Thoughts on emo, as a GENRE Options

[Ihate]

This is a topic that a lot of people disagree on. What classifies a song or a band as "emo" to you? Not necessarily talking about the way a band dresses, or the way they do their hair, etc...just strictly basing it off the sound of the band/song. Is it lyrical content? Is it an almost whiny style of singing and screaming? When I hear the word emo one generalization comes to mind, suicidal people, so to me I would say an emo band or song is based off the lyrical content more so than the sound they produce.

What do you think?

[NoSex]

Emo (also known as emotive hardcore) is a form of hardcore punk which emerged in the mid-1980's around the scene in Washington D.C. with bands like Rites of Spring, Embrace, and Nation of Ulysses and continued on into the early 1990's with bands like Sunnday Day Real Estate and Fugazi. It wore American Hardcore influence on its sleeve with screaming and yelping vocalizations, simple percussion, and high distortion. However, due to the immense violence, discrimination, and rigidness in form within the hardcore punk scene... artists began to backlash. This created a more melodic, more experimental, and more personal sounds that was less chaotic and less violence.

Not until the turn of the century was the term largely perverted to include a "lifestyle," and "fashion." Further, the sound that the term "emo" was originally associated with has been entirely subjugated in today's generation. No longer is there a clear idea of what exactly "emo" sounds like, and, this sounds ambiguous nature has been accepted into the mainstream with bands like My Chemical Romance and and Dashboard Confessional being described as "emo."

LEARN SOMETHING.