miseryXchord ♫

Recently, broadcast news stations have been running "informative" segments alerting parents and others to the dangers of Emo-ism.

Fox 11 Undercover



The Dangers of Emo (Emo concern in Utah)


In response to a discussion about "What is Emo?" prompted by the video clips above, I wrote

miseryxchord: 05/28/2007 12:49 AM
Okay, I feel old when I do this, but... "Emo" did really come about in the 80's in the Washington D.C. Hardcore Punk scene to describe songs that dealt more with personal experiences and feelings than politics and dissent. "Emotive Hardcore". It did really refer to a type of music, and that's why you'll hear people complaining from a musical viewpoint that bands like MCR, Fallout Boy etc aren't REAL Emo.

It's evolved, or devolved, depending on your point of view, to eventually be applied to music significantly different from the hardcore roots, as the original bands gained popularity and got mainstream listeners, and new bands started emulating the mainstream sound that got airplay without having or knowing the background or basis of that sound. The progression can be traced from the original bands in several waves eventually going from a local hardcore phenomena all the way to being applied to mainly Indie rock bands (I just wrote something about this in response to one of panasonicyouth's posts a week or two ago and am trying to find it, but Wikipedia and (crud I forgot the url) are actually pretty good sources that the news media constantly misquote) At this point, "Emo" has become so nebulous and been so misused by every idiot who wants to trash a band, sensationalize some lame article they wrote, or is just too ignorant to write a real review that it means pretty much nothing...hence you'll hear comments that "Emo is dead"...because it's applied to everything and everyone except what it really was.

At some point it went from describing the music played by the band, to the bands playing the music, to classifying the people who listened to them (because human nature seems to like labeling things to either drag them down ("them") or glorify them ("us")), and a whole subculture of fashion and lifestyle started growing in it's own direction from there, influenced by the music but eventually influencing new music. 10 years ago, people who would derisively refer to "Emo's" and "Emo Scene Kids" were making fun of EXACTLY the same things and people by calling them "Goths" and later "Mall Goths" (depending on if you were an elitist Goth or not ;). When I was in high School (before the 2nd great Goth age ;) they called us "punks"..and if you want to go all the way back another decade or so "beatniks" wore all black, ironed their hair straight, and focused on dark moody music and emotion. 10 years from now, the media will have bogarted yet another label to apply to young people stepping outside the average trying to find their way in the world and the next great punk-goth-emo-slacker-whatever rage will get all sorts of sensationalist press.