This music style has people getting EMOtional

By Hannah Lowe
Home-schooled

Chris Carrabba is the singer/songwriter behind Dashborad Coffessional, one of the bands noted for its emo sound.

Undersized sweaters or tees from Goodwill. Plain jeans that are too tight and too short. Black hair, dark-rimmed glasses, the works.

It’s easy to spot an emo kid from a mile away.

Right?

“I don’t understand the whole ‘being emo,’ ” Nitro High sophomore Halley Smith said. “Emo isn’t a sweater and it isn’t Chuck Taylor’s.”

This type of music is not necessarily about whether or not someone can look at you and think “emo.” It’s about passion, raw emotion, pain, deep feelings and generally everything else that punk has long been known for.

Teens who enjoy punk, as well as some who don’t, have found that emo has its own unique element to bring to the punk world. The same deeply felt and passionately sung lyrics are found in music dubbed “emotional punk,” but they are placed against a slightly softer backdrop.

Musical styles within the world of emo vary from stripped-down acoustic melodies to passionate expressions of angst that rival those of original punk, but all share the common bond of introspective lyrics and distinctive vocals.

There are many reasons for the recent rise of emo.

“I really like emo because it’s stuff I can relate to,” Capital High junior Andrew Miskowiec said. “The whole ‘relationships’ thing was never all that great to me anyway, but I also just like the diversity of the music.

“On one side of the spectrum there’s pop stuff like Saves the Day, which is cool, and then at the same time there are ‘screamo’ bands like Thursday. So either way, I’m getting intelligent lyrics with well-orchestrated melodies, and it all fits under that ‘emo’ umbrella.”

As Smith pointed out, today’s pop-heavy music scene doesn’t appeal to some people.

“There isn’t much else to like. The scene is so broken up that there isn’t much else,” she said.

Embrace, Moss Icon and The Rites of Spring are considered to be some of the first bands to feature what is now considered the “emo sound.” They followed closely on the heels of the hardcore punk bands of the early 1980s and soon established their own unique sound.

Emo bands that have appeared on the scene more recently include Dashboard Confessional, Thursday, The Juliana Theory and Further Seems Forever, just to name a few. These bands seem to have taken emo to a whole new level.

It is no longer shocking to hear bands like Dashboard Confessional played occasionally on popular radio stations or MTV. Is this good or bad?

“I’m all for people expanding their horizons musically if they actually like the music, but if they’re just listening to emo to be cool, then I don’t agree with it,”Miskowiec said. “I don’t have a huge problem with seeing The Used or Thursday on MTV, but when they are in Teen Magazine or something like that, then I’m not really too thrilled.”

Smith also did not appreciate it when another teen magazine attempted to turn emo into a fashion statement.

“When Seventeen did its big emo kick, most of my friends and I just laughed. Emo is music, not fashion,” she said.

Quandaries like these come with the mainstream territory. Purists’ questions whether or not bands are being “true” to their roots as outcasts in the music world are bound to come up. But does that really matter?

Emotional punk is not changing to fit into the mainstream music world. Instead, the music scene is broadening to include more styles and sounds.

Emo is being heard by more and more people, and people are finally being offered music that is intelligent and well-written. This isn’t “selling out” on the artists’ behalf. It’s what’s known as progress.