Emo Music’s Role in Adolescent Mental Health and Substantiating Identity
Emo Music’s Role in Adolescent Mental Health and Substantiating Identity
In my sophomore year of high school, I found myself in a deep depressive state. I was unable to fit in at school, failing most of my classes, and was experiencing my first heartbreak. With no support system I felt I could rely on, I turned to drugs, alcohol, and typical teenage mischief. Simultaneously, I became addicted to using social media, comparing my life with that of my peers, at first living their happiness vicariously, then later resenting them for achieving happiness I felt I never could. On most days, I could be found in my bed feeling completely numb. Eventually, I stumbled upon the band Bayside’s acoustic album. I listened to vocalist, Anthony Raneri, grieve for lost friends, struggle with alcoholism, and express feeling overwhelming pressure. Bayside became a mainstay in my iPod and I saw them live in concert later. As Anthony Raneri took the stage and began to sing, a sea of people shouted every lyric back to him. I looked around at the crowd and realized that these were people who were going through what I was going through, and that I was not alone. Finally, I had found a family.
In most modern cultures, adolescence is the period of time when a person develops “a personal identity, and a sense of self in association with a group, role, or another person, [and] a social identity.” In a modern society where “Adolescents spend, on average, 9 hours (h) a day using screen-based media including about 3 h/day on their mobile phones,” many adolescents struggle to build self-regulation skills and suffer conduct problems. Enter Emo music. As a genre, Emo music has been long associated with teenage angst, self-harm, and suicides. While hard rock, heavy metal, and alternative music have been found to indicate emotional vulnerability, very little research has been done about the connection between Emo (both the musical genre and the subculture), mental health, and personal identity. With Emo undergoing a revival and mental health issues among adolescents still on the rise, understanding the history, culture, themes and musical elements of Emo are essential for future research.
In this paper I will provide a detailed analysis of the musical genre Emo and the culture surrounding it. Along the way I will outline how the musical stylings have evolved over the last 40 years, and examine the four “waves” of Emo using examples that are representative of these waves. I will explore Emo’s ties to mental health and identity, along with the effects that the emergence of social media had on Emo. Finally I will examine the “Emo revival” and attempt to explain the significance of Emo’s return.
In order to contextualize the emergence of Emo, we need to understand its predecessor; Hardcore Punk, known better simply as Hardcore. Put best by author Stephen Blush: “hardcore was the suburban American response to the late-seventies punk revolution.” In the 1980’s, music groups began to sprout up in the metropolitan areas of The United States. Cities like New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Washington D.C became hubs for groups of musicians to start rebelling against “the mainstream” music scene, opting to build their own communities themselves. Inspired by the punks across the pond, the music they wrote was loud and fast. Vocalists shouted barely coherent lyrics backed by heavily distorted guitars, pumping electric bass, and thrashing drums. The interplay between performer and audience member was a vital part of hardcore. Crowds were very active, moshing, crowd surfing, and often jumping on stage while the band played. Lyrics were denuded, unmelodious, and repetitious; perfect for the rowdy crowds to shout back to the stage. The messaging was often about anti-authoritarianism, nonconformism, and free thought. Hardcore communities were tight-knit as well as resourceful. Fueled by a strong DIY work ethic and the desire to express themselves, shows would be set up anywhere were they could find, often in the basements of houses or abandoned buildings.
Birthed from this scene was singer and frontman of Washington D.C.’s Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye. While contemporaries shouted apathetic rage ballads, MacKaye redirected the energy into establishing a discourse between him, his community, and “the system”. In June of 1981 Minor Threat released the song Straight Edge. Within two verses and 46 seconds MacKaye expresses his disdain for being outcast among his punk contemporaries for choosing not to participate in taking drugs. Three near identical guitar riffs play over the ripping drums while MacKaye shouts lyrics like “I'm a person just like you, But I've got better things to do, Than sit around and fuck my head, Hang out with the living dead.” In spite of (or maybe thanks to) it’s short run time, Straight Edge sent waves in the D.C. Hardcore scene. According to Jawbox/ Burning Airlines guitarist J. Robbins, “...Soon after that, people started examining their politics. Up until that point, you could just say ‘Fuck the system! Fuck the system!’ but then we were like, ‘What does that mean?’ Maybe we need to stop being so negative and leave behind some of the overt trappings of punk rock.” Additionally, the song championed a movement named after it where members of the punk community abstained from drugs, alcohol, and in some cases eating meat, and pursuing “casual” sex. Without knowing it, 20 year old Ian MacKaye had started a revolution in Hardcore Punk music by shifting the focus of their passionate music inward, rather than outward.
