We will be covering the history of the music subculture, music theory and lyrics (what defines the subculture within its genre) and the mix-up of bands.

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So, let’s start at the very beginning -

Introduction

Emo came from the hardcore punk scene in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, and what made the big difference between the punk scene and Emo was the lyrics, because Emo covers topics of emotions and introspective topics (deep analysis of our personal selves).

Edit: I forgot to mention something very important: within the 80s, it wasn’t called “emo”; it was known as Emotional Hardcore Punk!

Emo grew throughout America within the 90s as it began to become popular; bands started to experiment with different sounds, and a lot of bands started to gain the “emo” label when some took it willingly, others not so much. (We will be talking about the bands in the next chapter).

What I also noticed from the late 90s up until now is that there is a lot of music subculture mumbo jumbo mix-up from punk, un-metal, goth, etc.

But before we go there, to understand more about this music subculture, we should explore the different waves of how it evolved.

Chapter 1) History

First Wave. 1985 - 1990

As we mentioned at the start, the subculture started in Washington, D.C., but it was a reaction against the growing violence and hyper-masculinity (“tough guy” persona) that came from the trad-hardcore punk.

The sound of this first wave of emo music is fast tempos which are blended with melodies and dynamics, along with vulnerable vocals and lyrics.

Originally, the subculture wasn’t known as “emo” around this time, as it was known as “emotional hardcore”, then shortened to emocore by the press, and this label was rejected by musicians like Ian MacKaye.

Image from Ian MacKaye Talks ‘Woodstock’ Soundtrack Obsession in New Book Excerpt
Fugazi and Minor Threat co-founder reveals the albums that influenced him most as a kid in writer Eric Spitznagel’s book Rock Stars on the Record: The Albums That Changed Their Lives.
By Jason Newman, published on February 24th, 2021.

Defining Bands: Rites of Spring, Embrace, Beefeater, Moss Icon.

Second Wave: 1991 - 1999

The Emocore sound moved to the American Midwest and grew into different music subgenres, as bands and artists went from aggressive shouting to clean arpeggiated guitar playing (this is when individual notes of a chord are played one after another rather than played at the same time. If you want a good example of this, I recommend checking out Alicia Keys’ If I Ain’t Got You. I know it’s not in theme with this article, but it is a really good example of hearing the arpeggio being played.) Complex time signatures and quite loud dynamics.

The emo-core subculture started to create more of its own fashion/style with thrifted cardigans, jumpers, vintage t-shirts and vinyl record collecting; and indie labels like Jade Three and Polyvinyl became rather popular during this time.

Defining Bands: Sunny Day Real Estate, American Football, Cap’n Jazz, Mineral, The Promise Ring, Texas is the Reason, Orchid and Seatia.

Third Wave: 2000 - 2009

This is when the term “emo” came around, as the music subculture had a “commercial explosion”, as it went from an indie rock subgenre to a global youth music subculture which was heavily amplified by MTV, Warped Tour and early social media platforms like Myspace.

The main sounds of this genre are a mix of pop-punk, post-hardcore and stadium rock hooks. It also evolved into a fashion scene as well, with side-swept bangs, dyed black or neon hair, heavy black eyeliner, skinny jeans, studded belts and Converse sneakers.
This was when the subculture became misunderstood and started to get mixed up with goth and metal subcultures.

Defining bands: Jimmy Eat World (Clarity I Bleed American), Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco.

Fun Fact: Even though Panic! At The Disco gained the label emo within the mid-2000s, their actual sound is a blend of baroque pop, electronic dance and classic 60s rock.
They were called “emo” because they were signed by Pete Wentz from the band Fall Out Boy to the label Fueled by Ramen, which put them into that pop-punk and emo area.
And a lot of the early promo photos and music videos featured the emo fashion style, and the audience came from the emo subculture too, due to its flair and angsty titles.

And there are two other bands that were thrown into the emo label when, actually, they’re not -

Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.

