Why I love 'Emo'

[from Nothing Nice to Say]


Even I find hating on emo funny. Still, I love emo. Why?
-I am contrary. Emo isn't cool -- being called 'emo' is super-uncool. No band in the history of emo has actually been willinng to identify themselves as emo.
-Emo isn't about being a rockstar -- it's about communicating, and rather than glorifying the performers, it's about breaking down the walls between the audience and the performers. The best bands make you feel like they could be you, and you could be them.
-Sincerity= cool. Irony = lame
-Positivity is also cool
-It's not just about girls. There's plenty of self-criticism and stories about broken friendships.
-Mockers will scoff at the sometimes sirrupy/wimpy 'heaviness' -- products of emo's desire to blend melody and aggression musically --but emo music gives its performers (and by extension its fans) a chance to be powerful and vulnerable at the same time. (Alright, so I have to admit that quite frankly I scoff at the sirruppy 'heaviness' of some of the current screamo bands... this post isn't my attempt to say all emo music is good).
-Misogyny is lame. Emo doesn't depict females as sexual conquests.
-'Macho' is lame. It ruins a lot of the good parts of sports, punk, and metal.
-It's cool to find a genre of music where the fanbase is made up (rougly) equally of girls and guys.
-It's inclusive. Emo is for kids that know they don't want to listen to Top 40 radio (or radio rock) but that aren't cool enough to be punk (or macho enough to be metal).
-Emo is punk.
-Fuck you. Who made you the arbitrator of what punk is? The original generation of punk involved a bunch of bands that shared a (somewhat) common spirit, but no one sounded like anybody else -- just try to find the common sound between Television, the Ramones, and Patti Smith! British punk and then American hardcore narrowed punk to a one-dimensional sonic style. Just because you don't sound like The Sex Pistols or Black Flag doesn't mean you're not punk. (Though those are two awesome bands). The great thing about punk rock when it came out was that it sounded unlike anything anyone else had heard until then. (Unlike most of what masquerades under the name 'punk' today, which either sounds like it came from 1977, 1982 or like those two years filtered though 90's modern rock and pop-metal). The first generation of punk bands were brilliant, inventive, hard-edged, and progressive, (and not 'progressive' in a lame, dinosaur-rock kind of way). Any band with a DIY aesthetic, unprocessed sound, and subversive message and unfiltered expression is punk rock. Son House is punk rock. They Might Be Giants is punk. Good emo is punk.