Emo: a definition

Wow bmxican, I kind of agree to what you're saying. But at the same time I can't, because some of the things you listed "depressing lyrics, monotonous music style where all bands sound pretty much the same" are things people have either come to love in their music, or disagree with.

But these music genre arguments have to end. People get so involved in the type/genre of music they listen to, and the image that comes with it, instead of focusing on what moves you: The music itself. Why should you try and teach a bunch of riders the definitions and types of music you listen to? Why are you getting angered that people don't understand your music? It's as if you're trying to preach a new religion to those that don't want it.

Now on the other hand, If someone called you an "emo fag" or something of the sort, you have every reason to explain to them your passion for your music, what it means to you, and what it isn't supposed to mean to them. People get so caught up in images in the media, it warps our perception of the world, entertainment and other people in general. Education is a good thing, but what we're discussing is something that is just as much opinionated as it is fact. People will always sterotype and judge, people will always carry misinformed opinions, and people will just generaly not care. Deal with it, and enjoy listening to your music.
 
A simple "wrong" would have been fine...Anyway, I wasnt calling anyone dumb, and I maybe spelled one word wrong.
 
amanda woodward

beaumont hammel

burried inside

circle takes the squaire

cobra kai

cobra noir

drive like jehu

envy

forstella ford

hiretsukan

hot cross

i spoke

indian summer

jeromes dream

Joshua Fit For Battle

karate for kids

kill maniquine

Makara

Mi Amore

Off Minor

orchid

page 99

the Red Scare

saetia

sex positions

shikari

swing kids

takenfromyou

these arms are snakes

Transistor Transistor

yourcodenameis:milo
 
Musically educated? How can you possibly make that assumption? What reasoning do you have behind that. Thats like saying all kids who listen to country are great drivers. There is no logic behind that and you sound like twit for saying it.

Fake emo? If it wasn't for those bands no one would no what emo was. I know that their cheese eating fans are a poor representation of the true genre but, those bands are still emo. What do they sing about that "real emo" doesn't that would classify them to be "FEMO?"

Screamo isn't a genre? How can you say that? Of course its a genre. Are you try to say that bands that are screamo don't exist and therefor the genre doesn't exist? A genre is a simply a category, trying to group sounds together in massive super genre is dumb. grrrrreat!
 
To start I'd like to say that I am a big fan of the genre and most related, whether it be post hardcore, emo violence, screamo, you name it. But the bands that really revolutionalize music are the ones that do not belong to a genre. Not becasue they just have an odd sound, but because they want to push boundaries to create a new sound. By slapping a nametag on these bands it will ultimatly slow down thier progression with new stereotypes and predjudises(sp?)to deal with. Now they are once again just another fish in the sea of music. I dont think band labeling should go so deep as to combine more than 3 words. In saying this, I think Rock, Pop, Rap, Country, Classical, and occasionally Techno ect. should be about as far classification as needed. I wear tight pants, I have a slightly "emo" haircut. I don't cut my wrists, i dont cry myself to sleep. I chill to the music that satisfies me. If you want to call it emo, you can. But I like to call it music.
 
Good music doesnt need all those labels. Good music is different and undefienable. Bands/Artists like Beck, Cake, Animal Collective, Dave Matthew, They Might Be Giants, Butthole Surfers, and Bob Dylan are all examples are unique music. Now I'm not saying that all music with a definite Genre is bad but that music that is unique tends to be good music. At least in my opinion, everyone has different taste in music. Thats why is is so useless to argue about which band is better.
 
FUCK YO COUCH NIGGA

now that i have your attention i will put in my 2 cents.well i am sick of hearing these emo elitests say what is and what is not emo. their "real" emo sucks and is probobly the shittiest form of music i have ever heard. i think that emo never really started it was just a branch of kids who got their asses kicked by punk kids who were tired of their shit music they tried to classify as punk. if you look at emo it is just a way for kids to look cool and model after other perfect scenesters. emo has set the scene and now the other "fake" emo bands (taking back sunday, underoath, thursday, shit like that) are profiting off a social confusion that is destroying the basis of idividuality. my music of preference is traditional ska and 2 tone ska with a hint of ska punk. i like others such as calypso, soul, blues, roots, reggae, dub, and others. it could be easy for me to put in an emery cd and cut the back of my hair short and leave the front long were tight shirts and pants and be down with the scene, but that shit is fake and just all around an immature high school popularity contest. how many scene kids do you see in college, very little. and as for emo's roots, they blow, roots are what people have dedicated themselves to and has stood the test of time, not some fad for the scenesters.
 