In my personal opinion, I wouldn’t classify Panic! At The Disco, but I am surprised by my deep-dive research about Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance.

Fourth Wave: 2010 - 2017

Young musicians rejected the 2000s pop-punk sounds and aesthetic and went back to the 90s Midwest emo and math-rock sounds.

What is Math-rock?

The main sound was fingerpicking, open guitar tunings, gang vocals and deeply personal narrative songwriting.

This wave was driven by online message boards like Reddit’s r/emo, Bandcamp and DIY house venues, and the focus of the music subculture was community, inclusivity and musical craftsmanship.

Defining bands: The Hotelier, Modern Baseball, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Foxing, Algernon Cadwallader.

Fifth Wave: 2018 - Now

Emo to this day has gone in two major directions: genre-bending and digital experimentation within mainstream media like emo rap and hyperpop, with artists like Lil Peep, Juice WRLD, and Machine Gun Kelly bringing the lyrical themes and guitar samples to hip-hop and trap.

Other beginning bands are: Origami Angel, Glass Beach and Weatherday.

There are also events like Emo Nite and massive festivals like When We Were Young that turned the 2000s scene culture into a celebratory era.

https://www.museumofyouthculture.com/emo-numetal/

https://www.britannica.com/art/emo

Chapter 2) Bands that are mislabeled as Emo.

And it will surprise you.

My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Panic! At The Disco, Blink-182, Evanescence, Good Charlotte, The All-American Rejects, Offspring, Green Day, Avenged Sevenfold, Thirty Seconds to Mars, Bullet For My Valentine, Black Veil Brides, Twenty One Pilots, Palaye Royale, Pierce The Veil, Sleeping with Sirens, Motionless in White, Bring Me The Horizon, The Used…and many more!

And that list can go on and on. I don’t think I need to cover every single one of these bands, but what I will do is cover the bands that I know are very popularly known as “emo” when they’re not.

Let’s kick this off with a most famous one:

My Chemical Romance Analysis.

“Basically, it’s never been accurate to describe us. Emo bands were being booked while we were touring with Christian metal bands because no one would book us on tours. I think emo is fucking garbage, it’s bullshit. I think there’s bands that unfortunately we get lumped in with that are considered emo and by default that starts to make us emo. All I can say is anyone actually listening to the records, put the records next to each other and listen to them and there’s actually no similarities.”

Quote from the Rolling Stone Article published in 2007, September 20th. Written by Rolling Stone. My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way Taps Another Nail Into “Emo” Coffin.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/my-chemical-romances-gerard-way-taps-another-nail-into-emo-coffin-101867/

I wanted to kick this off with this quote because I do love it when bands/artists do make statements like this, especially when it comes to factors with the music on how the different genres sound.

The most famous “emo” song of theirs, as we all know it as The Black Parade, as there are memes where they press a note on the piano and an emo starts to be “triggered” and cries. But the song isn’t even emo at all, even tho it became an “emo anthem”.

Their main goal through this song was the opera-rock inspired by the legendary band Queen, but to truly understand why The Black Parade isn’t an emo song, we need to look into the music theory and compare it to a traditional emo band.

Lyrics

“He said, “Will you defeat them?
Your demons, and all the non-believers
The plans that they have made?”

The song is about a character called The Patient who dies of cancer and confronts his life and death. Gerard Way (lead singer ‘n’ frontman of My Chemical Romance) has mentioned in previous articles that he’s framing it around human spirits over darkness, of one’s spirit that gets through really hard things - the dark things that can happen in life- but we all get through it, both physically n mentally. And these themes don’t just run throughout this song, but throughout the album as well.
“
“When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band”

Within the song, the patient’s dad took him to see a parade in the city. And that memory becomes a symbol of the Patient becoming part of the black parade, which represents his death.

