Left image via author.Right image via 'My Chemical Romance'
As a former emo kid who still spends at least one hour a week listening to emo music—in particular, My Chemical Romance—I’ve been following the trail to their inevitable reunion. For over five years, I’ve creeped their personal Twitter and Instagram accounts, searched Google News for an inkling of information that they would return, and in recent months, learned that they were gearing up for a reunion: they changed their Facebook and Twitter profile pictures to cryptic images; in May, Joe Jonas spilled the tea on a reunion to which MCR guitarist Frank Iero fired back, calling the Jonas Brothers a “Disney Band”; and Warner Records prematurely released new merch. All the while, MCR vehemently denied they were getting back together, crushing our collective dreams. But not me. In the office where I work, I’m the official town crier of My Chemical Romance news. Advertisem*nt
Music
My Chemical Romance Is the Artist of the Decade
Hannah Ewens
I wasn’t just an emo teen—I was Black emo teen. If anyone was angsty, misunderstood, and slighted, it was me. By 14, I had moved from my pop-punk phase of listening to Good Charlotte, Gob and Sum 41 on my walkman—my clothes held together by obnoxiously large safety pins, my Converse scribed on with black marker, and rainbow socks—to black band T-shirts and rubber bracelets, bows in my hair, and skull jewelry. All throughout Grade 9, I roamed the halls of high school alone, carrying around a photo album of printed images of my favourite emo and screamo bands—MCR, From First to Last, The Used, Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy, Weezer—which I’d spend classes admiring as dumb jocks threw pennies at my head. After school, I blasted From First to Last’s “Dear Diary, My Teen Angst Has a Body Count” as I applied pink eyeshadow and eyeliner tears to take overexposed photos for my MySpace profile. At night, I became MsGeeWay, writing From First to Last and MCR band crossover stories on the now-defunct fandomination.net. (By 13, I became one of the most popular fanfic writers in the category.) Hiding behind the anonymity of the internet, I didn’t have to worry about being the sole Black emo. But at my Toronto high school, where everyone was obsessed with hip hop, Ice Creams and Air Jordans, I was the weird Black emo girl who no one—not even the boys—wanted to be around. Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
Music
The 100 Best Albums of 2019
VICE Staff
Our treasured nostalgia about emo music has always been teetering on the brink of resurgence. BuzzFeed listicles about emoness have been published as recently as last May. Homesick: Emo Night is a regularly occuring event across Ontario, and Emo Nite LA’s parties and two-days festivals draw a huge emo-loving crowd; it even brought Sonny Moore (now known as Skrillex) back together with his band From First to Last. All the while, we’ve been inundated with memes about emo culture, listening to mash-ups of emo and anthems with big name artists and singing our black hearts out at emo karaoke.And so it feels that My Chemical Romance’s triumphant resurrection is indicative of what us emo kids always knew: emo never truly died, and outcasts will always be outcasts. It’s even more evident with the band’s U.K. tour selling out in minutes, along with its whole North American tour selling out within hours, breaking record sales numbers at some venues. As the New York Post said, us “Aging Emo Kids” have returned to revisit a childhood that was collectively nightmarish yet comforting thanks to MCR’s music. I’ve been following my favourite emo bands into the 2010s, watching how they’ve recreated themselves in a new decade that belonged to hip-hop music and culture. Along with teenagers and their parents, I’ve continued to head-bang to Panic at the Disco, Fall Out Boy and Weezer, all of which have been influenced by pop, hip hop and R&B. As Weezer says in “Beach Boys,” a track off its 2017 pop-rock departure album “Pacific Daydream,”: “It’s a hip-hop world and we’re the furniture.” Advertisem*nt Advertisem*nt
Music
Some Emo Parenting Advice From American Football
Billy Eff
As I write this, I just scored my tickets to see My Chemical Romance. Even my mother, who never let me listen to emo in her dancehall-only car as a kid, endured the dreaded Ticketmaster queue. Though I’ve long set aside my wardrobe and gotten over not having a pre-Justin Bieber hairdo, I still feel just as emo as ever. I listen to MCR loud on the subway while ignoring shocked looks that once bothered me. Fall Out Boy albums are my shoulder to cry on during breakups. I join other fans on Twitter in raving about our favourite emo songs and albums, no longer worried about hiding behind a profile avatar. Since most people I now meet were scene back in the 2000s or are fans of the 2010s emo rap, I straddle the line between a culture that never included people like me, and one that was created by people like me.I can’t wait for all of us aging, raging emo kids to be reunited to experience the final missing piece of our loner youth—an MCR concert. In that space, regardless of race, we’ll get to be righteously angry at the world, one much different than when we deactivated our Myspace accounts. In that moment, it won’t matter what colour we are. And for that one fleeting moment, we will forget about the Danger Days ahead.Follow Eternity Martis on Twitter. Her new book "They Said This Would Be Fun" is coming out in March for Penguin Random House Canada.
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