What is emo??

Question

I see it all of the time on the internet...is this new music or something?...I must be getting old!

Answer 1

What is Emo: The only true definition

People are living in things that have happened, the 60s have happened, your parents have taken all the drugs they can take, you've had the 70s, you had heavy metal get with it, its over with, wake up. Kids are living re-runs, the same crap over and over and their minds get closed tighter and tighter. Its such a waste. The same political crap, the radio is dead. I think the whole thing is gonna fall down to this lower level, cause I know kids are getting into it, they dont have anything else. What we have at those shows, and with these records this is our battlefield, this is where we'll be fighting about what we're for. We dont have access to all the things people in the 60's had, we have to do it all ourselves, which means we have to get happening, we have to get with it.

-- Guy Picciotto, Flipside ..47 (1985)


It was a hot summer night in New York City and my friend and I were at the bar sippin Brooklyn Lagers out on the patio. We were joking around when my friend turned to me and made a sarcastic quip to something I said, You are so emo. He laughed, but I only pretended to chuckle. That joke was never really funny to me. For the past few years I have watched as this word has developed a large following of people dressed in black Victory Records band tees. I dont dress like I am emo. I usually get called it because I am an emotional guy. I am an artist. That is what I do. But the word does not stand for emotional. For some reason society thinks it does. I just could not let this misconception of the word take me down with it. Usually I just roll my eyes but this time I replied in defending myself, "If you think that I am emo, then you dont know what emo means." He laughed a little and asked, "okay what is the true meaning of emo then?" I replied, "Well let me tell you."

Emo is a very complex musical genre issue. It has been under debate for years even before it came into the limelight. You have to understand that to find that influential moment where one man said "I have a great idea, I am going to make emo music," can not be found. That is the interesting thing about emo because no one can truly say were it came from. Its life force was the underground. The underground was ruled by the people with the same mind and desire to change what they did not like without being controlled. What you are about to read is years of personal research that I have compiled in my quest to define the roots of this very word. I have been through books, websites, searching for common facts and interviews. Anything that has the least bit of facts about its history. It was quite interesting what I found. I have found that emo music does not really exist in a sense. Emo was just a marketing nickname that got associated with the scene well after its invention. I have discovered where the need and then the invention of indie music developed. I am not using this opportunity to bash corporate music because to be honest not all big labeled bands are bad but there is one core attitude that makes certain bands good that I will share later on. I have understood that emo is not a musical style, its an attitude and that those that say they are emo are not really emo.

The word emo itself has a scattered history with no defined roots. It was never truly publicsized to describe the bands of the time during its first creation. The sound at that time was actually referred to as DC hardcore, then post-harcore and then indie music. The word emo-core was first heard sometime in between the DC hardcore and post-hardcore era but it never stuck becasue it was more of an insult to the bands. No one officially called it emo until years after its creation and somewhere during that time the official definition came to mean emotional.

The first utterance of the word in relation to the genre is so obscure. There are three stories that are scattered all over the internet that state the first use of the word. One story says that the first time the word was heard publicly was from the mouth of Ian MacKaye, one of the innovators of the scene in the mid-80's, during a TV interview. Another story says Ian MacKaye was onstage with Embrace (a short-lived group that fell between his pioneering of Minor Threat and Fugazi) when someone shouted from the audience, "You guys are emo-core!" MacKaye supposedly responded, "You mean Emo Phillips?" Lastly back when Ian MacKaye started his new band Fugazi, hardcore Minor Threat fans used the word as an insult to those that liked Rites of Spring and Fugazi, the supposed first emo bands. This is the only evidence we have and no where has it been said that emo is short for emotional. We do know one thing for sure, any band, including many of the major independent bands of today, hated being labeled emo. Which is obvious if you learn why they made music in the first place. Emo or indie music, as I will point out is about not being classified or making a certain type of music. Its just about making the music and having a love to do it. This is an important thing to remember next time you watch The FUSE or talk to that supposed emo kid with dyed black hair and thick rimmed plastic glasses about music.