Music Theory

The tempo of this song is rather interesting because it starts off slow at 75 BPM (BPM = Beats Per Minute) and then shifts to a half-time feel at 194 BPM, as the song starts with its iconic G note piano melody before we get onto the main pop-punk rock energy.

And what also makes this song interesting is that it changes key from G Major to A Major, because normally when you combine two different scales together, it can sound like it’s clashing together the notes; I tend to call them “ew” notes because they don’t sound very pleasant. But if done right, you can get away with it.

So, for example, to change key, I might want to end the G Major Scale on the A, for example, not just because of wanting to go to the A Major scale, but because they are both part of the G Major scale; they both don’t have an A# or Ab (A Flat)t. I may stick to the notes A, B, D and E before moving to the C#, F#, G#.

It’s a fun challenge to fiddle around with. Do you guys have a musical instrument? Honestly, give it a go playing with these two different scales and see if you can transition from one scale to another smoothly without it sounding “ew” or clashy. I would love to hear how you get on in the comments below!

What makes this song “not emo”?

There is a big debate about this, because some people do argue that this song is emo due to vocal delivery, lyrical content and cultural association that is read as “emo”, but not the instrumentation itself.

Can I see some of the emo resemblance? Yes, a little, but even though society says the lyrics are emo, I don’t see them as emo at all, because it tells a story, yeah people can relate to it, but I wouldn’t say it’s “emo”.

Comparing the lyrics to Deeper Than Inside by Rites of Spring, it’s pure emotion; the best way I can describe it is like emotional turmoil.

“I’m going down, going down, deeper than inside
The world is my fuse
And once inside gonna tear till there’s nothing left to find
And you wonder just how close, close-up can be”

Now, comparing it to The Black Parade -

“When I was a young boy
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band
He said, “Son, when you grow up
Would you be the saviour of the broken
The beaten and the damned?”

If you want to see the full lyrics on both of these songs, you can follow these links here. I don’t want to share all the lyrics because there is only so much I can share without being copyrighted.

https://genius.com/Rites-of-spring-deeper-than-inside-lyrics
https://genius.com/My-chemical-romance-welcome-to-the-black-parade-lyrics

Chapter 3) Music Theory - What Makes it Emo?

And we are going to be using the two songs above, The Black Parade and Deeper Than Inside, to compare them.

When doing research into Deeper Than Inside by Rites of Spring, it’s not very high energy, and the fact that the sources also disagree about the chord progressions is a sign of a less “settled” arrangement, and it’s a very compact verse, pre-chorus, chorus, etc.

But with Welcome to the Black Parade, it does start slow but then shifts to half-time, where it starts to feel very danceable too. And the song is in G Major, as we know, but changes to A Major.

The chords are also more of a clean progression within the verses, where it’s more polished compared to the emo tracks.

I know I said “sources also disagree with different chord progressions”, but it does show how rough the song is, and their main goal is to capture the raw live performances within their music. It was all played in one take.

However, if you play both of these songs side by side, you can hear the difference, especially if you listen to another MCR (My Chemical Romance) song - Teenagers.

In Summary

Deeper Than Inside is like an emotional, pure, raw emotional outburst - start to finish- but with The Black Parade it’s more like a storyline; yeah, it does have an emotional arc to it, I mean all songs do, but it also has a calculated key change. The Black Parade is more of a narrative rather than the Deeper Than Inside track as confessional.

So, Phillippa… Which bands ARE classed as “emo”?

Chapter 4) The Real Emo Bands

80s: Rites of Spring, Embrace, Dag Nasty, Fugazi, Moss Icon, Grey Matter, Soulside

90s: Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, The Get Up Kids, The Promise Ring, Cap’n Jazz, American Football, Mineral

Currently: Modern Baseball, Origami Angel, The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, Foxing.

Now, the “emo” bands in the 2000s I don’t count because it’s just the mainstream pop-punk crossover with the bands I mentioned above, like MCR, Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Black Veil Brides, Jimmy Eat World, etc.