^ Yeah it doesnt matter if you listed a bunch of bands nobody has heard of and called them "emo roots" it is still shitty music. I know I said everyone has different tase but emo is just plain bad music.
 
wow you are ignorant. kids who listen to real emo are musically educated jsut because they can tell the difference between the two.

how are you going to tell me or darkwolf that we are wrong when we base our definitions on the bands who started the genre not what mtv or your stupid little friends might say.

thats like henry rollins telling someone that black flag is hardcore and you contradicting that person.

and those bands are NOT emo. listen to darkwolf.

and i already made my argument about screamo not being a genre. read previous posts and actually check some of those bands out.
 
I am ignorant? OK. I can take it. I would just like to point out the level of musical education that emo fans have then.

You say that they are musically eduated because they can tell the differnce between emo and femo.

whoop - de - doo!

I have this cat, Becca, and it can tell the differnece between emo and femo too. Cool eh?

Based upon Darkworlf's list of not emo bands I selected a band to try and get bacca to listen to and tell if it is emo or femo.

I went and put in alexisonfire and then boysetsfire for a little test of Becca's skills.

Would you guess what happened? It took a big shit, right where it was standing. To be honest, I was flabbergasted myself when I found out that the band alexisonfire used allusion and imagery just the same as boysetsfire.

Trippey eh?

Now really, the creater of this thread said that the major difference was allusion and imagery. Look at all the allusion and imagery in this song.

A dagger though the heart of st. angeles.

Plaid skirts that hide love

Walk in single file.

Ties that restrict blood... to the brain.

Passing notes in math class.

Freedom wear your scars of desire.

It's a coming of age story.

Freedom wear your scars of desire.

Conflicting impulses.

Freedom wear your scars of desire.

Cuts seem to bend the sky.

Bend (bend) the (the) sky (sky).

I've read this book before.

Anxious eyes stare out of warped glass

Waiting for the 3 o'clock bell.

Trying hard to forget that cold October day,

When Love challenged Freedom to a fist fight.

Freedom looked victorious;

But no one was expecting the outcome on that baseball diamond...

When Love reached beneath her plaid jumper,

Pulled out a switch blade,

And drove it...

Directly through the heart of St. Angeles.

Go!

Any notion of self-government

Was left by Love bleeding

On the pitcher's mound.

You're

(So you say you're scaring me)

Scaring me.

(And you won't be there to catch me.)

And bleeding on the pitcher's mound.

On the, on the...

Maybe it doesn't have enough allusion or imagery. Which makes me think about something else: are there bands that are more emo than other bands due to their use of these tools. Is there like a band who is super into allusion and imagery that they "out emo" other bands. Are they like "extremo" or "supremo."

They have Pink Floyd-esque lyrics that put them beyond all realms of true emoness.

I mean holey shit, even the weeniest teen emo band uses some of these literary tools and to boot them our of your little circle of emo friends is not fair. YOU CONTRADICTING PIRATE HOOKER!
 
boy sets fire are not a true emo band. take a look at the list of the bands i posted up there.... there are like 50 true emo bands on there... or bands that fall right in there... for the real good stuff check out saetia, or orchid. they will give you a good idea of what true screamo should sound like.
 
yea they are a bit out of place on that list, but they took so many riffs from jeromes dream its hard to not see the simliarities.... deffinitely heavily screamo influenced.
 
Well considering that they are from members of kill sadie, although kill sadie wasnt really emo. They are like pg.99 where they are integral to it. and their influence is huge.

You can really hear the emo sound in the other kill sadie runoffs; being pretty girls make graves and minus the bear

But yeah you are right, the influence is there, especially the scream to spoken word shifts(well not spoken word, but softer more seperated words at least)
 
alright, emo may be a shitty ass genre of music, but people can definitly be emo. or fags, homos, bitches, tools, kids i want dead. alright. they cut themselves with HIV inectdknives and wear all black, periceings, never happy, died red hair, faggots, and the music is hjust awful, all they sing about is how bad theure lives suck, i swish they would all commit suicide if there life sucks so bad, and there gurlfirend dumped them.
 
Dumbest thing i have read in my life.

