Emo: A History

The story of Emo is one plagued with misunderstanding and controversy. Going from a genre of Washington rock in the 1980's to a derogatory insult and infamous social class, Emo has a thick, cultured background.

The term Emo, (derived from "Emotional"), has two main meanings. The first of these is a term to describe several musical genres, varying over time. The second, and more recent, adaptation of the word represents a social class renowned for their semi-gothic persona and is ofter used as an insult.

The term, "Emo", was first used as a the term for a category of hardcore punk rock in Washington DC in the 1980's. The term "emocore" was also used to describe "emotional hardcore" music. The term is thought to have derived from the fact that many of the assiciated bands, such as Embrace, One Last Wish and Beefeater, got spontaneously emotional on stage. The original meaning of Emo, however, died out after the break up of many of the assiciated bands in the 1990's.

Through the 1990's, Emo began to represent much of the Indie music scene with bands like Sunny Day Real Estate and Texas Is The Reason, who turned the genre more melodic and less chaotic. This led to a softening of Emo into a soft-punk-rock sub genre. Slowly creeping into the mainstream, Emo had, by the end of the 1990's, left its hardcore roots behind, to take on a more "emo"tional character.

A milestone and turning point for Emo was the classification of Dashboard Confessional as Emo. Carrabba's music featured lyrics founded in deep and personal outpouring of emotion. Where ealier Emo had featured lyrics of more dark and painful direction, Carrabba's featured a greater focus on love won and lost and the inability to cope. This led to a surge of popularity of Emo throughout the teenage market, many who, experiencing love and heartbreak for the first time, related to such themes.

This led to the socially accepted Emo, the heartbroken teenager who whines about how his life sucks. The term itself has developed very negative connotations and is ofter used as an insult. This led to the fashion that these types of people favored (being a combination of super tight black pants, straight-usually black-hair covering three fifths of the face, studded belts, and other, semi-gothic items) to be branded "Emo" as well. This led to the categorisation of bands who adopted this dress code into the Emo category, irrelevent of their style of music. An example of this pop-punk band Green Day who, while viewed by many Emo, doesn't actually fall into the increasingly broad genre.

deaded at 5:06 pm