They are classed as pop-punk and alternative rock, but they got pulled into that “emo” label due to the media and the fanbase culture within the 2000s, and not due to the real emotional hardcore music/youth subculture.

MCR also gets labelled as Goth too, when actually they are nowhere near the music within the Goth subculture. If you want me to write about that subculture next, let me know in the comments below!

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I grew up listening to Dolly through my parents and my grandparents, and not going to lie - knowing that she is now with all of the other amazing legends that have passed away, it feels strange. I just had this weird impression that she would…just live on forever. But I suppose we do forget that celebrities aren’t these supernatural creatures; they’re human beings like us.

Anyway, shall we dig in? Let’s get to know Dolly’s Jolene.

Lyrics

The name of the song came from a young fan who came up to Dolly in the early years of her career, who asked for her autograph. She had red hair and beautiful skin, and she asked her what her name was, and she said, “Jolene”.

However, the song wasn’t just about that sweet girl that she met, but it was about a different woman who Dolly felt was paying too much attention to her husband, Carl Dean.

You can watch the video here!

Dolly could have confronted the woman who was being flirtatious with her husband, but instead she wrote this song with the narrator expressing vulnerability and fear of losing a loved one.

The song opens like a poem with beautiful description:

Music Theory

To play this song, all you need is three chords, which are A minor, C major, and G Major; but to play within the original recorded key, you would need to put a capo on the guitar on the 4th fret. However, when it comes to playing the piano, you can’t put a capo on the piano, so the chords would be C#m, E and B.

Now, that may sound confusing, but let me try to explain in the easiest way possible.

When you put a capo on the guitar frets it makes it go up half a semitone (half tone), for example, the E string would go up to E#. (If it was a whole tone - whole step, it would go up to F. That’s just an example.)

So, the guitar chords we have for this song are: Am, C and G. So, to transpose this, we need to go up 4 semitones (or 2 whole tones).

Image from https://londonpianocentre.com/memorise-piano-notes/

A-A# is a semitone
A-A#-B is a whole tone
B-C is a semitone
B-C-C# is a whole tone.

I hope that makes sense with the piano diagram above!

Production

Jolene is the lead single from Dolly’s album called Jolene, which was released in October 1973. It became her second No.1 on the Billboard country charts, and Dolly had said she wrote Jolene in the same few days as I Will Always Love You.

It was recorded on May 22nd at RCA Studio B in Nashville, and it was produced by Bob Ferguson.

I know I haven’t mentioned a lot on the production side, because I wanted to focus more on the music theory bit, as I know I haven’t covered semitones and whole tones as I did in this article.

Dolly was a talented and amazing singer; she’s with all of the other big legends now resting at peace. Rest well, Dolly…

Thank you for reading this weeks, Song of the Week!

Monday 31st is Monthly Monday Analysis - Emo Subculter.

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That’s Life by Frank Sinatra

There are a lot of songs I really do love, but this one gives me hope during dark times and gives me perspective.

Because life can be tough; it can be absolute bullshit.

But it can also be good.

And it's true, when I do fall "flat on my face" I do "pick myself up and get back in the race" because "that's life" and in reality life is short. I mean 50-90 years in numbers is a big number but when you look at how our brain perceives time as we get older it seems like it goes quicker unless we change our routine and then it seems to go slower.

And that is true, some people do "get their kicks stomping on a dream", a dream you want to achieve, tell you - you can't do it when actually you know you can achieve it, like me with my writing due to my dyslexia.

I know I do state my dyslexia a lot but I don't use it as a label, I don't like using labels to identify myself because in reality I am many things, kind, gothic, female, mother, carer, teacher, writer, musician, witch, wiccan, pagan, future wife, sensitive, pmdd, friend and so much more.

I mention my dyslexia to create awareness with it, because it's not just reading and writing.

