Emo

The emo (pronunciation: /imo/) is a sub-genus of the hardcore. Since the appearance of the term, emo ended up defining various independent alternatives, with the rather loose family ties, but having a common origin. Its use (in particular with regard to the fact of knowing which groups can receive this qualifier) is prone to many controversies.

In the beginning, name emo was used to describe the music resulting from the scene hardcore of Washington, D.C in the middle of the Années 1980. Later, the term emocore , abbreviation of “ emotional hardcore ”, was also applied to the scene of Washington and some of the regional scenes (in the United States) which it generated. The groups most manifestly associated with the emo at this period include/understand off Rites Spring, Embrace, One Last Wish, Beefeater, Gray Matter, Fire Party and, a little later, Moss Icon. The decline of the first emo wave began after separation from the majority from the groups which composed it, to the beginning of the year 1990.

Starting from the middle of the years 1990, the emo started to reflect the scene Indie influenced by the new group of Ian MacKaye, Fugazi, itself a derivative of the first emo wave. Groups like Sunny Day Real Estate and Texas Is The Reason proposed a style emo nearer to the Indie rock'n'roll, more melody and less chaotic than its predecessor. This scene indie-emo survived until late in the years 1990, when its group-headlights separated or borrowed a way plus general public ( mainstream ).

New groups then started to imitate this sound plus general public, creating the kind of music now known under the name of emo in the popular culture. This name was used as of its origins to qualify a broad variety of groups, and the spectrum covered by the groups classified today like emo, in its modern direction, is even vaster, making of this term a vague qualifier rather than a specific kind of music.

History

The first wave (1985-1994)

In 1985 in Washington, D.C., Ian MacKaye, the charismatic singer of Minor Threat and Guy Picciotto decided to take their distances from the basic hardcore and to inject a greater amount of experimentation in their music through their new respective groups, Embrace and Rites off Spring, which developed their own sound, even if Zen Arcade , the album of Hüsker Of the left in 1984 were often quoted like one their major influences. Marked by this new breath, the summer 1985 was very quickly called " Summer" revolution; within the scene.

In little time, other groups were influenced by this new sound emo born in Washington: Moss Icon, Nation off Ulysses, Dag Nasty, Shudder To Think, Fire Party, Marginal Man and Gray Matter. Several of them were signed besides on Dischord Records, the label of Ian MacKaye. The separation of Hoover at the end of 1994 marks the disappearance of the first emo wave of Washington.

The exact origin of the term emo remains dubious, but according to an interview of members of Rites off Spring in Flipside Magazine in 1985, some their fans started to use this expression to define their music. The birth of the alternative emocore is not dated either exactly, but the term was already of a use enough running to the beginning of the year 1990.

The growth of the scene of Washington made it possible other local scenes to be born with a sound and an ethics similar DIY. To the beginning of the year 1990, the label of San Diego Gravity Records left a big number of discs of hardcore emo. Among the famous groups at the time, one can count: Heroin, Indian Summer, Angel To hate, Antioch Arrow, Universal Order off Armageddon, Swing Kids or Mohinder. Always in California, Ebullition Records left the albums of Still Life and Portraits off Past, as well as other more traditional groups of hardcore, having social topics and common policies.

In same time, with New York and in the New Jersey, other groups such Native Nod, Merel, 1.6 Band, Policy off 3, Rye Coalition and Rorschach adopted the same way. Several among these groups played regularly ABC No Rio, a social center which wanted to be an answer to current violence from now on at the time of the concerts to CBGB, only another room for the concerts of hardcore in New York at the time.

An appreciable part of these groups, in particular those resulting from the scene of San Diego, gradually turned to a more chaotic and aggressive form of emo, called Screamo .

The precursory groups of the emo ending up separating, the vein hardcore of the emo was dried up little by little, even if certain groups try to maintain in life the original sound of the emo, like Circle Takes the Square, Hot Cross, City off Caterpillar, Funeral Diner and has Day in Black and White.

In Washington, following the separation of Embrace and Rites off Spring, MacKaye and Picciotto decided to join their forces and founded Fugazi together. Even if, to be exact, this group is not included in the emo category, its influence on the second emo wave were determining.

Influences and posterity of the first emo wave

In California, and more particularly in the Bay of San Francisco, of the groups like Jawbreaker and Samiam started to mix the influence of the hardcore of Washington, D.C., with the Pop punk, to lead to their own alternative of the sound resulting from the scene emo of Washington. On the album Bivouac , of Jawbreaker, the voice of Blake Schwarzenbach evolves to a more melody song, letting bore more sadness that the song of Ian MacKaye, more desperate. Other groups adopted this kind of rough melody, generating a style whose ramifications are prolonged until in the years 2000, thanks to Virginiens of Avail or with groups like Hot Water Music.

