I got way too ambitious doing these writeups because I love talking about music I like and forgot to make the site interesting! So some of these are going to be much shorter than others, and isn't really a great intro to the genre or anything at all. Sorry! I'm always ready to talk about the music I love so if you're intrigued talk to me and get my number/discord/whatever to contact me.
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I like these guys, and I've been listening to the song Broken Cash Machine by them a lot lately.
Lots of discussion on whether they fit the bill on emo, and I'll let Ian Cohen of Pitchfork cover it:
Like pretty much every guitar band these days that doesn't immediately scan as indie rock,
Modern Baseball have been lumped into emo
—and yes, considering Modern Baseball are probably Weezer fans and are caught up in girl problems of their own making, that label sticks to an extent. Thing is, the actual music of You're Gonna Miss It All is just about everything but emo, mostly some code-splitting of the pop-punk double helix. There's shout-and-whoa power-pop (Charlie Black
), prim twee (Going to Bed Now
), folky punk (Your Graduation
), all built around sturdy choruses.
With this, we of course get into the nasty discussion of what emo really is. I'll save a lot of the anguish and forum posting and just give you my opinion - yes! They are! Emo in 2014 is a recognizably different thing than what it meant in 1994 when Sunny Day Real Estate released Diary. Fourth Wave was considerably more poppy and optimistic than other styles, and it's not betraying the genre
to be happy. Speaking of SDRE...
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These guys are great. Essentially created what we now know of today as Midwest Emo, linking together the sad remains of what left of post-hardcore and the D.C. Emotional Hardcore
scene.
My favorite song by them has to be Seven, one of my favorite choruses in the whole genre. You don't know how hard it is for me to write this right now and not sing it out loud.
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These guys are undoubtedly important to emo history, but writing about them is hard considering that most of their songs are about being an awful person who does awful stuff.
When it turned out that the lead singer and songwriter was an awful person who did awful stuff, we were surprised for some reason.
But man... that song The Archer's Bows Have Broken is still an all-time favorite of mine. Only listen with full foreknowledge of what you're getting into, and pirate the song so you don't have to put money in their pockets.
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I like em anyways get owned lol
So fake emo
is a thing, which I'm not really gonna get into. There's a lot of stuff you could say about gatekeeping in the emo scene and what it means when you talk about emo, but I don't wanna get into it because I've already spent a bit making these writeups and I should probably be focusing on the code. Suffice it to say, I'll probably write about it some time or other for a class that allows me to format things as articles rather than formal essays because talking about stuff that I'm personally invested in inside academic environments is torture. Regardless. MCR is important because of just how strong their fanbase is and how enduring they were. Even though my favorite stuff by them probably falls outside of the purview of emo
, my favorite song that I would call emo is Thank You For The Venom, specifically the incredible recent remaster for the 2025 deluxe edition of Sweet Cheers.
Turns out I can't upload audio without a paid subscription which is probably for the best because I pirated a leaked flac anyways so here's a Youtube video with the old, lossy version of the track. Try tracking down the new remaster on Soulseek. man it would have been a good idea for a site to show people how to use soulseek whatever dude
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Gonna close this out with some Screamo, a very hard genre to get into for a lot of people. Characterized by, yes, screaming, I understand why many people do not enjoy the subgenre, but when this clicks, man, does it ever click. Some of the rawest and most emotional stuff out there, and if you aren't immediately turned off by it, start digging in and find other stuff. You will be grateful you did.
iwrotehaikusaboutcannibalisminyouryearbook didn't title any of their songs, or their albums, as a matter of fact. My pick for their best has to be the seventh song on their eight-track demo, but honestly most of their incredibly short discography could qualify. Note that what's on streaming services isn't actually them, it's a fan archive page. Currently there is not really any way to support the band monetarily though, so really you can listen to it without feeling too bad.