was clouded by our realization of the music's obvious toxicity. Regardless of how it had aged, emo left a profound legacy to the world.
If one knows what to look for, it is obvious that the indie music revival of the 2000s (much like alternative rock in the 1990s) borrowed heavily from emo. The mainstreaming of the Riot Grrrl movement with Sleater-Kinney brought with it new analytical tools with which to critique punk/emo and improve upon their legacies. A new vanguard of predominantly female-led groups including Hop Along ("Some Grace"), Screaming Females ("Hopeless"), and Vagabon ("Cleaning House") carried this spirit into a new age, grafting radical feminist theory onto the gut-wrenching pathos of punk music. These bands carried a raw, emotional message to a new era of more diverse fans that beat back against the emotional resignation and disturbing nihilism that has become the hallmark of contemporary popular culture.
That radical message (of beating back against the quiet desperation of living under late stage capitalism) has been carried into the mainstream political world as well. The rise of Bernie's Political Revolution was embedded with an emotional urgency that rejected the cynical and soulless political triangulation of moderates. His message has been passed on to a historically diverse generation of new leaders in the radical wing of the party. The message is one based upon rectifying the very real economic hardships hoisted upon the poor by austerity but it is delivered with a raw emotional timbre that magnetizes Leftist and melomaniac alike. Emo truly is not dead for its emotional poussance is eternal. By demanding to be heard it presents a radically hopeful message for an age in desperate need of something to believe in.
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