I went on a rambling rampage there didn't I? My bad 🤣

Anyway, I don’t let my dyslexia get me down, or any of my “quirks”, I try to fight through, “get on with it”, but making sure I don’t pass my limit because I also need to look after myself so I can look after my two boys.

This song by Frank Sinatra, That’s Life, is like my “morals” and gives me perspective to keep going, to keep fighting because life will just throw obstacles in your way.

Before moving onto the next heading, there’s something I do want to say about getting through tough times in life, is something I like to say to people and something I follow myself -

When you’re going through a storm, it doesn’t last forever; no storm does, it may become settled but still grey, but the sun will come out at some point.

And I must admit, I know this is going to make me sound like I’m vain, but, like, I know I am quite emotionally mature for my age of 25, I have had a lot of people tell me that but hey ho, it’s just the way that I am. ANYWAY! Next heading!

What’s to come:

I am currently working on a few projects for the Melody Times shop!

I am working on The Simple Music Guide to Song Analysis book 2, but I’m also working on crafting a workbook to go with the Song Analysis guide 1 and 2.

There will be more detail and more song analysis in the workbook, along with note pages if you want to print the document off and make notes, and there will be some quizzes to test your knowledge as well, along with some activities for those who have musical instruments. But you don’t have to have a musical instrument if you don’t have one.

When I publish it on my online shop, you can buy the workbook on its own or as a bundle with The Simple Guide to Song Analysis 1 and 2.

Preview of Workbook:

I'm also hoping to do more guest Song of the Week analyses, so if any of you would like to take part, please feel free to let me know in the comments below!

Last week’s Song Analysis:

Melody Times

Song of the Week Ft. Tamara Casey: Uninvited by Alanis Morissette.

Welcome to this week’s Song of the Week! Today we have a special guest - Tamara Casey from Rare Groove Productions. She is an amazing singer, songwriter and producer, and in her bio she mentions she doesn’t like to perform, which I can relate to, as I just freeze on stage and just forget EVERYTHING when I am on my own. In a band, I’m okay, though…

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13 days ago · 16 likes · 9 comments · Phillippa Taylor and Tamara Casey

We also have Monthly Monday Analysis coming out on Monday the 31st about the Emo Subculture!

I hope you all enjoyed this mini bonus celebratory article on us hitting 100 subscribers, and I hope to see you guys in the next one!
P.S. If you have any questions about music or about me, please feel free to mention them in the comments down below!

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I highly recommend you check out Tamara’s publication - Rare Groove Productions.

Rare Groove Productions

I write about my songs, the process, the people that help bring it to life and the other factors that influence me as a songwriter and music producer.

By Tamara Casey

Now let’s pass this on to Tamara on why she chose this song!

Tamara Casey Rationale:

When thinking about a song that would be interesting for a composition breakdown, I struggled a little. Wanting to choose something that a) I like, b) was musically interesting, and c) was something that was a bit obscure. Why? Who knows? Just how I think.

My pick - Uninvited by Alanis Morissette.

City of Angels was one of my favourite films in the 90s. A big part of that was the amazing soundtrack. I touched on it briefly in my post about sync music.

Rare Groove Productions

Sync Music

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6 months ago · 38 likes · 63 comments · Tamara Casey

Uninvited has a number of qualities I love - simple piano parts, clean vocals, interesting lyrics and incredible arrangement ebbs and flows. It also fits my criteria for being a bit obscure.

Given Phillippa’s tender years, I thought there was a chance she may not know the film or the song. I was curious what her take would be.

With that backdrop, I will turn it over to Phillippa to do her thing and look forward to the results.

Phillippa’s Music Analysis:

I must admit, when I looked up the song I thought to myself this reminds me a lot of another song, these vocals sound very familiar, and it’s because Alanis had done the song You Oughta Know, which I wasn’t a big fan of to be fair, but hearing Uninvited, at first I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it…until it started to build and build. And it did remind me of Bring Me to Life by Evanescence.

