Origins of Emo
Looking at the History and Structure of 'Emotional Hardcore'
Looking at the forms that the sound of emo can take in the contemporary music climate and how these came about as well as why this has caused so much controversy.
Bothersome to some and life-affirming to others; the broad catch net that is this colloquial term “emo” has a complex and a history and development that is difficult to trace. This is simply because the equifinality that exists here is phenomenal. Each and every individual influence that goes towards making some part of modern emo can inspire many different outcomes of modern emo.
The article by Jim Martin in issue #167 of Terrorizer magazine taking a retrospective look at the history of nu-metal and emo focused mainly on the attitude and lyrical content of emo bands, but failed to cover much of the musical evolution and structure of development that has ensued.
The wide range of bands that are branded emo by critics and consumers alike have all taken something from a collective pool of hypothetical emo DNA and developed from said blueprints, but these bands all had to apply the emo façade to an already existing form of music and the victims of this hijacking were mainly punk, metal and rock.
The wailing, high-rise choruses and ‘woahs’ that arose from pop/skate punk fused and told through a gothic filter a la AFI, proved a massive influence to many modern emo bands throughout the world. The quirky camp and kitsch sensibility of Glassjaw and At the Drive in during the nineties both provided a stepping stone to the world of emo that we see around us now in 2008.
Alongside these contributors countless pop influences have weaned their way into several genres of music to produce the sound dubbed emo. A boy band sheen has evolved in certain niches of the genre and a commercial viability only associated with overproduced chart music raises its head in most cases.
This has (rightly so) angered the fans of the musical genres being defiled because although these emo bands may be rooted in the music these fans love, it just comes across as bastardisation and so far from the attitude of the original that it is almost a mockery of the pure and good energy sources and mantras that the originals emitted, just because there is a market to be closed in on and a quick buck to be made.
Hopefully this sound, attitude and pretension will go the way nu-metal went and be diluted, dispersed and marginalised to the realms of embarrassing nostalgia. Look at metal - heavy metal, punk, rock and extreme metal; the youngest of these genres is over twenty years old and shows that integrity and honesty wins the day, not a quick cash in on teenage angst with zero longevity.
On the flip side, genuine talent and ingenuity is abundant across all varieties of music, and shunning all bands and groups because the attitude or aesthetics is offensive can be a mistake, but it does happen every day. This is remorseful as real song writing ability and showmanship can be lost to potential audiences due to skin deep prejudice. Music is such a hotly contested and debated paradigm and this unrest is solely driven by the factor of money being involved.
