Is This Band Emo?

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Is This Band Emo?
Itbe logo.svg
Screenshot
Cayetana Is This Band Emo%3F.png
Is This Band Emo's page when searching for the band Cayetana
Type of site
Music, comedy, search engine
Founded2014
Founder(s) Tom Mullen
URL isthisbandemo.com
Current statusActive

Is This Band Emo? is a website that classifies various bands and musicians based on whether they are included in the emo music genre, with some responses accompanied by comedic comments. Created by Tom Mullen, founder of the Washed Up Emo podcast and website, it is intended to inform about the history of emo music. It has been featured in various music publications such as Alternative Press , Consequence , and Rolling Stone .

Contents

Origins

The emo genre formed in the Washington D.C. music scene as a subgenre of hardcore punk in the 1980s, before reaching mainstream popularity in the 1990s and 2000s. [1] [2] Tom Mullen, who had discovered the genre through the underground punk scenes, first created the blog Washed Up Emo in 2007 in response to its increasing mainstream prevalence. [1] [3] Likening emo's popularity in the 2000s to the "hair metal" genre, Mullen lamented what he perceived as the shifting legacy of the genre, noting how the mainstream press often emphasized and covered the genre's popularity and aesthetics in the decade, while overlooking the genre's hardcore punk origins and Midwest developments. [1] [3] Mullen later created the Is This Band Emo? site with various friends, musicians and writers around the world, facetiously called the Emo Council. He designed the logo for the council "in five seconds" based on the United Nations logo, and spent several months including bands with jokes on the site. [1] The website launched in late 2014 and crashed on its first day, according to Mullen. [1]

Content

"What I try to do with the site is remind people that if you came in through MCR, if you came in through Armor for Sleep or Fall Out Boy, there's more… There's more for you to experience, and let me show you where."

Tom Mullen discussing the purpose of the website. [1]

The website functions as a basic search engine that generates a response on whether a band or musician is classified as emo or not emo. [4] [5] As opposed to an algorithm or artificial intelligence models, the decision for the bands is manually determined by the Emo Council, who collectively discuss and vote for their inclusion. [1] [5] [6] Several of the responses include explanations on why a particular artist is or is not classified in the genre, often containing humorous and ironic commentary. [6] [7] Bands listed as emo on the site include Dashboard Confessional, Death Cab for Cutie, Jawbreaker, Taking Back Sunday, and The Promise Ring. [2] [4] [7] [8] Bands such as Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance, and The Used are listed as not emo on the website, despite their association with the Third Wave of the genre; [1] [8] [9] searching My Chemical Romance yields the result "Unlike high school, emo has a history longer than four years" as of 2022. [1] Bands not listed on the site may be requested through Twitter/X. [7] The website also contains several Easter eggs and references, such as a reference to a Saturday Night Live sketch upon searching Weezer, Bernie Sanders listed as emo among indie and punk, and basketball players such as Kevin Durant. [1] The site has received notice from Alternative Press, [4] Consequence, [5] and Rolling Stone, [7] along with musicians such as Phoebe Bridgers. [1] Similar websites, Is This Band Punk? , and Is This Band Indie? were also created by Washed Up Emo to help differentiate and educate music listeners about these genres. [10] [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

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4
time signature
and utilizing a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Screamo</span> Aggressive subgenre of emo

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Post-hardcore is a punk rock music genre that maintains the aggression and intensity of hardcore punk but emphasizes a greater degree of creative expression. Like the term "post-punk", the term "post-hardcore" has been applied to a broad constellation of groups. Initially taking inspiration from post-punk and noise rock, post-hardcore began in the 1980s with bands like Hüsker Dü and Minutemen. The genre expanded in the 1980s and 1990s with releases by bands from cities that had established hardcore scenes, such as Fugazi from Washington, D.C. as well as groups such as Big Black, Jawbox, Quicksand, and Shellac that stuck closer to post-hardcore's noise rock roots. Dischord Records became a major nexus of post-hardcore during this period.

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Deja Entendu is the second studio album by American rock band Brand New, released on June 17, 2003, by Triple Crown Records and Razor & Tie. It was widely praised for showing the band's maturation from their pop punk debut Your Favorite Weapon, and critics described the album as the moment when the band "started showing ambition to look beyond the emo/post-hardcore scene that birthed them."

<i>Tell All Your Friends</i> 2002 studio album by Taking Back Sunday

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scene (subculture)</span> Youth subculture

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The emo revival, or fourth wave emo, was an underground emo movement which began in the late 2000s and flourished until the mid-to-late 2010s. The movement began towards the end of the 2000s third-wave emo, with Pennsylvania-based groups such as Tigers Jaw, Algernon Cadwallader and Snowing eschewing that era's mainstream sensibilities in favor of influence from 1990s Midwest emo. Acts like Touché Amoré, La Dispute and Defeater drew from 1990s emo and especially its heavier counterparts, such as screamo and post-hardcore.

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The Hotelier is an American indie rock band from Worcester, Massachusetts, currently signed with Dreams of Field Recordings. The band's second album, Home, Like Noplace Is There, has been featured on Spin's "The 101 Best Albums of the 2010s" list and is considered an "essential emo album" by AltPress. The group has performed at the Pirate Satellite Festival, the Pitchfork Music Festival, and the Primavera Sound festival.

Emo rap is a subgenre of hip hop with influence from emo. Originating from the SoundCloud rap scene in the mid-2010s, the genre fuses characteristics of hip hop music, such as trap-style beats with vocals that are usually sung. The most prominent artists in the genre were Lil Peep, XXXTentacion, and Juice Wrld.

References

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  2. 1 2 Sayles, Justin (July 25, 2022). "The (Slightly Abridged) Dictionary of Emo". The Ringer . Archived from the original on July 25, 2022. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  3. 1 2 Burleson, Ryan (April 28, 2015). "The Medium: How Tom Mullen Took a Stand for Emo". Paste . Archived from the original on March 4, 2024. Retrieved March 4, 2024.
  4. 1 2 3 Sharp, Tyler (December 9, 2014). "This website will tell you if your favorite bands are "emo" or not". Alternative Press . Archived from the original on August 11, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
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  6. 1 2 Mack, Emmy (January 23, 2015). "Is Your Favourite Band Actually An Emo Band? This Website Knows". Music Feeds . Archived from the original on January 24, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  7. 1 2 3 4 Broicher, Fabian (January 23, 2015). "Ist meine Lieblingsband emo? Website klärt endlich auf" [Is my favorite band emo? Website finally clarifies]. Rolling Stone (in German). Archived from the original on February 6, 2024. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  8. 1 2 Gerstein, Julie (December 30, 2015). "This Website Will Tell You If Your Favorite Bands Are Emo Or Not". BuzzFeed . Archived from the original on December 31, 2015. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
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  10. Dickman, Maggie (December 9, 2014). "This website will tell you if your favorite bands are "punk" or not". Alternative Press . Archived from the original on February 13, 2019. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  11. Hughes, Josiah (June 9, 2017). "There's Finally a Website to Tell You Whether Your Favourite Bands Are Punk or Not". Exclaim! . Archived from the original on June 9, 2017. Retrieved February 6, 2024.