Totally Tunes: Emo Was Its Name-o

 Remember emo? Not that it's dead, even when most emo bands have split or migrated towards alt-rock. Truth is, I'm not sure emo even existed. I mean, it was this sort of collective stupid name media gave to the rising amount of alt-rock bands whose lyrics dealt with emotional, even death-y stuff, but it wasn't a genre per se, and definitions of emo varied according to whoever thought of it at the moment. Like, 2005-2010 Green Day was emo just as Metro-fucking-Station was emo to some. And in most cases, it brutally overlapped with goths, to add to the clusterfuck. I was caught in the emo wave as a teenager, hence the long intro, I'm very, say, passionate about the subject.

21 Jump Street via Giphy

Honestly, the reason most people thought of teenage me as emo was not because of the excessive eyeliner and shitty fashion taste (the latter still remains), but because of my undying love for My Chemical Romance. They were considered the epitome of emo, so if you liked them, you were emo! Well, suck it, media, I still like their music, and you can't tell me this wasn't a fantastic performance:

Won't deny you that some bands did cash in on the emo trend, taking advantage of their gloomy lyrics and ramping that shit up to eleven for maximum emo-ness. And it worked for them! Eventually, most went back to their roots, to a smaller audience. But it's not like we'll forget you were there, yo.

Some bands were lumped in with the wave only because they became big around that time, which made no sense whenever you saw their general aesthetic, but there was always some channel or photographer who tried REAL hard to make them fit in emo. I still have a Panic at the Disco shirt with a picture of them looking emo as fuck, which may or may not have been what triggered their folk/Beatle/bland pop phase and subsequent break-up, so thank you, assholes.

What was more baffling was seeing half-assed pop-punk bands being lumped with the whole vibe because they were whiny twits with whiny lyrics, so that has to mean emo, right? No, fuck you, that was just a bunch of grating, oh so grating people. Not that I'm talking about any band in particular or anything.

The emo trend already began getting stale when established but flailing artists decided to hop in, in an attempt to somehow cash in on relevance? Who the shit knows, but they were there and they were sooo emo, you guys, totally not pop punk but with a PR spin for catching youths! Once again, not talking about anyone in particular.

Fuuuuuuck this.

Where were you when the emo trend came up? Do you like bands/songs that were part or lumped into emo?