A Retrospective and Modern Look at Emotive Hardcore

by Johanna Armstrong

Trends are fickle, temporary, and change like the leaves in autumn. If you were to evaluate the differences between the 60’s and the 90’s, you would have quite a long list. This is because trends define generations, and they mutate over time. A modern example of this virus-like characteristic is ‘Emo’. What started as a genre of music and a way to cope, has evolved into a curious trend that only the people who are a part of it appreciate.

Hardcore is, unarguably, the father and mother of Emo. Born in the 70’s, bands like Jawbreaker, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Rites of Spring were the first baby steps of ‘the Emo Movement’. However, it was a punk band named Minor Threat that first inspired the beginnings of this new genre. Led by vocalist Ian MacKaye, the band was taking a stand and saying things that meant something to people. They were loud, fast, and shot their energy and emotion into minute-long songs, venting anger and frustration, which in turn allowed others to vent theirs. They were also the first to introduce a characteristic of the Emo-lifestyle: straight-edge. Straight-edge, or sxe, is the choice to remain abstinent until marriage, as well as drug and alcohol free-- a stark contrast to the other punk bands of the time. However, in 1984, it was ‘Zen Arcade’, an album released by Hüsker Dü, which drew the blueprint for future emo bands to follow in terms of sound.

Guy Picciotto, a superfan of Minor Threat, was inspired and influenced by the band, and formed his own band, Rites of Spring, which is credited with the creation of the now in-vogue term ‘emo’. Similar to Minor Threat, Rites of Spring emptied all they had into their songs: anger, frustration, betrayal, sadness, angst. They were shameless, their live shows going beyond just playing the music, with Guy screaming into the microphone, unafraid to expose his emotions to the people who felt the same way. Broken guitars, toppled drum sets, and strewn flowers became a staple of their shows. They differed with other bands of the time, including Minor Threat, in that their lyrics were personal and introspective, which became a mark of the genre of music which, since then, is referred to as Emotive Hardcore. However, ironically, Rites of Spring, which are credited with birthing the genre, hated the label, and after only 14 shows (only two of which were outside of their home town), the band burned out, and the term ‘emo’ fell into a figurative black hole of despair. Regardless, the kids who were present during the time of their existence, and who stood by the band, were affected and inspired, because, as Jenney Tooney (who runs the Future of Music Coalition), said, “When confronted with people performing that nakedly, you’d cry. That’s the definition of great art.”

Bands that grew from the seeds Rites of Spring planted included Indian Summer, Mohinder, Fire Party, and Angel Hair. However, none of them lasted very long, and their breaking apart, disbandage, or entrance into the main stream gave way to a new branch of emotional hardcore, a more melodic, but nonetheless painfully honest and fractured branch termed “indie emo”[1]. This new branch introduced another bunch of critical bands, including the slightly more successful Sunny Day Real Estate, and, from the opposite side of America, The Promise Ring.

Indie emo surpassed the success of the original emotive hardcore scene, and as it became more widespread, bands that would not have been originally under the label “emo” were now beginning to be classified as such. An example of this would be Weezer’s “Pinkerton,” which would later be considered the defining emo record of the 90s. Major record labels of the late 90s began looking for bands that were a part of a new branch of emo (albeit a hated and frowned upon branch, at least from those who were a part of the original scene), now termed neo-emo, with the hopes of capitalizing on this “new” genre. By the end of the 90s, Teen People had named emo the new “hip” style of music. This was the beginning of the end for the original vision of the emotional hardcore genre and, most importantly, scene.

Before, emo was about the kids. You couldn’t tell the difference between the people on stage and the people in the crowd. The kid playing the guitar could well be the kid you were sharing a squat with. There was a connection between the entertainers and the entertained. It was a local, regional way of bringing people together and letting them know they weren’t alone. But the mainstream had and has blown it out of proportion and what was once a personal thing is now a national capitalistic trend, a joke. Even bands who were truly emo, like Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate, began to turn away from their original sound in order to isolate themselves from this new monster of a genre.

“Emo” is now used to describe bands such as AFI, My Chemical Romance, Hawthorne Heights, and Taking Back Sunday, bands that have little common ground in sound, appearance, and morality, thus making it difficult to determine what bands are actually emo nowadays. Few bands embrace the label, understanding that media has perverted what it once meant. However, Victory Records is notorious for advertising their bands as “Emo”. For example, the sticker on a Hurt Process CD reads: “[The Hurt Process] has made the album that brings together Metal, Emo, and Hardcore, for fans of Hawthorne Heights, My Chemical Romance, Silverstein, and Fall Out Boy.” It is important, then, to note the vast sonic differences between Silverstein and Fall Out Boy, Hawthorne Heights and the Hurt Process.

It is also important to note the original definition of “emo”. That is, “emotive hardcore,” not just “emotional,” a mistake that people often make, and ignorantly keep making. The genre has evolved greatly over the years, and its original reason and purpose has been forgotten and replaced with trendy clothes and the want for money. What used to be all that some kids had has turned into something that the Internet and large record companies present to everyone in every corner of the world. What was once personal and kept close is now a way to rake in the big bucks. However, those kids who are associated with neo-emo have found their own niche in the genre, have found solace in the acoustic songs of Dashboard Confessional and Death Cab for Cutie. The percentage of people, then, who have been comforted by the clean-cut pop-punk emotional whiny rantings of Fall Out Boy have at least found the heart of what emo was created for: to be a crutch for the kids who have been crippled by the deadly blows of adolescence, the loss of innocence, and the dark gates of adulthood.
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[1] Indie: independent, usually of the mainstream, but when referring to an ‘indie’ band, it would mean independent of major record labels such as Virgin, Warner Bros., and EMI.