Taking into consideration the growing population of emo listeners and fashion followers and with the growing popularity of printed on style humor or band name shirts, hoodies and scarves, still there's a question: what makes an emo - emo?
Yes, EMO - short for emotional. Defined by the hard core rock music mixed with the sentimental mellow sound and lyrics that are supposed to carry sentimental messages. It evolved all the way from the United States and it has started to gain followers all over the world. Believe it or not, the emo scene started from the music scene of the 1980's in Washington, DC and was revived again in the third wave of the emo music scene, which was about in the early part of 2001 up to the present.
Walking the paths of Ian Mac Kaye and Guy Picciotto, bands such as My Chemical Romance, Dashboard Confessionals, Yellow Card, Fall Out boy, The Used and Hawthorne Heights carry the genre emo to break through the international music scene. Aside from the founding roots of the emo music, there's Rites of Spring, Husker Du, Nation of Ulysses, Shudder to think, and Hoover who took the place of the second wave of emo music.
There are transitions to the music of emo. Over the years, emocore to emo to hard core emo narrowed down to being guitar-oriented, incorporating pop elements, and of course, the signature punk emo vocals of each band. Prior to the bands, of course, there are hundreds and thousands of emo fans all over the globe who live, breathe and think emo. Popular media stereotyping gave emo fans a negative image of angst, depression, self-injury and suicide. Of course, with some exceptions to those fans who take things too much by heart. There are other speculations, one of which male emo fans are being called homosexuals because they are more in touch with their feelings which is not typical according to male norms.
The songs' themes formulate circles in a couple of genres of teen angst, pressures, anxieties and sometimes pessimistic views about life. Somewhat exaggerated, they want to depict life in a typical society and the day to day hardships of teenagers which they can relate to. Rather than to ease the pain, sometimes it contributes to the depressing factors to what these fans are facing. Reading between the lines and taking the song too far from what it should be. Others noted that at the height of this new found fanaticism, there are a few who will attempt to commit suicide. Although others are for paparazzi purposes only, these could lead to many psychological effects on other listeners. On the lighter side of things, however, emo music also portrays friendship in a more general manner. This encourages the youth to be more expressive with themselves and take their lives in a new direction. Pent up feelings would no longer be a problem for them since they are able to liberally exhume some if not most of their harsh feelings towards the society and the people living around them.
