Then What Is "Emo"?
Could be that Brendan Urie is sensing the inherent faddishness of the scene surrounding his brand of mall-punk, 'cause the Panic! singer is taking the presses to distance himself from his "genre." He told NME:
Emo is bullshit! If people want to take it for the literal sense of the word, yes we're an emotional band, we put a lot of thought into what we do. People always try to stereotype us, but we don't fit the emo stereotype.So fear not, Sunny Day and Ian MacKaye fans! There's hope yet to reclaim the lost label of your youth. But is he wrong? Has Panic! and their cadre of eyeliner-loving cheese-punk disciples in fact redefined "the emo stereotype"? If so, what do we call Embrace and Fugazi? "Emo*"?
Maybe the competing camps should adopt mascots for pictoral differentiation. Candidate #1: Tickle Me Emo! Now that's good stereotype.
Posted at 9:01 AM
Tags: Panic! At The Disco
A much more interesting question is, can something be "inherantly faddish" as stereogum implies. Isn't that what the out-of-touch ones have said about every scene ever?
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oops, "inherently"
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On 9/11 everything changed. Now emo sucks. Texas is the reason is still cool.
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Did you make "Tickle Me Emo?" That's truly inspired, Four Four style.
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>>Did you make "Tickle Me Emo?"
We found it before we even had a chance! ;)
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on a side note, that embrace record was amazing. it's a shame they only did one but i think it was between minor threat and fugazi. ian also did a 7 inch called....Egg Hunt? Or something like that. Man, I was such an Ian head in high school.
Anyway, no one ever talks about that Embrace record but I rediscovered it recently and threw it on my ipod - it's production is pretty bad, all drums and no guitar, but the songs are fantastic. "dance of days", etc...
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what kids call emo these days is like emo drag. everything is so exaggerated and obnoixious. to me, it is like all the kids I grew up with, who didn't know that morrisey wasn't all sad. he was actually mostly sardonic and witty. but then, that sort of thing is perhaps more nuance than most people pick up. it becomes fashion so quickly, and then you are identifying more with your tight ironic faux-vintage tshirt and not with your self.
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just agreeing with the comments about Embrace album. Love that record.
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Anything that resembles a revelation coming from a member of P!ATD is immediately dismissed. If you exhibit all the tendencies yet reject the conclusion, you're just covering up that you know you're exactly the thing you swear you're not... Like a crack-head that swears he never touches the stuff.
As for 'emo' in general, the music itself doesn't bother me, the lyrics slightly irk me because they are two steps away from "Dan Fogelberg's Kick-Ass Punk Band!", but the real irritation is how every singer sounds like a pre-pube Billy Joe Armstrong wannabe. That nasally, twee-sounding squeak they all have is the real problem. These bands would not need to wrestle with the 'emo' take if all the kid-brother singers weren't thoroughly interchangeable and finally turned 21.
DwD
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"Honest we're not emo!!" says the band with the red, yellow and blue eyeshadow and dyed/emo style haircut.
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This whole "new" emo is so weird to me. How did it get called that? I blame Jimmy Eats World!!
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Anything that resembles a revelation coming from a member of P!ATD is immediately dismissed. If you exhibit all the tendencies yet reject the conclusion, you're just covering up that you know you're exactly the thing you swear you're not... Like a crack-head that swears he never touches the stuff.
As for 'emo' in general, the music itself doesn't bother me, the lyrics slightly irk me because they are two steps away from "Dan Fogelberg's Kick-Ass Punk Band!", but the real irritation is how every singer sounds like a pre-pube Billy Joe Armstrong wannabe. That nasally, twee-sounding squeak they all have is the real problem. These bands would not need to wrestle with the 'emo' take if all the kid-brother singers weren't thoroughly interchangeable and finally turned 21.
DwD
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one time i went to a smoking popes show, they played with bayside...everyone left after bayside..it made me sad, kids are so unapriciative of the stuff that influences their favorite bands...same thing happend with braid when they did their reunion tour...i just don't get it...kids these days.
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"Honest we're not emo!!" says the band with the red, yellow and blue eyeshadow and dyed/emo style haircut.
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one time i went to a smoking popes show, they played with bayside...everyone left after bayside..it made me sad, kids are so unapriciative of the stuff that influences their favorite bands...same thing happend with braid when they did their reunion tour...i just don't get it...kids these days.
