FROM MR. HARDY'S DESK: What Is Emo?

   What is emo? The world alone provokes a lot of things, and when you hear the word you probably think of guys with long black hair and eyeliner obsessing about how much their life sucks. Unfortunately, emo also often calls to mind things like self-harm and suicide. But what is emo?

   Emo is a term that people are constantly misusing. Emo is an actual genre of music. Emo is short for emotional hardcore, meaning a variant of the genre of hardcore music where the lyrics focus more on emotions. 

   Now, a lot of people on the internet refer to the "emo trinity": Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and My Chemical Romance. Often times, this trinity is instead expanded to an "emo quartet" to include Twenty One Pilots.

   I love all four of these bands. I've seen two of them live. I have at least one Funko Pop of three of them and really want the Pops of the one I don't have. I have at least one vinyl record from all four of them. So, because I'm so invested in all four of these "emo quartet" bands, obviously this would be a topic I'd want to spend a blog episode whining about...

    None of those bands are emo. Nope. At least not as far as the actual, genre definition of emo goes. Even just looking at the four of them - they aren't even the same genre, so how can they all be emo? Fall Out Boy is the most like your classic rock/pop band, Panic! At The Disco has a more baroque/showman-y pop sound, My Chemical Romance is the edgiest and most raw of the four, and Twenty One Pilots! Twenty One Pilots is literally just as much a hip hop act as they are a rock one. Many, or I may even say most, Twenty One Pilots songs feature the lead singer also functioning as the lead rapper. When was the last time you heard Patrick Stump, Brendon Urie, or Gerard Way rapping? Certainly not on any official recording. 

   So there's point one. They cannot be an emo quartet when they aren't even the same genres as each other.

   But, I'm not some nerdy curmudgeon who's gonna push his glasses up and lecture you if I hear you call The Black Parade your favorite emo album. The other day at work, I was talking to one of my coworkers about My Chemical Romance and saying how I was getting really into them again, and she asked if I was getting back into my 2016 emo phase. To which I replied, "I never left." Because at the end of the day, if you wanna call these bands emo, if you wanna proudly embrace the emo quartet, it's no skin off my nose. I've even suggested that if we're gonna call these bands emo, can we at least throw in Paramore too and call them the emo quintet? If you like FOB, Panic!, MCR, and TØP, it's pretty much guaranteed that you're also a fan of Paramore. 

   "But Mr. Hardy! You just spent half this episode rambling about how those bands aren't emo!" Yes, yes I did. But the thing is, I only care enough about that to write about it in my blog. I'm not about to talk the ear off of, say, a coworker or a friend about it. If you wanna call those bands emo, I won't spend my time arguing you off that position to your face. I'm just glad you like them. You have good taste in music. I once got into an argument that got a little too intense with my best friend because he wanted to call these and other similar bands emo, but now I feel stupid having done that and wouldn't do something of that sort again.