Even though the beginnings of the genre is hard to trace, the history at the time leaves a key trail. Reagan was president, spreading his conservative policies to push more capitalistic control over the population, waging secret wars over seas and trying to unite a nation under a banner of conformity. Peter Prescott, former drummer for Mission of Burma, once said, "The eighties were a little like the fifties--it was sort of a conservative era: money conscious, politically nasty, and Republican." The great musical pioneers like the Beatles and The Who were now in the history books and burne a trail to great musical song writing and the music during this time was being controlled by six major behemoths: Capitol, CBS, MCA, PolyGram, RCA, and WEA. Giving bands more exposure through major distribution and commercial airtime. The public listened to their radio stations and bought music from their stores creating the only resources for music at the publics disposal.

Those major music behemoths at this time got their hands on a new sound from the underground called punk and was preparing to make it big. As the punk fan base grew so did the money signs in their eyes. Soon everywhere you looked there was punk merchandise and a stylistic punk style that became more of a uniform than a way of expressing yourself. A true punk was now defined by having liberty spikes, a few chains on your boots or a bullet belt giving you that quick answer to the question "who am I".

During this time in Washington, DC under all the conformity and political struggle of the time, Ian MacKaye was a young high schooler establishing his identity. MacKaye's name has always been present in the DC harcore, post-hardcore, and indie scenes. As MacKaye grew up he was influenced by the great political backdrop of the DC scenery. The atmosphere was stifling and bland, exacerbated by the conservative inhabitants of the white house, giving him a feeling for rebellion. He learned that commercial mainstream music was too artificial. This gave cause to his discovery of punk. He fell in love with its sound and its philosophy of non-conformity and its DIY (do-it-yourself) attitude. While the kids in high school were trying to pay attention in class, MacKaye and his friend Henry Garfield, who will later change his name to Henry Rollins, were paying attention during punk concerts. MacKaye never felt he was musically talented but experimented here and there with the guitar and later as vocals in startup punk bands. But it wasn't until he noticed that punk had become of a more mainstream everyday scene and that these newly enlightened mainstream punks started telling him how to be punk that he decided he wanted to step it up. "I think what we took away from first hearing about the punk stuff in England and then the early American punk stuff was a sense of self-definition and also sort of playing music for music's sake and being part of a family for family's sake," says MacKaye. That was the beginning of Minor Threat.

Minor Threat started to change the punk sound by stripping punk even more to its bare basics allowing them to use their instruments to vent their rage faster and harder than the current punk sound. Their songs were fast and sharp, fitting in all their rage and anger into a catchy melody that would only last a minute on average. Their shows always ended in heated emotional riots in front of the stage that was fueled by MacKayes lyrics about anti-drugs, anti-drinking, rejecting anit-establishment politics and a need for self-awareness in punk stylized poetry. When it came time to record MacKaye and the band had no money and no recording contract (which they did not want anyways.). MacKaye took that DIY attitude and started Dischord Records to record their own records and found a way to do it by their own standards. "Basically we just created our own label, but again we just did it to document our own music and create our own thing, so the major labels were just always out of our picture, we're not interested," says MacKaye.

Then one day it stopped. Minor Threat broke up after the release of their first full length album in 1983. Minor Threats success skyrocketed, giving them the opportunity for major record deals and cross-country tours. Everybody but MacKaye wanted it. By that time the energy in the hardcore seen was starting to get stale. New bands would join the scene but would not last. Not only was the desire to rage becoming tiresome, the true local DC fans were being replaced by outsiders. The skinheads and other machoists were starting to run rampant. The hardcore scene was starting to be dominated by fighting and mindless macho behavior. MacKaye watched all his hard work slowly being disintegrated by an outside force. Seeing that he was losing the scene to outsiders he decided he needed to win it back. This time though, seeing that trying to reinvent hardcore could be a losing battle he decided to take it back by doing something completely new, by doing the complete opposite. At the time a band called Rites of Spring was already in DC one step ahead of him.

Guy Picciotto was already playing a new sound for his audience with the band Rites of Spring and they had an unprecedented commitment to their music. The band broke out of the simple constraints of the hardcore melody and into a wider, more epic sound. Picotto would sing every word of his song by putting his heart on the stage and singing with such passion and melodramatic sadness that often the audience was seen crying. Rites of spring style was all about emotion and this attitude was what possibly brought about the nickname emo-core. But the Rites of Spring only played a total of fourteen shows and eventually broke up because simply, they could not afford to keep playing. The band had a habit of smashing its sound equipment during its purely intense concerts. So Picciotto was without a band to play for and MacKayes latest experiment Embrace just broke up leaving the two without a band to play for.

