What exactly is emo rock and alternative?

Question

Just a question.

Panic! At the Disco is NOT EMO.

Answer 1

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 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.

Alternative rock (also called alternative music[1] or simply alternative) is a genre of rock music that emerged in the 1980s and became widely popular in the 1990s. The name "alternative" was coined in the 1980s to describe punk rock-inspired bands on independent record labels that didn't fit into the mainstream genres of the time.[2] As a specific genre of music, alternative rock consists of various subgenres that have emerged from the indie music scene since the 1980s, such as grunge, indie rock, Britpop, gothic rock, and indie pop. These genres are unified by their collective debt to the style and/or ethos of punk, which laid the groundwork for alternative music in the 1970s.[3]

Though the genre is considered to be rock, some of its subgenres are influenced by folk music, reggae, electronic music and jazz among other genres. At times alternative rock has been used as a catch-all phrase for rock music from underground artists in the 1980s, all music descended from punk rock (including punk itself, New Wave, and post-punk), and, ironically, for rock music in general in the 1990s and 2000s.

The term "alternative rock"

The music now known as alternative rock was known by a variety of terms before "alternative" came into common use. "College rock" was used in the United States to describe the music during the 1980s due to its links to the college radio circuit and the tastes of college students. In the United Kingdom the term "indie" was preferred; by 1985 the term "indie" had come to mean a particular genre, or group of subgenres, rather than a simple demarcation of status.[4] "Indie rock"[5] was also largely synonymous with the genre in the United States up until the genre's commercial breakthrough in the early 1990s due to the majority of the bands belonging to independent labels.

By 1990 the music was being termed "alternative rock".[6] The term "alternative" had originated sometime around the mid-1980s;[7] it was an extension of the phrases "new music" and "post modern", both for the freshness of the music and its tendency to recontextualize the sounds of the past, which were commonly used by music industry of the time to denote cutting edge music.[3][8] Thus the original use of the term was often broader than it has come to be understood, encompassing punk rock, New Wave, post-punk, and even pop music, along with the occasional "college"/"indie" rock, all music found on the American "commercial alternative" radio stations of the time such as Los Angeles' KROQ-FM.[3] The use of the term "alternative" gained popular exposure during 1991 with the implementation of alternative music categories in the Grammy Awards and the MTV Video Music Awards, as well as the success of Lollapalooza, where festival founder and Jane's Addiction frontman Perry Farrell coined the term "Alternative Nation"

Answer 2

Ok first things first. Listening to emo music does not mean that you cut yourself. Panic! at the Disco is not emo and should never be considered as such.

Now that that is out of the way.

Emo is short for emotional. I would say that some examples of this could be Something Corporate, Dashboard Confessional, or perhaps Mae. Everyone differs in their opinion of emo music and what should be considered emo and what shouldn't, but it tends to be slower music and has more of an acoustic feel to it.

Alternative rock is a very very wide genre. Anything from Fall Out Boy to the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus to Panic! to Nickelback could be considered alternative.

Answer 3

Emo- Panic! At the Disco
Alternative- Bush

Depends on who you ask.

Answer 4

I Don't Love You - My Chemical Romance I'm Not Okay (I Promise) - My Chemical Romance Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off - Panic! At The Disco Bang the Doldrums - Fall Out Boy ooooh, and look for stuff by The Used. ♥ they're amazing! :D

Answer 5

I think that first guy gave the most thorough answer. I think that different ppl will give you a different answer for this question because emo basically stands for emotional and who's to say this is emo and this isn't. I mean one persons emo is perhaps anothers portrail of 'fake' music. Different ppl aren't moved by the same type of music so...I dunno, but I really don't think that emo means cutting yourself that's called stupidity.

Answer 6

ok.. ok Panic! at the disco is NOT emo! emo stands for emotional! like people who cut them selves.. just saying! ok... they are alt. rock. just wanting to get that staight.

Answer 7

{go listen to some fall out boy} thats where theyre classified at HMV.
but dude why do i bother answeering after the first dudes answer. we all know youre going to pick that one