Whiny Emo Boys

Welcome to Part II of the Good Music Corner's three-part series on the stereotypes that should populate the cast of American Idol.  This week: whiny emo boys!  The producers of Idol are always looking for eye candy to feed the adolescent teenyboppers.  Why not feed them a few brooding poet-types who can drop a metaphor or two?

Emo is teenage anthem music.  Nowadays, the genre is often associated with dyed black hair, tight clothes and other fashions originated by the screamo scene at Gravity Records.  But emo boys are actually much more than side-swept bangs.  They are punkish, lovelorn Romeos, wallowing and raging against the tragic beauty of existence.  Yes, they are whiny.  They whine about broken love, the mediocrity of suburbia and the frivolity of their peers. 

In a world filled with facades, it's refreshing to hear a little introspection now and again, and whiny emo boys aren't afraid to wear their hearts on their sleeves.  

[url=http://www.last.fm/music/Rites+of+Spring/_/Drink+Deep]"Drink Deep" by Rites of Spring[/url]  

The lead singer of Rites of Spring, Guy Picciotto, was one of the founders of emocore.  In 1985, this D.C. kid helped kick start "Revolution Summer," a rebellion against the brutish machismo of New York's punk scene.  Rites of Spring's debut was an "emotional" reaction to the macho jock mentality of hardcore punk.  Unlike other punk songs from the era, the reflective lyrics in "Drink Deep" encourage punksters to thing beyond thugness and cease the day. 

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDSsh7Ocv8o] "In Circles" by Sunny Day Real Estate[/url]  

Sunny Day Real Estate was one of the first emo bands to start recording radio friendly  music.  They were less hardcore punk and more indie rock, paving the way for modern emo boys like Conor Oberst and Chris Carrabba.  In this track from 1994's Diary, lead vocalist Jeremy Enigk embraces the dichotomy of healing wounds while bleeding himself.  Later, when Enigk became a born-again Christian, the band had nothing left to brood about and broke up. 

[url=http://www.last.fm/music/The+Get+Up+Kids/_/Red+Letter+Day] "Red Letter Day" by The Get Up Kids[/url]   

Matt Pryor's voice sounds like it dropped two days ago, a prerequisite of  every whiny emo boy.  The Get Up Kids' wildly successful 1999 album, Something to Write Home About, helped popularize emo and simultaneously spurred an anti-emo backlash that lingers to this day. 

* Like all things emo, The Get Up Kids deny being emo. 

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Kx8JeJIedA]"Something Vague" by Bright Eyes[/url]

Oh, how the artsy girls swoon over Conor Oberst and his Moleskin songs about the search for meaning (whiny emo boys are always searching for meaning).  Bright Eyes, a favorite folk-influenced indie rock band, exemplifies the broad generality of modern emo.  Emo is no longer easy to categorize; it is an all-encompassing and widely varied genre. 

In this elegiac ballad from 2000's Fevers and Mirrors, Oberst uses enough cerebral metaphors to make William Faulkner jealous.  Coffin apartments, brain dreams, disapperaing bridges and starving eyes... Oberst is the poet laureate of coffee shop imagery and remains modern emo's reigning Shakespeare.   

The Good Music Corner began after VFTW's infallible Dave noticed an inundation of pretentious music geeks visiting his site.  This blog, in addition to countering the poor quality music marketed on American Idol, serves as a soapbox for self-proclaimed musicologists.

If you have a submission for the Suggestion Box, would like to talk music, or feel a need to complain about the likeness of the caricatured Idols adorning the banner of this site, you may email Laura at CaricaturesByLaura at Yahoo.com