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| via Boston Phoenix |
As we did before with the Metal, Goth, and Brit Pop issues, my colleagues and I at the Boston Phoenix have compiled an issue this week dedicated to the Top 100 Emo Songs. Warning: if you are over 30 never wore eyeliner/girl jeans (via being a girl) you are going to be MAD.
Personally, I am just as into the power ballad pop era of commercialized emo as I am the tr00 early r00ts of emo (via DC hardcore), so I'm OK with our pop-friendly list. Could've used a little more Mineral/Boy's Life/Lifetime in my opinion, but I'm honestly just excited to have been able to mention Texas Is the Reason, The Anniversary, The Promise Ring, and American Football in a news-paper in the year 2012.
I wrote a few of the blurbs for the top five songs. Check them out below, then go read the rest of the list here. Check out the Spotify playlist here and dig the articles All emo is local ; A punk phenomenon grows up; and Emo: it might as well be a four-letter word.
“The Quiet Things That No One Ever Knows” by Brand New from Deja Entendu
There's a reason we were all referring to Brand New's Jesse Lacey as the next Morrissey around the time of this near-perfect 2003 record. In a genre notable for its predictably broken-hearted navel gazing doggerel, Lacey embraced a broader, poetic panorama, with the lyrics to songs like this soaring, euphoric power-ballad making it known his peers would need to step up their scribbling game. “I lie for only you,” he sang. “And I lie well. Hallelujah.” No coincidence on the religious undertones there, hearing this one performed live is a transcendent revivalist preacher sermon for all the sad young literary kids.
“Screaming Infidelities” by Dashboard Confessional from The Swiss Army Romance
When this record was released in 2000, it was emo's Dylan-goes-electric moment in reverse. Chris Carrabba had abruptly departed the seminal post-hardcore outfit Further Seems Forever and set off alone into the moody Florida sunset with only his acoustic, a powerfully-, and often painfully-emotive warble, and a heroically broken heart. Both maligned by haters and melodramatically beloved at once by diehards as the most quintessentially “emo” emo track ever, it's a cuckold's anthem for anyone who's ever sat home alone obsessing over what it is she's up to tonight.
“Mass Pike” The Get Up Kids from Red Letter Day
The GUK may have been from Kansas City, but there was always a strong vein of Mass. <3 running through their music. A wistful, minor chord piano lead that builds to a spike-edged punk lament, this 1999 track is a deceptively simple paean to falling in and out of love – “Last night on the Mass Pike, thought I was losing you. Last night on the Mass Pike, I fell in love with you.” – and not being able to tell sometimes which one is which. There's emo in a nutshell right there. Probably doesn't hurt my fondness for the song that I was traveling regularly back and forth from Boston to Worcester at the time myself the year it came out, trying to answer the same question.
“Overstand” by Sense Field from Building
“Understand what it is to be loved by someone who understands.” It sounds simplistic to the jaded eye fifteen plus years later, but for a generation of punk kids in the nineties learning to feel something besides alienation and confusion, this song was eye-, and heart-opening. Part of the important second wave of emo bands at the time that were popularizing the sound, Sense Field is occasionally woefully overlooked in the canon. But for people who understand, this is what it feels like to love a band that understood.
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8 comments:
Was someone asking for a top 100 list of emo songs? That seems suspect to me. There's some kind of conspiracy going on here, and I think we all know who's behind it.
WHO DO YOU MEAN?
Wait. There is NO Mineral on this list? Definitely, suspect, bro. You repeat too many bands that no one cares about anymore to not have at least one Mineral track up in this piece. Granted, these sorts of lists are always going to get “Dude, I can’t believe you didn’t include…” Obviously everything is subjective, but to a new and old emo-lover who is also an IRL old man, the top 10 feels kind of troll-y, + or - a couple choices. I will think of other songs that should also be on this list forever.
Yeah man, I feel you. No Mineral and a couple others I mentioned is kind of glaring. Oh well.
I am happy not having an Pedro the Lion on there, which everyone seems to also be mad about. And CapnJazz weren't really that good.
True story: until this playlist, I thought "I write sins not tragedies" was by Incubus. You really DO learn something new every day.
Yo, there's a lot of emo crossover with Incubus somehow. This one song I thought was Incubus forever was actually Finch. Weird one.
CAP'N JAZZ REALLY WAS THAT GOOD BRO! Respek
i don't know who cap'n jazz is/was, but there's literally no song they could write to atone for that craptastic band name.
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