This shift gave birth to one of the core facets of Emo music, a focusing of energy towards addressing the emotional burden that is put on by their environment. In the mid-80’s, bands like Embrace (led by Ian MacKaye) and Rites of Spring embraced this idea. They pulled back from the relentless battering of Hardcore, choosing instead to incorporate melodies (both in the guitar playing and singing), extend songs to include a larger dynamic range, and write more poetic lyrics, deepening their meaning and wrestling with moral quandries. In the song Give Me Back (recorded in 1985 but released in 1987) by Embrace, MacKaye personifies his emotions, singing “I'm pissed at my anger, But he don't want to fight, I turn to my conscience, But he just thinks I'm right, My insecurities, They got nothing to hide, My emotions are my enemies, For being on my side.” Meanwhile, Rites of Spring began to solidify another core facet of Emo using the violence often channeled in Hardcore songwriting to describe their feelings within. In the track For Want Of (1985), vocalist Guy Picciotto sings “I - I bled - I tried to hide the heart from the head. I - I bled - in the arms of a girl I'd barely met. And I woke up this morning with the present in splinters on the ground - And then I drowned.” As these bands played shows in the D.C. area many people began referring to them as “Emotional Hardcore” and later “Emo-core”. MacKaye, after playing a monumental part in establishing Emotional Hardcore as a genre, detested the label. While on stage playing with Embrace he stated ”‘Emo-core’ must be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life. But, just in case you’re wondering – I read in my Thrasher the other day – that in fact, what my band along with what other bands in the city [are] playing is ‘Emo-core’… Emotional hardcore. As if hardcore wasn’t emotional to begin with.” This hesitant attitude towards being labeled Emo would be seen in just about every band for the next 30 years that would eventually huddle under the Emo umbrella. But whether MacKaye liked it or not, Emo had experienced its first wave and he was the earthquake that set it casting to shore.
MacKaye and Picciotto began working at the same record store, Yesterday and Today. The owner, Skip Grotto, exposed the young punks to an extremely diverse range of music and another employee Ted Nicely shared with them his experience being signed to a record label. MacKaye would go on to found Fugazi, with Picciotto joining shortly after. MacKaye took his experience in Hardcore and slowed it down, emphasizing groove inspired from reggae. Working with Nicely producing them, Fugazi released their self-titled EP featuring the song Waiting Room(1988) which immediately became a huge success. Fugazi would go on to inspire countless musicians who would continue to experiment with the Hardcore formula, in a genre that came to be known simply as Post-Hardcore. Post-Hardcore is important to Emo, with each genre heavily borrowing from each-others styles.
Moving into the ‘90s, Emotional Hardcore started to be referred to simply as Emo music, and it continued to break away from its Hardcore Punk roots. As Emo removed itself from its musical nascency, it also moved away in physical distance. The bustling city was replaced with the quiet suburban neighborhood, as Emo quietly spread westwards through the country. In the midwestern suburb droves of teenagers were stuck in boring towns with little to do. The towns quickly became home to a new style of Emo, introducing elements of 80’s indie rock to the sound of Emotional Hardcore. Artists like The Promise Ring, The Get Up Kids, and Sunny Day Real Estate found great success applying pop chord progressions, verse-chorus form, and beguiling melodies to the aggressive stylings of Emotional Hardcore. More attention was paid to the harmonic capabilities of the instruments, with bands moving away from the chunky power-chord sounds to more delicate and complex guitar riffs. In 1989 a pair of brothers, from a suburb 45 minutes out from Chicago, Tim and Mike Kinsella, formed the group Cap’n Jazz. Like the hardcore bands that inspired him, Tim Kinsella’s sings at the top of his lungs, though instead of the commanding, masculine confidence of D.C’s vocalists, his voice is more like a cry for help. Cap’n Jazz knew how to play with energy, but weren’t afraid to play twinkly melodies and syncopated, odd time rhythms either. The band was short-lived, only releasing a single full-length album. While both brothers (and their cousin Nate) would play in many bands after Cap’n Jazz, the most notable were Joan of Arc (Tim remains the only permanent member) and American Football (only Mike and Nate). American Football was the most commercially successful of these endeavors, creating wistful songs of their small town life with the distortion taken out of their guitars, as well as utilizing open tunings, and layering of contrapuntal melodies.