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I never, ever, EVER understood how Fugazi (and, by extension, Rites of Spring) could be considered emo. I don't think that a single emo band has ever even sounded like Fugazi! For me, it began with SDRE and Cap'n Jazz, continued on through the Crank! stuff like Mineral, Braid et al., and the early Vagrant records.
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Rites Of Spring is considered the first "emo" band. Back when it only referred to emotion, and had nothing to do with the "sound." So, when Guy and Ian started Fugazi, some of those Rites tendencies remained.
Then, Sunny Day really popularized emo in a very nicely done power-pop, indie rock way which then became the blue print for braid, promise ring, countless other bands who came from milwaukee, etc. Somewhere in the mid-90s, you had all those soundalikes and Jimmy Eat World, etc.
To me, it just sounds like old, late 80's pop punk like Dag Nasty/Down By Law, Big Drill Car, ALL/Descendents, etc.
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Tickle Me Emo was actually a little-purchased compilation that came out right after Clarity, the emo death-knell.
Am I the only one who has made a choice to enjoy Jimmy Eat World for just a good pop band?
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I still think of Rites of Spring as the only real emo band.
Christ, I'm old.
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somebody should bring emo back JT style.
JMAC, I enjoy Jimmy Eat World as a band that made one amazing album and has a few other good songs.
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somebody should bring emo back JT style.
JMAC, I enjoy Jimmy Eat World as a band that made one amazing album and has a few other good songs.
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"Emo" now is completely different from "emo" in the 90s, much like how "alternative" now is completely different from "alternative" in the 90s.
I really don't have a problem with emo now; I really don't have much of a beef with Panic!; the guy's 21, and you gotta start somewhere with your music. I just have a huge problem with the fact that most of the dudes in these bands are, like, pushing 30 and are still weeping about prepubescent problems.
Bands like Taking Back Sunday, where they've actually settled themselves into a nice comfortable shitpile of complacency, are truly what's wrong with the "emo" fad today. Would it hurt to actually, y'know, grow and mature musically?
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Saying you're not emo is the new being called emo.
I think we all agree that emo isn't what it was when we were into emo (be it Rites of Spring or Promise Ring or etc.)
We can only blame this Hot Topic crowd for aping emo and making it the shitstorm it is now. That's culture-killers for you - they'll glom on, NOT pay homage to those that created the trend/culture, and pretending that all of the emotions and feelings that came from whichever emo generation that you and/or I belonged to were theirs all along. It's caled being indignant.
I wonder if Urie heard Pete Wentz talk in the big kids room about how they're SOOOO not emo and is repeating what he heard. If emo's a four-letter word nowadays, than P!ATD are quite definitely emo.
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First off, no one EVER who knew who the hell Rites of Spring was when they were around. Ask Guy himself. The whole ROS fetishism is rather comical. Secondly, Sunny Day Real Estate sounds nothing like them and neither do any of the early emo bans, so can we please stop sullying the good name of ROS and Fugazi? Braid, Garden Variety, early Jimmy Eat World...none of this is close to Rites of Spring or Embrace or Fugazi or whatever. I have no idea how they get lumped into this crap.
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"Emo" is/was a genre that inspired people to look at themselves differently
i call PATD and their ilk "white belt" - it inspires people to look at themselves differently, but only in the mirror.
Let's all read Andy Greenwald's "Nothing Feels Good" and reconvene, shall we?
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>>This whole "new" emo is so weird to me. How did it get called that? I blame Jimmy Eats World!!
Jimmy Eat World is one of the bands from the early 90s that made emo great. Afterall, they did tour with Christie Front Drive.
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>what kids call emo these days is like emo >drag. everything is so exaggerated and >obnoixious. to me, it is like all the kids I >grew up with, who didn't know that morrisey >wasn't all sad. he was actually mostly >sardonic and witty.
oh so true!
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David, you feel old? I'm going to go cry to my Indian Summer records now.
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I always thought "crap" was a perfectly viable tag.
Or crap 2.0 if he wants to distinguish himself from his blink and sum brethern.
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emo's round where i live r fags even though there not n if we see them we will break there legs. lil faggots. I hate emo's wit a passion, the last emo that said sumptin to me ended up in the hospital for 3 months. cuz i put him in a coma.
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