After some time the two eventually got together with two other members to create Fugazi. Michael Azerrad wrote in his book titled Our Band Could Be Your Life, No other band was more engaged with its own business, its own audience, and the outside world than Fugazi. In response not only to a corrupt music industry but to an entire economic and political system they felt was fraught with greed for money and power, the band developed a well-reasoned ethical code. In the process, Fugazi staked out the indie scene as the moral high ground of the music industry; from then on, indie music wasnt just do-it-yourself, it was Do the Right Thing. By this time hardcore had entered the post-hardcore seen and was starting to create that indie world. Indie bands where constantly abondoning the life of the underground for a life set for rockstars under major labels but Fugazi was proving that without compromise, one could still succeed. Under their requirements of community activism, five-dollar shows, ten-dollar CDs and resistance to mainstream outlets Fugazi set the high bar for artistic excellence.

Minor Threat and Fugazi created an attitude that could only thrive underground, completely far away from the major recording companies. The bands success depended on the community and their own hardwork making them anti-commercial. The years passed and through bands like Sunny Day Realestate and Cap'n Jazz the sound was reinvented. More independant labels were formed including Deep Elm, Jade Tree, and many more. Most have fallen to the stiff competition of today. The sound evolved and became more progressive, full of complex guitar work, unique song structures with extreme dynamic shifts. The lyrics were always deeply personal. Albums were only released in small quantities. Most of the sales for these records were through mail orders only. Indie music had a need for freedom. Major records lablels did not give you that freedom. This freedom was neccesary becasue the bands where the launching grounds for new and experimental sounds that no major record labels wanted to touch until years later when the new sound had accumulated a large profitable fan base. The indie world would become the experiment labs that created a lot of the musical styles that are popular today. The best known example of this is Curt Kobain and his band Nirvana.

As we have seen with punk, when an underground movement gets so big the major record companies take notice. And just like the punk scene, they saw the emo scene. Now we are starting to see a cycle. With indie labels pumping out albums from hundreds of indie bands the sound starts to generate a bigger fan base. Spreading from coast to coast and everything in the middle and major corporations see the opportunity to make money. Buying off indie bands and then producing hundreds of albums, sponsoring expensive concerts, buying air time on the FUSE and MTV, and selling 'emo styled' fashion and clothes in major stores. Its now become if you wear little kids t-shirt with a band featured from TV, tight pants, sporting a pink tie, black hair grown over your eyes, lots of wrist jewlery and chucks automatically tell you how well you can make music. How does fashion/materials make music?

"Im watching MTV right now, and it seems to me that the bands nowadays that are getting successful arent getting successful because theyre good but because theyre clever," says guitarist-vocalist Jim Adkins. "Im sure Capitol would love it if we came out and called ourselves an emo band and then they could totally trumpet that. But Id like to be a career musician, so I dont want to do that."

Adkins pauses for a moment to reconsider the word "career."

"Maybe I shouldnt say that," he says. "What I mean is that I have no doubt that Ill always be making music or be involved in music in some capacity. But being on a major label and all the crap that comes with it, its like not the most important thing in the world to me. I really dont care. I like it in the sense that we get to record the way we want to and we dont have to worry about time restraints. We took ten days to mix this album, and a lot of our peers will say: We did our whole record in that time! I really wish that more bands would get the opportunity to record for as a long as they want. For most of them its pay the rent or record, unfortunately, and were lucky not to have that."

These MTV bands like Fallout Boy, My Chemical Romance, every band on Victory and Drive Thru record labels produce a sound that comprises of weak lyrical sound that are drowned out by their simple melodies and riffs that just loop until they end. These bands openly market themselves as emo and are backed by their labels to get the records out fast and easy to as many people and as fast as they can using every means of media they can destroying the quality. Are you starting to see a contradiction? How can a band that sells out $30 concerts to fourteen year old girls be making music because they love it. "Corporate rock was about living large; indie was about living realistically and being proud of it." Michael Azerrad says. "Indie bands didn't need million-dollar promotional budgets and multiple costume changes. All they needed was to believe in themselves and for a few other people to belive in them, too. You did not need some big corporation to fund you, or even verify that you were any good. It was about viewing as a virtue what most saw as a limitation."