Taking a moment to really listen to this second wave of Emo, we can still hear the angst that came from hardcore. The lyrical content of these songs feature failed relationships, suffering abuse, and physical violence coded as metaphors for emotional pain. Thematically, what changed was an added layer of nuance. It’s possible that by Emo’s second wave, the audiences had already accepted that these artists would be singing about their personal pains, leaving the artists to feel more free to explore more abstract feelings. Midwest Emo was still very DIY, free from the influence of labels and mostly playing shows in basements. One could argue that this would be the last time that Emo was “authentic,” with young, inexperienced artists making art for art’s sake.
At about the same time that the Kinsella’s were touring the midwest, the grunge scene grew on the west coast in Seattle, Washington. The most popular band to come out of the scene, Nirvana, drew the attention of record labels and the mainstream media. Their 1991 album Nevermind achieved so much popularity (and monetary success) that record execs were scrambling to find the next group of unkempt punk kids to send into a recording studio. The softer sonic space that Emo had begun to take up made them just approachable enough for the labels to dip their toe into. One notable band from this time is Jimmy Eat World, who released their album Clarity (1999) under Capitol Records, and later Bleed American (2001) with DreamWorks Records. Bleed American shipped with their most popular single The Middle, peaking at number five on the Billboard Top 100. The Middle’s genius stemmed from it’s simplicity. A I-V-IV-I progression repeats through both verses and choruses, but the chord changes swap to the off-beat during the chorus. With the band resting for the first beat of the chorus we’re drawn to the (prominently mixed) vocals. The lyrics of The Middle perfectly describe the final and arguably most important core facet of Emo’s messaging, the act of struggling is not unique, and the listener is not alone. This message is wrapped neatly with other themes of nonconformity, and staying true to oneself. Both the themes of The Middle and the resources that pushed it to the top of the charts would go on to found the basis of the third wave of Emo.
Between 2001 and 2004, three bands would form and begin playing in their local scenes, completely unaware of the influence that they would go on to have on rock music. These bands, satirically dubbed “The Emo Trinity” by fans, incorporated both electronic and orchestral instruments, as well as a flair for the dramatic.The Emo Trinity was made up of Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and Panic! At The Disco. The early careers of Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance were akin to the alt-rockers before them, playing crowded shows in small venues save for the occasional warped tour, with each putting out one record with some considerable success. However, Panic! At the Disco concentrated on their songwriting and recording demos, citing a poor local scene for their lack of stage experience. Panic(At the Disco)’s primary songwriters Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie sent their demo to FOB’s bassist and backup vocalist Pete Wentz via early social media site LiveJournal. Almost immediately after, they were signed to DCD2 Records. This moment was significant, because through the use of a simple social media message, Panic’s freshman release A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out(2005) while slow to lift off the ground, ended the year in position 20 of the year-end Billboard Top 100.
Akin to the D.C. Hardcore artists of the 80’s rejected the term Emotional Hardcore, the artists sculpting this third wave rejected the term Emo. The reasoning? A conflict with the traditional masculinity that rock music (and other genres dominated by white middle-class men) has long held. Music historian Sarah F. Williams writes that emo was an “attempt to reconcile the long-established codes of masculinity[...] with more multifaceted human expressions of heartache, weakness, longing, and loss.” In his 2014 thesis, Ryan Mack asserts “The musical syntax in Emo widely employs the use of major and minor ninth chords, major seventh chords, and a pervasive use of dynamics to construct an alternative masculinity.” This is in contrast to the norm that “broadly, men perform their masculinity within the heteronormative gender matrix, which reinforces the binary relationships between men and women through sets of performative acts.” Emo’s influence is especially feared in countries where hegemonic masculinity reigns supreme. Mexico and Russia are harsh critics, and in 2012 58 Iraqi Emo’s were killed by Shia militias due to its association with homosexuality.