Especially the hiv infected knives, they cant have hiv, if i must explain this to you i will
 
hahahahaha, sorry for my uneducated self, i meant to say that emo kids go to other emo friends houses, first they gather a large black pot, cut themselves, then the sacrifices begin, such as fingers and/or toes. and when they are in deep pain, and feel great becasue of this they dip knies into the blood, and kill themselves, whuikle crying, and listening to some SICk tunes.!!!!!!!!!!!
 
i still dont uinderstand why u guys are arguing over what "real" emo is. like u wanna out-emo eachother, thats not neccessarily a good thing, unless u wnna be known as king of emo
 
all the post dc hardcore is all so confusing. and like all those bands are all good but were basiclly trying to make an animal kingdom classification chart when the solution is simple. kets just realax and listen to billie joels advice for once. "its all rock n roll to me".

but whats hollywood undead classifyed as? haha
 
Thank you very much, I have been trying forever ( though not very hard) to show people how fucking stupid they are, they just heard the term emo somewhere in the media or with thier firends and pictured some little kids crying about fall out boy or some shit. it piisses the fuck out of me how every calls shit emo when they have the whole defintion entirley wrong. and then i was glad to see your list of emo bands, when people ask me what emo is now i ususally tell them to download circle takes the square.

ANYWAAAAYYS thanks very much for your post, but i wish when you listed bands who are not emo you also put in things like: fall out boy, armour for sleep, etc. all bands that mtv kids know and assume emo.

Thanks again!
 
musically tallented people are like bethoven, louis armstrong, and thomas kalnocky. people who can compose music for a large range of instuments and make it complex, buetiful, and musical. some dumbshit with crappy hair cuts who can play a few chanlenging lics on the guitar bass and drums are not musically talented.
 
well that does not change the fact that all bands he posted that were emo sound way worse than the other. what the fuck is with that circle takes the square shit i sounded like a bunch of small chilfren banging on trash cans and a drums set with some dumbshit in the backround trying to throw down so guitar lic he thought was hard, but ended up sounding like the beginning guitar class at my school. fall out boy and hawthorne heights may not be emo, but that doesnt mean that your "real" emo doesnt suck, hardcore my ass i bet if one kid from one of those bands got in a difficult situation he would probobly break down and start crying or screaming.
 
I was never asking you to like it, and i appreciate you listening to it.

Tastes differ and no one will ever like the same thigns as everyone else.
 
thats cool, i also didn't ask you to like those bands, and i don't even liek them very much. Its just a matter of people having the facts straight.
 
What is with all these negative stereotyoes towards emo music? Last time i checked "emo" was the root word of "emotional." Happiness, Surprised, Cheerful, arent these all emotions as well?

Ill agree that many emo songs, and any other genre relating to emo, have lyrics that project depression or lost love, But I've heard even MORE emo songs about happiness and romance. It may be viewed as "gay" by todays pop culture standards, but dont rappers, jazz groups, classical bands, rock bands, R and B artists, soul artists, Reggae bands ect. all talk about those same things in thier lyrics? Perhaps You need more rap music cliche filled video to tell you that the artist are in fact hetero sexual, and are attracted to the opposite sex.

When A rapper talks about his friend getting shot in a drive by, or a girl cheating on him, isnt that just as "EMO" as someone singing (actually singing) about a failed romance? I guess its becasue all the "whiny emo kids" play an instrument, and have singing skills that make them pansy ass wrist slitters. Sorry, but im not getting it to much.
 
^ i just hate fall out boy/panic! at the disco. but i like most other emo music. i only hate them because they are essetially teh same band, and because there music is really really overplayed. but you have a good point.i actually dont mind alot of emo music, but im not what they call an "emo", eg. i dont dye my hair black and slick it ovr my one eye, and stand there bobbing my head at concerts. or slit my wrists. but thats just a bad stereotype. i know alot of people who listen to emo music, and the next song on there playlist is gangsta rap, or indie music of some king. its all personal preference.
 
fall out boy is definitly emo, or whatever they are,(femo) they suck dick, and i hope they all die, is this femo a term used when emo kids hate on poser emo kids? casue thats kinda funny to me
 
the term "musically educated" should never be used to describe somebody unless they are like my neighbor and have a masters from berkeley with a major in music. thats musically educated. otherwise. get over yourselves. jeeze. circle takes the square. emo. hardcore. metal. rock. fall out boy. emo. indie. pop-rock. rock. britney spears. teen pop. pop. rock. its all the same if you narrow it down enough.
 
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