In addition, to the beginning of the year 1990, certain groups, as Lifetime reacted to their way with deterioration of the hardcore straight-edge Youth crew. Their music was often described of emo, but also as hardcore melody. In answer to sonorities close to metal borrowed by many groups of hardcore at the time, Lifetime chooses the way of the softening of the melodies, while preserving a mixture speed of execution and a certain aggressiveness, in addition to rather personal and introspective texts. Later, the kind defined by Lifetime was practically used as owner with groups like Saves The Day or The Movielife.

Same manner, a group as Converges, which influenced the current Metalcore, could take as a starting point the emo groups of the east coast.

The second wave (1994-2000)

With the growing popularity of Fugazi and Dischord Records within the underground indie of the beginning of the year 1990, from new groups emerged, which combined the influences of Fugazi with those, Post-punk, of Mission off Burma and Hüsker Of the, allowing a new misadventure emo to be born.

The moment-key of this evolution is perhaps the exit of the album Diary of Sunny Day Real Estate in 1994. Being then given recent successes of Pop Sub with Nirvana and Soundgarden, this label had opportunity of drawing around this album the attention of a public vaster than for a typical disc indie , in particular of the advertizing inserts in Rolling Stone and the group on the occasion to come to play in certain television programs.

More and more from people hearing of Sunny Day Real Estate, in particular via Internet already in full rise, the group received the label emo . The new generation of fans moved this name since the original hardcore towards this kind of emo nearer to the Indie rock'n'roll. It rare of even Sunny Day Real Estate and its similar was not even classified like emocore , before a distinction takes place gradually between the emo hardcore and new the emo indie .

In the years which followed, several major regional scenes of indie emo emerged. Most important appeared in the Midwest in the middle of the Nineties. Many groups held their influences of the same sources, but with a sound more posed. It was often refers to this kind of emo as to the " Midwestern emo " within sight of the localization of the groups, around Chicago, Kansas City and Milwaukee. Among the precursory groups in this category are Boy' S Life and Cap' N Jazz. The following years, from the groups like The Promised Boxing ring, Braid, Elliott, Cursive and The Get Up Kids emerged from the same scene and received a national attention in the United States.

The area of Phoenix, in the Arizona became in its turn one of the major scenes of the emo. Inspired by Fugazi and Sunny Day Real Estate, group punk Jimmy Eat World has started to inject elements emo into its music, which leads to the exit of the album Static Prevails in 1996, which was undoubtedly the first album of emo left on a major , the group having signed with Capitol Records in 1995.

The indie emo includes also groups like Christie Front Drive, originating in the Colorado, Texas Is The Reason and Rainer Maria, of New York, Knapsack and Sense Field, of California, Mineral, of Austin to the Texas, and Piebald and Jejune of Boston.

Surprisingly, the popularization of the indie emo involved classification among this kind of groups which would not have been it differently, because of the resemblances on the level of the sound: the most famous example is the album Pinkerton of Weezer, left in 1996, become thereafter a stake in the definition of the emo of the years 1990.

Many groups of emo as of end of the year 1990 signed at independent labels, in particular Jade Tree Records, Saddle Creek and Big Wheel Recreation. At the same time, labels like Crank Records and Deep Elm Records (with the series of the Emo Diaries ) started to leave compilations making the inventory of fixtures of the scene at a given time, gathering groups like The Promise Boxing ring, Christie Front Drive, Mineral, Knapsack, Seven Storey Mountain, Jimmy Eat World, Samiam, Jejune, Texas Is the Reason, Braid, At the drive-in or Jawbox.

The scene emo of this period becoming gradually more national than regional in the United States, the majors started to pay attention and to seek to it to sign groups of emo, in order to earn money thanks to this tendency. Whereas many groups refused in the name of their fidelity with the independent scene, others have advanced the examples of the vexations of Jawbreaker or Jawbox at the time of their passage on majors to justify their refusal, and the tensions generated by the assiduous court of the majors involved the separation of certain groups, like Texas Is the Reason or Mineral.

At the end of the decade ninety, the term emo had made its appearance in the popular culture mainstream . In the summer 1998, the magazine Teen People published an article announcing that the emo was the new connected kind of music. This increased attention pushed part of the groups of the time to change their sound to take their distances with respect to the kind and to thus preserve their individuality, Sunny Day Real Estate evolving/moving for example worms of sonorities closer to the progressive rock'n'roll.

Although the indie emo completely ceased existing at the time of the change of decade, of many groups continue to subscribe to the model inherited Fugazi and Hüsker Of, among which Thursday, The Juliana Theory and Sparta.

The third wave (2000 at our days)

At the end of the years 1990, the scene emo underground had almost entirely disappeared. However, the term emo survived in the media, to still qualify the rare groups in activity like Jimmy Eat World.