John Szuch, owner of New York Citys Deep Elm, is one of the biggest purveyors of emo today, and the home of three well-respected emo compilations. "When we sell records we have to deal with people who are older sales reps, so well use the word emo because its become a term they know," says label owner John Szuch. "All music is emotional, but when I listen to a band like Planes Mistaken for Stars or some early Sunny Day Real Estate material, this well of emotion starts building inside me, and its like I wanna totally rage. When youre singing a fun pop song about lost love or what you did last summer, its a lot different then when someone from Rites of Spring or Planes Mistaken for Stars is up there exposing his entire soul and offering up everything hes got and everything about him and his experience and hes pretty much naked in front of all those kids. You see these kids in the back with their mouths open, crying, because theyre so moved by the music that it takes them somewhere. That is a kind of power that I think is really amazing."

Are these new emo bands anti-commercial? No. Do these bands have very complex melodies that continue to become more and more unique as they progress as musicians? No. Are their lyrics moving? Not really, they make me want to dance more than feel. So how can these bands be emo? The answer is they are not, its actually pop music. Pop music very simply means popular music and that is what these bands that run around on stage in tight jeans, marketing themselves as an emo band are looking for. Current fans have been tricked into developing a false belief system of both punk and emo genres. They are forgetting that there was an attitude 25 years ago that came with that genre. It was just about the music, not about marketing. That is what separates the bands of today from the emo bands of old. They are not making music, just upholding an image. We are starting to see a cycle of history repeating itself. A great underground movement gets the attention of a few big companies that entice them to capitalize off of it. But in the end they can mimic the style but cannot mimic the attitude. That is how it will be until the current market gets bored and moves on to a new underground music scene and the cycle repeats itself.

Answer 2

Emo is a subgenre of hardcore punk music. Since its inception, emo has come to describe several independent variations, linked loosely but with common ancestry. As such, use of the term (and which musicians should be so classified) has been the subject of much debate.

In its original incarnation, the term emo was used to describe the music of the mid-1980s Washington, DC scene and its associated bands. In later years, the term emocore, short for "emotional hardcore", was also used to describe the DC scene and some of the regional scenes that spawned from it. The term emo was derived from the fact that, on occasion, members of a band would become spontaneously and strongly emotional during performances. The most recognizable names of the period included Rites of Spring, Embrace, One Last Wish, Beefeater, Gray Matter, Fire Party, and, slightly later, Moss Icon. The first wave of emo began to fade after the breakups of most of the involved bands in the early 1990s.

Starting in the mid-1990s, the term emo began to reflect the indie scene that followed the influences of Fugazi, which itself was an offshoot of the first wave of emo. Bands including Sunny Day Real Estate and Texas Is the Reason put forth a more indie rock style of emo, more melodic and less chaotic in nature than its predecessor. The so-called "indie emo" scene survived until the late 1990s, as many of the bands either disbanded or shifted to mainstream styles.

As the remaining indie emo bands entered the mainstream, newer bands began to emulate the more mainstream style, creating a style of music that has now earned the moniker emo within popular culture. Whereas, even in the past, the term emo was used to identify a wide variety of bands, the breadth of bands listed under today's emo is even more vast, leaving the term "emo" as more of a loose identifier than as a specific genre of music.

Answer 3

Emo=Emotionally Depressed

Answer 4

It is a type of music that branched out from hardcore and punk music. It has been around for a while but became popular in the late 90s. Emo is short for emotional i think.

Answer 5

Emo music stands for emotional music. Songs about love and are sad.

It turned into a sterotype. Like black rimmed glasses and cutting their wrists.

And everyone has their own verison of "emo." Just like punk music.


--Brittany

Answer 6

Emo is a genre of music.

Also, people have made it a steriotype and a style.

Answer 7

emo is like sad.. say like you lost a close grandparent or something and your sad about it then your emo... emo is also a sad genre of music.

Answer 8

emo means "emotional" mostly talking about people who slit there wrists.....bands that r emo are like fall out boy, and hawthorn heights

Answer 9

funny