It’s one of the most popular and most mock-able of all music genres, but it’s almost impossible to put your finger on what exactly “emo” is.
Just about the only thing you can definitively say is that emo is short for “emotional” and it’s a descendent of guitar-based rock with punk-rock roots – everything else is up in the air.
Emo detractors put down emo bands because they’ve got a reputation for being overly sensitive punks, pouring their hearts out while singing songs about heartbreak and the chick they can’t have.
Emo fans are usually dismissed as skinny depressives with asymmetrical haircuts and nautical-star tattoos who write bad poetry.
It’s no wonder emo bands (unlike, say, indie rockers)are reluctant to claim membership in the emo club and fans vigorously deny their emo-ness.
“It’s funny, emo is a genre that people claim exists, yet nobody claims to be a part of it,” says bassist Matt Rubano of emo band – maybe – Taking Back Sunday.
In the early ’90s, ” ’emo’ was something hardcore bands would call each other if they had a mellow song or a song about a girl – it wasn’t a full-on diss, but it was something you said to tell your friend’s band that they were soft,” says the 27-year-old Rubano.
“These days, bands have blended [the hardcore-punk and mellow] sound and come up with a hybrid that has become ’emo,’ although I don’t think you could find a band anywhere that would say, ‘we’re an emo band.'”
Upcoming sold-out emo shows at Webster Hall and Roseland Ballroom this month include Jimmy Eat World (Monday), the Used (Friday), Taking Back Sunday (Nov. 19) and Coheed & Cambria (Nov. 23).
On the surface, none of these bands really sound the same – not like bubble-gum pop – but they can be lumped together under the emo umbrella.
Luckily for the uninitiated, it’s possible to divide emo into subcategories, including “screamo” and “extremo.”
Rubano admits there are a few generalizations that can legitimately be made about the emo scene.
“Take a kid, slap a Taking Back Sunday shirt on him, some tight Diesel jeans, some skate shoes or some Sauconys, some tattoos, dyed black hair with bangs in front of his face and probably a piercing or two and you might have the garden variety, quintessential emo person,” says Rubano.
There’s also the emo band name.
“There definitely is a traceable sort of emo-sounding band name. The poetic, three words and syllables thing – having words like ‘blood,’ ‘bleeding,’ ‘death’ or months of the year or days in it,” says Rubano, pointing to his own band and others like Saves the Day, Thursday and the Early November.
All this confusion over what is and isn’t emo works out fine by Rubano and others in the scene.
“As soon as they can put their finger on it, they’re going to try to figure out when it’s going to end,” says Rubano.
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