While Emo’s appearance attracted criticism for appearing feminine, it also attracted controversy for its relation to mental health struggles, especially involving self-harm and Suicide. In 2007 two teenage Australian Emo girls stepped in front of a train. Only one year later 13 year-old MCR fan Hannah Bond was found hanging from her bunk bed in Kent, UK. These tragic events were picked up by news outlets, primarily Daily Mail, who used it to wage a war against Emo, categorizing it as a ‘suicide cult.’ Some of Daily Mail’s claims were based in reality, adolescents who immersed themselves in Emo culture often were at higher risk of suicide and self-harm. Daily Mail primarily pointed the finger at My Chemical Romance, saying they were the foremost of these ‘suicide cult’ bands. However, understanding the context of Emo illuminates the article as a baseless attempt to villainize something they didn’t understand. My Chemical Romance is vehemently anti-suicide and anti-self harm. Even the song lyric (from 2005 album The Black Parade) they pulled in an attempt to villainize them reads as a touching eulogy: “Although you're dead and gone, believe me your memory will go on.” Finally, there is evidence that mental health is a predictor of music taste, and almost none to support the inverse. So if Daily Mail pointed the finger in the wrong direction, which direction should it have gone?
In August of 2003, the social media platform MySpace launched and by 2005 it had become a sensation, adding 70,000 users a day. Many third wave Emo bands took advantage of this new platform to promote their music. Additionally, Myspace provided a place for fans to directly interact with official band accounts, as well as the individual band members and other fans of their music. The rate at which people could form relationships as well as the scope of the world for these adolescents was burgeoning. Compare this environment to early humans who’s worlds were substantially smaller. They experienced “...reduced frequencies of identity conflict, depression, psychological distress, and suicide, often associated with modern adolescent development.” Finally, the significant adults of many of these teens were either unaware or lacked the tools to deal with this onslaught of issues that social media burdened them with. I argue that Emo’s surge in popularity was in direct response to these issues,attempting to provide them a safe space to express their increasingly complicated issues. Emo has been a force for good for myself, friends and family, and many people I continue to meet today who are fans of the genre.
While MySpace has vanished from the internet, the issues that MySpace had brought on to adolescence have not gone away. Modern teenagers are encumbered with the same devils, wearing different masks. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, have been the primary social media platforms used by Gen-Z and while there is more awareness about the dangers of social media, the problems persist. Tacking onto it the progression of capitalism (and income inequality) and the climate crisis, adolescence becomes more and more complicated. After all, if the purpose of adolescence is to prepare young people for adulthood, the fear that their world may not even exist when they reach adulthood is a near impossible task to navigate.
Emo practically vanished from the mainstream in the early 2010’s. Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance broke up in 2009 and 2013 respectively, and Brenden Urie of Panic! At The Disco continued as a solo act beginning in 2015, venturing away from the Emo stylings of A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out. Emo would move back into the underground, and the pendulum would swing back towards the sounds and aesthetics of Midwest Emo. Known as the Emo revival, the 4th wave of Emo has been led by artists like Modern Baseball, Mom Jeans, and La Dispute. The bands have loosened up their playing a bit and vocalists focus less on the near-perfect intonation that was commonplace among third wave Emo artists. The emphasis of challenging masculinity has died down, it seems the next generation are less focused on the gender binary. Lyrically, revival bands have begun focusing on storytelling with themselves as the main character, establishing settings and side characters as they navigate the difficult and confusing moments of their lives. This method brings a new type of honesty to the music that maybe was missing in previous generations. The focus is more on validating individual experiences rather than creating a canvas for the listener to project their own feelings onto. Personally, I welcome this trend. After all, shouldn’t a genre based around the struggles of the human experience broaden its definition of empathy?
Since its inception in the 80’s, Emo has evolved and changed, sometimes keeping inline with the aesthetics of the times, other times going against the grain. The hesitant torchbearers have carved out a corner for (primarily western middle class) adolescents who had no one else to turn to. In a culture where technology like social media has forced globalization to occur at an unprecedented rate, adolescence has become more complicated than ever before, and Emo has provided a home to navigate these changes together. When discussing mental health wasn’t accepted in our culture, Emo artists took it upon themselves to tell anyone who was listening that they weren’t alone in their struggles, and that music and community could be coping mechanisms in the meantime. As the world continues to change, Emo will continue to change along with it. Hopefully, Emo’s message will be expanded, and the scene will integrate intersectionality into its expanding list of ideals. Academically, more research must be done to understand the impact that Emo music has on adolescents. These are collosaly important topics that have been misunderstood for far too long, and it’s time to understand them.
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