The History Of "Emo" As A Musical Sub-Genre Essay

The History of “Emo” as a musical genre




Today the term “Emo” (as a genre of music and as an adjective) has taken on a connotation as far from its original meaning as one could logically imagine in its short life of under 20 years.   Short for “Emocore” a contraction of the words emotional and hardcore, Emo as a genre, has its roots in hardcore-punk scene from the Washington DC area in the early 80's but differentiates itself mainly by its focus on personal and emotional lyrics as the driving force rather than the adrenaline appealing punk energy of its forefather .   The first true Emo bands would be coined as such til the early 90's though when an effective line could be drawn between it's punk origins and the new blend of complex personal lyrics, punk themed instrumentals, and melodic singing characterized by intense delivery regularly using screaming.   This time line though is still quite contrary to the popular belief that Emo is a fairly new phenomena,   that it has only really started dominating the independent music scene since the beginning of the new millennia.   The term Emo has also evolved in such as a way as to become an adjective toward a style of dress and even more generally as a description of the social subgroup of those who are involved in and are fans of that style of music.

While the first bands showing symptoms of our modern definition of Emo had only snippets of the full blow effect, Rites of Spring, a band from the mid 80's is often attributed with having the term pioneered to describe their style.   They are also commonly attributed with an event colloquially refereed to as the “Revolution Summer”; used to describe the summer of 85' where many band genesetic of the genre emerged.   Gray Matter, Soulside, Three, Marginal Man, Fire Party, Rain, Ignition and Shudder to Think all came from this time and set the stage for the genre.   Rolling into the early 90's many DC area bands followed with new elements progressing toward melodic rock...