But at that time, Jimmy Eat World had started to borrow a way more accessible to the general public. At the time of the exit of their album Bleed American in 2001, the group had practically liquidated all its emo influences, but remained catalogued thus. The new groups to which the sound was then close to that of Jimmy Eat World were thus included in their turn among the emo.

In 2003, Chris Carraba, the former singer of Further Seems Forever met success with its new project, Dashboard Confessional. The words written by Carraba had resonances of diary, overloaded personal emotions. Where earlier, the emo supported words traversing a more obscure and painful way, Carraba concentrated above all on the love found or lost, and the difficulty in facing. This new misadventure of the emo quickly gained in popularity among the teenagers making the experiment of the love affairs for the first time which found answers and comfort in the words and the music of Carraba.

At the same time, the term emo started more only not to refer to the music, which added confusion about it. It became associated with the expression with emotion without reserve. Certain attitudes and a certain vestimentary fashion become typical among the fans of certain groups were described as emo . And, consequently, the groups more or less associated with these modes or simply making a great part with the emotion were in their turn called emo .

Still more than in the years 1990, the term emo came from there to qualify an extremely broad variety of groups, having for number of them, little jointly. It then became almost impossible to describe what can be exactly regarded as emo .

Wrongly or rightly, emo was often used to describe groups like NOTE: The groups quoted here are often quoted as being emo in the popular culture, which one considers that they are really emo or not.

--> AFI, has Static Lullaby, Brand New, Coheed and Cambria, Finch, NOTE: The objective is not here to catalog or " déprécier" groups, but to reflect the current use of the term emo , and with a certain point, to show the character hold-all of it.

--> From Fall to Ashes, From First to Last, Funeral For has Friend, Hawthorne Heights, Atreyu NOTE: This paragraph should not be published, that it is through the addition or the withdrawal of a group simply because a fan thinks that such group is or is not emo . It was refers to all these groups at a point or to another in verifiable sources like emo , even if one can consider this use incorrect.

-->, Silverstein, My Chemical Lovesong, Taking Back Sunday, Bullet For My Valentine, The Used, Thrice and Thursday NOTE: This list does not have vocation to be exhaustive. Thank you to subject any change to the discussion on the page of discussion before publishing it, in order to check that there is a consensus about it among the contributors.

-->. The fans of several of these groups made the grimace vis-a-vis the use of the qualifier of emo and engaged in long debates and discussions to explain in what such group cannot be regarded as emo . On many occasions, the term their simply was coupled because of musical similarities, a similar vestimentary style or popularity of a group within the scene emo such as it is perceived in the popular culture, and not because the group regards itself as belonging to a bearing musical genre this name. (The dislike expressed by certain groups with respect to this kind does not miss a similarity with the change of orientation musical of the groups of the scene of the emo indie of the end of the year 1990.)

The result of the change of direction of the term emo with the passing of years is a visible fracture between the people who are identified with one particular period of the emo . Those which are attached to its original period hardcore récrient when another kind of music is called emo . Many people implied in the scenes emo independent of years 1980 and 1990 are opposed by what they perceive like the diversion of the word emo being used to market a new generation of music by the majors. At all events, the popular culture seems to have integrated the term emo with directions very far away from the original intentions of the members of the independent scenes and out of their control.

Irony of the destiny, the Screamo, a sub-genus of new the emo, gained in popularity these last years thanks to groups like Thrice and Glassjaw, as wrote it Jim DeRogatis in November 2002. The term screamo was in fact used with the beginning of the year 1990 to describe a completely different musical genre, and new the screamo resembles more the emo of the beginning of the year 1990. In order to complicate the things, of small local scenes devoted to the original screamo always exist within the mediums underground . However, the new use of the term screamo is significant difficulty of describing the multiple kinds related to the emo .

In spite of that, it may be that the difficulty of even defining the emo date of its origins. In an interview gone back to 2003, Guy Picciotto de Fugazi and Rites off Spring per Mark Prindle on its feeling compared to the fact of being “ the creator off the emo kind was questioned”. Picciotto answered: “ I don' T recognize that attribution. I' ve never recognized “emo” ace has kind off music. I always thought it was the most retarded term ever. I know there is this generic commonplace that every band that gets labeled with that term hastes it. They feel scandalized by it. Goal honestly, I just thought that all the bands I played in were punk rock'n'roll bands. The reason I think it' S so stupid is that - what, like the Bad Brains weren' T emotional? What - they were robots gold something? It just doesn' T make any judicious to me. ”

In the same way, in a recent interview with pastepunk.com, daN Yemin, singer of the group of hardcore Paint It Black, known to have been also the guitarist of Lifetime and appears eminent and respected scene Punk/hardcore, reconsidered this new wave emo - whose certain groups, following the example Taking Back Sunday, quote Lifetime like their major influence - and judged it severely: “ I gift' T know what “emo” is. “Emo” was RITES OFF SPRING and EMBRACE, and everything after that is… I gift' T know what it is. Goal it' S not eyeliner and it isn' T false-melodrama, and it' S not like, `I want to Be buried in your back yard.' ”

By-effect

As the popularity of the music increased, the emo became more and more an object of derision, in particular certain fashions and attitudes associated with the emo , and stereotypes emerged which facilitated criticisms and made an easy target of it.

