Lentil 1. a high-protein pulse
which is dried and then soaked and cooked prior to eating.
2. someone trying way too hard to fit into the emo crowd
1980s: The first wave Born out of Washington D.C.’s 1980s hardcorepunk scene, emo’s roots are often traced back to Rites Of Spring. Musically similar to the scuzzedup riffing of post-hardcore, it was Rites Of Spring’s personal lyricism that saw them picked out as the fathers of emo. “I woke up this morning with a piece of past caught in my throat / And then I choked,” howls Guy Picciotto on the stunning ‘For Want Of’ – one of the first examples of the intensely “fucked up” (his words, not ours) mindset that would come to define emo’s lyricism and vocal delivery. Be careful with that tidbit of knowledge though – the band themselves fucking hate the tag. “I’ve never recognized ’emo’ as a genre of music,” said a clearly irate Picciotto in a 2003 interview. “I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk-rock bands. The reason I think it’s so stupid is that – what, like the Bad Brains weren’t emotional? What – they were robots or something? It just doesn’t make any sense to me.”
THE OFFSPRING YOU GOTTA KEEP ‘EM SEPARATED
FALL OUT BOY
thanks
for the
memories
NEW FOUND GLORY
though you swear that you are true, I’d still pick my friends over you
BLINK-182 My friends say I should act my age What’s my age again?
1990s: The second wave Throughout the ’90s, emo spread out from that West Coast birthplace, most notably taking hold of the Midwest region of America. Bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Piebald, Cap’n Jazz and The Promise Ring tidied up the gnarlier edges of that early emo sound, and amped up the emotion in the process. It’s an era that captured the hearts and minds of a global youth, with a generation of teenagers quickly becoming enamoured with emo’s woeful sound. Defined by an emotional intimacy between bands and their fans, emo became a fully-fledged underground movement, with labels like Deep Elm and Jade Tree becoming go-to destinations for those on the cutting edge, signing bands such as Joan Of Arc and Nada Surf.
Sum 41 Cause I’m in too deep and I’m trying to keep up above in my head instead of going under
GREEN DAY Welcome to a new kind of tension All across the alien nation
Mayday
parade
without you, I’ll be miserable at best
2000s: The third wave and late’00s explosion By the time the millennium came around, the boundaries of emo had blurred even further. The ’00s saw pop-punk and emo become inexorably intertwined, with the likes of Jimmy Eat World, Saves The Day and Brand New fusing their scrappy punk chops and withering lyricism with a sense of melody and pop structure. Elsewhere, more posthardcore and screamo-leaning acts like Thursday were proving that there was still life in the heavier underground. And then everything went wild. In the mid-’00s, the emergence of MySpace took emo from a music genre to a fully-fledged counter-culture. The likes of Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, Paramore and Panic! At The Disco became the figureheads of this ‘mall emo’ offshoot, which was dominated by skin-tight jeans, ‘guyliner’ and black hair dye, while pant-shitting ‘newspapers’ like The Daily Mail quickly scrambled to declare it some kind of cultural crisis point.
WSTR
You’d rather talk it out i’d rather disconnect my jaw
Neck deep Life’s not out to get you
2010 and beyond… In the last decade, the term ‘emo’ has become taken two quite clear paths. The ‘emo revival’ saw many bands look back to the genre’s second wave for inspiration, and launched careers for the likes of The Hotelier, La Dispute, Foxing, Modern Baseball and more, each of whom brought their own slant to the emotional indie-rock of their 1990s record collections. Elsewhere, the likes of Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco and Paramore have transcended the emo tag, becoming fully-fledged, festival-headlining pop acts in the process. Looking to the future, a new generation is also blending emo sensibility with hiphop. Artists like Lil Peep, Princess Nokia (and her ‘A Girl Cried Red’ mixtape), nothing, nowhere and Ghostemane are tackling the genre with a futurefacing approach that’s both irritating old-school emo nerds and exciting young, fresh-faced kids. Where emo goes next? It’s anyone’s guess.
This wild life I treated you with honesty, honestly you promised me promised me
four year strong Let me see you put your hands up on the stereo It’s spitting out a ridiculous frequency