Does Emo = 80's hair band metal?
Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2007 9:19 am
Emo Punk: Today's Hair Metal?
artist: emo punk date: 06/14/2007 category: general music news
Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is ... , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, "basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over"), reports James Montgomery of MTV.com.
Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists Crush represents are basically the modern-day equivalent of Warrant or White Lion: good-looking, commercially successful bands that no self-respecting music fan would be caught dead listening to. Hair-metal acts for the MySpace generation.
And if that's true (and it probably is), then that raises the question: Are we currently living in the Trixter/Winger era of the genre? Has emo-punk — a term that, at this point, is so indefinable that it somehow encompasses My Chemical Romance, Panic and Cute Is What We Aim For, three bands that are neither particularly "emotional" nor particularly "punk," unless you count ripping off Queen, dressing up like a marionette or being terrible as such — become so same-y, so formulaic and so watered down that it now borders on self-parody? Is 2007 really just 1989 but, you know, worse?
Well, yes.
Let's compare: Both hair-metal and emo-punk acts exist almost primarily on the aesthetic plane — the obvious connection here is the hair — and count among their chief reasons for success the physical attributes of one bandmember (be it Kip Winger's toothy grin or Pete Wentz's, um, pouty lips). As a result, both appeal primarily — nay, almost exclusively — to young girls, those who, as Callahan puts it, are "not yet ready for real rebellion." Both are critically derided, save one act that is begrudgingly admired by critics (Extreme, MCR). And while both do, in fact, rock, no dyed-in-denim rock fan would ever admit to liking them (i.e. a Metallica fan would've never said, "Skid Row is kind of awesome," inasmuch as no Linkin Park fan would admit that "Boys Like Girls totally brought it last night").
This was taken from www.ultimate-guitar.com
Who got it from www.mtv.com
I was with her right up to that part where Linkin Park seems to get respect...
And most 80's metal fans were pubescent boys, not pre-teen girls... The pre-teen girls were all listening to Tiffany and Debbie Gibson...
Come on now, admit it, how many of us over 30-year-old males had a mullet back in the day, wore ripped jeans, and played air guitar to Skid Row, et. al.?
So, where's today's Nirvana???
artist: emo punk date: 06/14/2007 category: general music news
Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is ... , Boys Like Girls and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, "basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over"), reports James Montgomery of MTV.com.
Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists Crush represents are basically the modern-day equivalent of Warrant or White Lion: good-looking, commercially successful bands that no self-respecting music fan would be caught dead listening to. Hair-metal acts for the MySpace generation.
And if that's true (and it probably is), then that raises the question: Are we currently living in the Trixter/Winger era of the genre? Has emo-punk — a term that, at this point, is so indefinable that it somehow encompasses My Chemical Romance, Panic and Cute Is What We Aim For, three bands that are neither particularly "emotional" nor particularly "punk," unless you count ripping off Queen, dressing up like a marionette or being terrible as such — become so same-y, so formulaic and so watered down that it now borders on self-parody? Is 2007 really just 1989 but, you know, worse?
Well, yes.
Let's compare: Both hair-metal and emo-punk acts exist almost primarily on the aesthetic plane — the obvious connection here is the hair — and count among their chief reasons for success the physical attributes of one bandmember (be it Kip Winger's toothy grin or Pete Wentz's, um, pouty lips). As a result, both appeal primarily — nay, almost exclusively — to young girls, those who, as Callahan puts it, are "not yet ready for real rebellion." Both are critically derided, save one act that is begrudgingly admired by critics (Extreme, MCR). And while both do, in fact, rock, no dyed-in-denim rock fan would ever admit to liking them (i.e. a Metallica fan would've never said, "Skid Row is kind of awesome," inasmuch as no Linkin Park fan would admit that "Boys Like Girls totally brought it last night").
This was taken from www.ultimate-guitar.com
Who got it from www.mtv.com
I was with her right up to that part where Linkin Park seems to get respect...
And most 80's metal fans were pubescent boys, not pre-teen girls... The pre-teen girls were all listening to Tiffany and Debbie Gibson...
Come on now, admit it, how many of us over 30-year-old males had a mullet back in the day, wore ripped jeans, and played air guitar to Skid Row, et. al.?
So, where's today's Nirvana???