Also, and fyi for Tamara, she was right in thinking I wouldn’t know the song or the film! So it was rather interesting to analyse and listen to, and I won’t lie, I do love a good interesting song, which makes me think: do I like this song? I’m not 100% sure; if so…why?

Anyhow, let’s dive into the wonders of this song, shall we?

Production and Composition:

Alanis wrote and co-produced Uninvited with Rob Cavallo (he is known for producing for the pop-punk band Green Day) for the film City of Angels, which was released in 1998.
However, due to how well the soundtrack to City of Angels did in sales, the track Uninvited didn’t make it onto Alanis’s album, Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie, except for the demo version.

It went to No. 1 on the mainstream Top 40 and won two Grammys in 1999 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and Best Rock Song.

The song grows in dynamics rather than changing drastically with chords; it builds and builds and builds, from soft piano and vocals to a handful of chords and melody through orchestral and electric guitars till the end.

Another big name who helped with this track is David Campbell, who did the string arrangement, as he also arranged strings for Adele, Beyoncé, and many other major records for orchestral pop and rock music.

Music Theory

Uninvited is in the key of D Major, but it's definitely an interesting one when it comes to music theory because the D Major scale is - D E F# G A B C#. In chords, that is, D Major, E minor, F# minor, G Major, A Major, B minor and C# diminished.

This is what gives a song that happy and bright sound, but when listening to this track, you can hear how eerie it is, especially when listening to the piano notes being played with the vocals.

This is because they swapped a major chord to a minor one, which is G. Instead of staying “true” to the D Major scale, instead of using G Major, they used G minor, and it’s not diatonic to D Major (aka it doesn’t sound like “home”; it doesn’t sound resolved); it makes the song sound unsettled.

It gives it that mournful colour but also brings out the vulnerability of the lyrics.

What they have also done in this song is, instead of using a C# diminished, they changed it to a C Major, instead of returning to the D Major, which can create this incorrect sound, but it’s done artistically, which makes it so daunting, I find, to listen to, in my opinion, but so interesting too.

Lyrics

In the past, she has described the song as a “fear of love”, aka talking themselves out of letting someone into their bubble.

In my opinion, the lyrics come across as quite defensive, protecting oneself from another, and the composition in the song, like I have talked about above in the music theory section, brings the lyrics to life- not just Alanis’s amazing vocal performance, everything.

I am going to mention Alanis’s vocals in this section because of the way she sings; the lyrics are almost spoken word throughout the song as the music carries that heavy, unsettled, uneasy weight.

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Thank you all for reading this week’s Song of the Week! I hope you all enjoyed it, and omg we have reached 100 subscribers! Love you all and thank you.

And thank you, Tamara Casey, for joining me today on this week’s Song of the Week!

Rare Groove Productions

I write about my songs, the process, the people that help bring it to life and the other factors that influence me as a songwriter and music producer.

By Tamara Casey

I do have a bonus article coming out on Monday the 24th to celebrate us reaching 100 subscribers. It will be a mix of what I am working on currently, a little more of getting to know me as the person behind Melody Times, and a song analysis of one of my favourite songs that I tend to actually live by as one of my values.

So! See you guys in the next one!

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Road trip to Bulgaria

Song of the Week - Duality by Slipknot.

Road trip to Bulgeria

Driving from Dorset, UK, on the ferry, and across Europe to get to Bulgaria was quite an experience. A stressful rollercoaster, but also exciting.

When entering France, getting off the ferry was scary on the roads. You drive on the opposite side, and the speed i…

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Ariana has a unique vocal range and a beautiful harmonising voice.

I still find it …

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It’s not 100% what it said, but it was along those lines.

It did make me think to myself, like, I understand the pers…

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However, before I get cracking on, what inspired me to do this article is that I got mentioned in a comment section, suggesting me to answer someone's question about what rhythm and melody are in basic terms.

So I thought, why not write…

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