Brian..Emo????

[Shady]

A ludacris statment of course..But last night Virgin radio were talkin about Emo as the new 'thing' and they were counting down the Ten greatest Emo's and Brian came second..Just behind Kurt Cobain.

I hope this is not how troubled Rock geniuses are gonna be seen in the future.

[the captain]

That's funny. First of all, emo as the "new thing"? It's a description well worn out over the past decade (or more), I'd say. And like any descriptor of pop, it is an overgeneralization that limits artists.

That said...sure, Pet Sounds is as emo as anything any other band or artist considered as emo ever did. So it fits as well as anything else does, I guess.

[♩♬🐸 Billy C ♯♫♩🐇]

I wish my lawn was emo so it would cut itself.

[mikeyj]

I dont understand this emo thing. Can someone explain EXACTLY what emo is. Some people say its when people cut themselves (hence Jaymie's Dad's joke) and other people just say its a music genre aswell. And the people who say its a music genre say that "oh this is emo" all the time!! It frustrates me. Some people seem to think that anything that has ANY emotion in it is emo? Thats stupid if you ask me. Most music (atleast good music) has atleast a bit of emotion in it.

[Jonas]

I agree with Mikey. People who call music "emo" are just categorizing a post-punk unoriginal crappy style of music. But lets be real...ALL kinds of music is emotional. Hell, if theres NO emotion in your song...then don't bother calling it music.

[the captain]

I dont understand this emo thing. Can someone explain EXACTLY what emo is.

No.

Like any one-word categorization, it is ridiculous. Emo = emotional. Usualy it is used to describe relatively depressing music, but obviously that is limiting. So to really answer the question...no.

[Ebb and Flow]

I like to think of it as just another trend, a marketing ploy but record companies to combine a bunch of sub-genre counter-culture elements into one style of music with it's own clothing line and lunchboxes to go with it.  While this isn't exactly a new practice, I find Emo music and culture particularly nauseating.

And I would hardly call Brian "Emo".  While Pet Sounds has themes of melancholia and so-called "emotion" (What good music doesn't?), you don't exactly have the narrator cutting himself at the end of "Caroline, No".  And if you're going to call all albums with elements of sadness Emo, does that make Sinatra an emo for "In The Wee Small Hours"?  It's stupid to apply such short-term labels that will mean nothing to anybody in ten years to music that will have a much longer shelf life.

[shelter]

Emo's not new, it excists since the mid 80s. The term was already used for the second wave of Dischord bands from DC... Post-hardcore bands like Dag Nasty, Rites Of Spring, Gray Matter and Embrace... It was much more underground back then, though.

[Andrew G. Doe]

When I discovered that "Emo" was short for "emotional", I regret to say I laughed in the face of the person who told me. Isn't all music emotional ?

[mikeyj]

When I discovered that "Emo" was short for "emotional", I regret to say I laughed in the face of the person who told me. Isn't all music emotional ?

Well to be honest I dont really find artists like 50 Cent to be that emotional. For example that song that goes "Go short its your birthday were gonna party like its your birthday" THAT is like the opposite of the BW Piano demo of Surfs Up from the box set in terms of emotion.

[shelter]

When I discovered that "Emo" was short for "emotional", I regret to say I laughed in the face of the person who told me. Isn't all music emotional ?

Pretty much all music is made with emotion, but emo music is about emotions, primarily.

[Andrew G. Doe]

And, say, "Good Vibrations", or "Love Me Do" wasn't ?  Usual load of pretentious twaddle. Still, I get a good chuckle when the emo kids come in the shop trying so hard to look the part. Lemmings, each and every one of them.

[Roger Ryan]

Context is everything when considering the origins of the term. It was originally applied to indie punk bands who would write songs dealing with introspection and personal emotions as opposed to the standard "screw the establishment"/political-based material of most punk rock. In terms of Do-It-Yourself hardcore bands from the early 80s, compare Dead Kennedys to Husker Du. The DK material was consistently social/political satire whereas Husker Du dealt more consistently with personal emotions. Punk bands who followed this latter path were initially an anomally and so the term "emo" was coined as an easy label, a label that is completely useless now since bands like the Huskers and Fugazi obliterated the constraints of hardcore punk.

Current bands who try to live up to this now-imaginary label of "emo" tend to sound especially phony and contrived. The fact that Virgin radio is cataloging artists who pre-date the original use of the term and trying to shoe-horn them in is ridiculous.

[matt-zeus]

To me it seems like some crappy cross-genre of goth with a bit of nu-metal, Phil Oakey inspired hairstyles and then dressed up with some pretentious genre title. Car 67 is more 'emotional' to me. 

[shelter]

A little history in emo music:

In the early 80s there were a lot of really young hardcore punk bands in the USA. Thousands of 'em. But then around 1985 that kind of music started dying out, simply because the musicians grew up and became better musicians. Shouting slogans over three chord songs is fun, but it tends to get boring after a while. So some bands started going in the metal direction and became 'crossover', while some others went more into the college rock direction and became 'post-hardcore', or emo (most so called emo bands actually hate that word). I think the word emo was originally a word that the 'real' punks used for bands that started making mainstream rock. Calling someone 'emo' was pretty much the same thing as calling someone a sissy. So emo originally was an insulting name for former punkers who were now trying to sound like REM of The Smiths.

Of course it's different now. Today's emo bands have nothing to do with REM, The Smiths or hardcore. Their music is basically a mutated version of the music that the original emo bands made.