In the first years of the “third vagueness”, the critic relatively light, was amused, even sometimes of the autodérision. In September 2002, Jason Oda launched Emogame, which made fun of the many stereotypes emo and the musicians of the kind, but in a manner which could be appreciated also fans and detractors of the kind.

The following years the mockeries increased exponentially. The male fans of emo started to receive insults on their supposed sexual orientation, reflection of the mode specific to the “scene” (in particular the use of eyeliner and Maquillage), the wearing of more adjusted clothing, sometimes even intended to the girls, and of the expression of the emotions. Criticisms related however initially to the dramatic exaggeration of the emotions and not necessarily on the emotions in themselves.

In October 2003, Jessica Hopper of Punk Planet showed the “third wave” emo to be sexist. According to it, it is too common for the emo groups to write songs according to a male point of view which reduces the women to being the cause of emotional wounds, the result being whereas the women are diabolisées in a collective way, the songs not relating to a person in particular. To that connect it disproportion within the scene between boys and girls came to be added, in favor of the first. For Hopper this sexism is a problem only involved in new the emo, the groups of indie emo as Sunny Day Real Estate giving seems it more depth with the female characters described in their songs.

The reactions in this article were contrasted. Certain people noted that the rock'n'roll has a long story of problems sexists, that it was not a characteristic of new the emo: the glam metal of the years 1980 for example produced many songs réifiant the women.

Criticisms of the modern emo also concentrate around the increasingly generic nature of the music created. Many groups having fled the qualifier (by adopting sometimes that of Post-hardcore), the remaining groups correspond to the kind only because of the similarities posted with the other groups known as emo . The critical observers notice a slow homogenization of the kind, the new groups recopying a caricatural style rather than to redefine it, a little as that had occurred at the time of the decline of the grunge in the years 1990.

These negative criticisms persistent and these stereotypes increased the perception of the current emo in the form of a new nice sin. In spite of criticisms, the modern version of the emo is a success which is not contradicted within the spheres mainstream . However, within sight of the disgrace into which the term emo fell, the question of knowing so of new groups will be asserted as such remainder open.

In the popular culture

Mode and practices

Two forms of popular vestimentary modes are generally regarded as emo . First is resulting from the scene of emo indie of the years 1990 and is not without relationship with the indie rock'n'roll and the punk one. It includes more clothing vintage and glanés with the chips which offer a worn aspect. Typically, the T-shirts are rather skimped and present very diverse reasons, sometimes come straight of the years 1980. The bags are often decorated with patchs and badges of groups.

The other style tends more towards the dark colors. Classically the hair is dyed, generally in jet black (but sometimes also with red wicks, violets or platinum, for example) and has a wick in front of the eyes, the boys carry Jeans " cigarette and also called allumettes" (very narrow) or slims, boys and girls post many piercings (with the lip, with the labret) and Maquillage sinks (primarily of the black eyeliner), the glasses with mountings thick (and often black) are also very popular (and sometimes carried by people not needing glasses of correction); the accessories emos are often with reasons in " damiers".

The Chuck Taylor All-Stars are common to both styles, just as the Vans (often of the models slipway one ).

A widespread stereotype also associates the emo with practices of self-mutilation, manifestly to gash the wrists. That is partly due to certain words of groups emo in which it is question of self-destruction. There does not exist however any serious proof which it is about a more widespread practice among the mediums emo than elsewhere.

Other uses of the term

The term emo is used since the beginning of the year 2000 on Internet, in particular in the anglophone world, as a form of insult towards the people who evoke on the forums, the public living rooms of discussion or the waiters of video games, their personal problems, or which posts a behavior émotionnellement unstable. It is not necessarily used in its strict direction and is rather a vague insult. That gave rise to certain sarcastic expressions done everything like “ Cheer up, emo kid! ”, or with “ Admin emo ” which can sometimes be used to qualify the administrators, regulators of forums Internet or waiters of video games reacting in an impulsive way (, i.e. which do not remain Masters of their emotions).

Sources

External bonds

EmoGuide
“'' What the heck *is* emo, anyway? ''”
Definitions of “emo” on urbandictionary.com
How to Dress Emo

Simple: Emo

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