What is emo? -Attempting to Define Emo

Emm, it's a little hard to define what is "emo", finding an accurate definition for Emo is not easy you know, when I think one guy is emo, but others not, when I think that girl is really a hot emo girl, but others don't think she is emo. But, I’ll make the attempt to define..
Okay, to start off with you have to understand that what is considered Emo today and what Emo was, in it’s original form, are two completely different things, bearing little-to-no resemblance to one another. These two distinct styles can be categorised as:

Emotional/Emotive hardcore, AKA Emo-core, AKA Emo (early 80’s to early 90’s)
Mainstream Emo (2000 until present day)

Emo-Core the Birth of The Genre

Pay attention to that, the heading says genre, not culture. At this point Emo was simply a musical extension of the Hardcore Punk movement of the 80’s. It didn’t have it’s own distinctive fashion or visual style, it was quite simply a sub-genre. Followed by fans of the parent form, hardcore punk.

Hardcore punk incorporated elements of the 80’s thrash metal, rather ironic considering that thrash metal had, in turn, borrowed heavily from the early 80s punk movement.

Anyway, several of these hardcore punk artists felt that the aggression of the music, not to mention the violence of the scene, was too limiting on their personal expression through music.

It has to be remembered that punk was developed during a period of strife, economic as well as social. The artists spearheading the movement came from a world in which the future was uncertain, the world a dark and dangerous place, where one had to fight just to get through each day. As such, the music, the style, the attitude of punk as a whole was very aggressive. Punk looked out at the world and commented on, as well as attacked, what it saw to be wrong.

The mid-80s were a very different place. Punk had become rather impotent. It’s revolutionary ideals no longer had any place. As a result people began to look inward. The music became far more introspective (it is interesting to note that metal music went through a similar change, albeit about a decade later). Ones personal experiences and the way in which one was affected by the world, became the driving force of musical content.

This introspection was to give birth to the Emo sub-genre. The act of looking at and analyising oneself, ones own feelings, is what gave rise to the “Emo” tag. Though the exact source of this title is still uncertain, it is commonly agreed to stand for “emotional” or “emotive”.

Despite the so-called emotional aspect of early Emo, it’s roots in the Hardcore punk genre were still very much apparent. Emo took a great deal of influence from the melodic rhythms of Heavy metal and thrash metal artists of the time, taking a step away from the more cacophonous sounds of hadcore punk. This helped them to achieve their “emotional” sound.

At this point, Emo had taken aspects from both the Metal and the Punk scenes, it possessed the melody perfected by metal and expressed itself with the same teenage angst as punk, but it lacked the anger of either genre, expressing melancholy and disappointment rather than frustration or rage.

Despite it’s musical distinction from other genres and sub-genres, Emo was still not a culture in it’s own right. It’s fans were simply punks who happened to enjoy a few Emo bands.

Mainstream Emo, Emo as We Know it Today

As punk, through the growing popularity of artists such as Blink 182 and Greenday, became more and more accepted by, and absorbed into, the mainstream pop culture we began seeing the rise of “alternative” fashions amongst the kids that years before would have been considered “preppy” and in no way seen as belonging to any “alternative” group.

Dyed black hair, black clothing, dark make up, fashions that had once belonged to the “unaccepted” sub-cultures, the goths, the metalheads, the punks, began being touted by the mainstream majority of kids.

This, mostly teenaged-and-younger, crowd were labeled “Emo” because of their penchant for over-emotionality. Modern day Emos are the product of a generation, rife with learning disabilities and emotional disorders, struggling to understand themselves, much less the world in which they’re attempting to live. They are the middle- to upper-class, suburban white kids, whose parents were too busy earning money to pass on any sort of coping skills to their children. As a result, we have the Emo, for whom the world is a cruel place, and every inconvenience is a tragedy.

Trying to categorise what constitutes Emo music is almost impossible, as the number of bands adopted by this subculture are legion, and their styles range from melodic metal, through to bubblegum pop-punk. This serves to further prove the distinction between modern Emo and original Emo. Modern Emo is entirely a Subculture based around fashion and attitude, having almost nothing to do with the music to which it’s adherents listen

Emo is also the target of a great deal of derision at the the hands of other “alternative” subcultures, for a variety of reasons unique to each group:

Goth: Goths are technically supposed to be the deep, emotional and philosophical members of the alternative nation. Emos are often considered to be something akin to “baby goths” while goths despise any perceived resemblance between the cultures as they often view emos to be preppy kids playing at being goth without any idea what it means to be goth.
Metalheads: Metalheads see Emos as weak, having everything they could possibly want yet still complaining about how hard life is, when, in actuality, they have no idea how hard life really can be. Also, a lot of emos listen to “fake” metal bands and wear clothes proclaiming their love of this music. This tends to blur the line for outside observers between Metal and Emo, this is insulting to the Metalhead’s pride in his music. In addition, Emo is a culture based entirely around style and fashion, and most Emo males are metro-sexual. Although many Metalheads wear clothing proclaiming them as such, they largely reject the idea of fashion, and the inherent masculinity of the Metal subculture finds the idea of metro-sexuality to be repulsive.
Punks: Since, at its deepest roots, the emo subculture is a derivative of Punk, many Punks see Emos as being poseur punks. Their fashion adopts most heavily from “old-school’ punk styles, really having no identity of it’s own, and this can be considered by Punks to be largely responsible for the slow degradation of their cluture and music.

In conclusion

Once again, I see, I’ve gone way over the length I had originally planned for this piece to be. Hmmm.. Oh well, I, once again, say that I will expand on the subject of Emo in later posts. Exploring different aspects of their culture, fashion, interaction etc .