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10 Albums That Changed My Life: 2000s Emo Edition

For the past few days, I’ve been listening to an audiobook version of 2023’s Where Are Your Boys Tonight by Chris Payne, and the book chronicles the emo / pop-punk scene between 1999 and 2008. It’s about the rise and (unfortunate) fall of the genre’s mainstream success, but it metaphorically comes straight from the horse’s mouth. The book has interviews from loads of musicians and important folks from the “scene,” such as Pete Wentz, Patrick Stump, Geoff Rickley, Buddy Neilsen, Anthony Raneri, Hayley Williams, JT Woodruff, Chad Gilbert, Chris Carraba, Andrew MacMahon, and many others.

Because I’ve been listening to the book, I wanted to start a new series in which I talk about ten albums that changed my life, and I wanted to start with 00s pop-punk and emo. I was at the right age when emo broke into the mainstream, so a lot of the big bands at the time were like gods to me. Some of these albums aren’t necessarily some of my all time favorites, but I still love them. For all these episodes, I also wanted to include a “bonus pick,” where I include an album that’s a rather obvious pick, because it’s an album I love and talk about all the time. That way, I can talk about ten other albums that I may not have talk about as much.

The aim of this series is to highlight albums that are important to me, but these albums are in no particular order. I don’t rank these lists, because some of these albums aren’t necessarily more influential than another. Each one of these albums is important in some way, but I wanted to highlight them regardless.

Bonus Pick: Fall Out Boy - Infinity On High

For the first bonus pick, I wanted to start off with an obvious one. I’ve talked about Fall Out Boy’s third album, 2007’s Infinity On High quite a lot. This is the album that got me into music, and to make a long story short, I had listened to a few alternative albums beforehand, but I didn’t truly get into music until I heard that record. This isn’t the first album I picked up, but it was the most impacting one, because it truly blew my mind. This is still my favorite album, although it’s interchangeable with Michael Jackson’s Thriller, but this record really opened my eyes to how unique and awesome music can be, especially alternative, emo, and and pop-punk. I can say so much more about it, but this is the album that truly started it all for me. Little did I know that picking this album up at Target on the weekend of its release that it would change my life.

Fall Out Boy - Take This To Your Grave

I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with the first couple of Fall Out Boy records, especially 2003’s Take This To Your Grave. Back before I would just order stuff online, or download music on iTunes, I would only buy music through retail stores, like Target, Best Buy, and Walmart. I remember finding Take This To Your Grave at Walmart for $9 back in 2012, and while I was a huge fan of them, I didn’t know their early stuff too well, especially their debut. I picked it up, and I absolutely fell in love with it.

Take This To Your Grave is the record that introduced me to the early 00s pop-punk scene, and it was a scene that I only vaguely knew. I was a little too young for it, but hearing their debut was mindblowing. In retrospect, Take This To Your Grave is a hardcore album disguised as a pop-punk album, because it has the ethos and energy of a hardcore record, but the songwriting of a pop-punk album. As a kid in my late teens when I really sunk my teeth into it, and with the “defend pop-punk” movement being huge, this record (and many more like it) worked for me. The lyrics just spoke to me, but I’ve always been a sucker for Wentz’s lyricism.

Over time, however, my relationship with the album soured a bit, partially because my taste in music was becoming more removed from the current pop-punk scene (and reckoning with the fact that a lot of that scene was very misogynistic, including some lyrics on the first couple Fall Out Boy albums), so I wasn’t as into them, and I championed more of the later work, as well as some of the post-hiatus albums. It’s come full circle now, because I really love Take This To Your Grave, warts and all. This is a record made by kids that just loved hardcore and pop-punk, so if you look at it as anything more, it’s doing the record a disservice.

Paramore - Riot

My first experience with Paramore wasn’t with 2007’s Riot, but it was with 2005’s All We Know Is Falling. That was the first album I downloaded on iTunes, back when iTunes was just exploding, but I somehow lost the album (I think it was due to losing my first account, or my hard drive crashed, something like that). I listened to the album pretty soon after, but in between that, Riot was released. Riot is the album that blew Paramore up to the upper echelons of the emo and pop-punk scene, and for good reason. I’m pretty sure I got this album at Walmart, but this record was the soundtrack to the summer of 2007. It came out right before my freshman year of high school, so I played it a lot.

Between Hayley Williams’ vocals improving tenfold between the debut and Riot, their sound having more of a “mainstream” sound, and emo / pop-punk being at the crux of its popularity, this record came out at the right time. It was lightning in a bottle, but they were truly something special. This record has some of the best hooks and vocal performances of any band in that scene at this time, rivaling Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance (the scene’s two biggest bands at that time, arguably). This is just a monster of a record, and one of the most pivotal and important records from that time, and it’s cool to see people still talking about them all these years later. They just won the first Grammy earlier this year for their 2023 record, so it’s awesome to see that success pay off.

The Academy Is - Almost Here

One of the most underrated bands in the emo / pop-punk scene of the 00s is Chicago’s The Academy Is. These guys didn’t get their time in the spotlight, or at the very least, they skirted with fame at the same level as labelmates and friends in Fall Out Boy. It feels like highway robbery almost, because their sound was just as good. Their first two albums really changed my life, but for different ways. I wanted to focus on their debut album, 2005’s Almost Here, because this album is arguably the more influential album compared to 2007’s Santi. Santi was a more eclectic and interesting album, but Almost Here was more influential, because it was a big influence to the mainstream rise to emo and pop-punk.

Vocalist William Beckett is one of my favorite frontmen of the scene, too, and he has such a good voice, especially here. Almost Here is a really catchy, clever, and accessible emo record that surely should have been bigger, but oddly wasn’t. I don’t know what happened, other than that the scene was just too saturated. There were just too many bands out there, and that’s one reason the scene began to disappear from the mainstream. There were so many bands that were vying for peoples’ attentions, but Almost Here is one of the best records of that era that not a lot of people, at least outside of people who were a huge fan of the scene itself, have heard.

Bayside - The Walking Wounded

Contrary to the belief of what “elder emo” TikTokers will tell you, there are more bands in the scene than Fall Out Boy, Paramore, MCR, and Panic. The scene is so much bigger than what you saw in the mainstream, and a lot of it began in New York, including the band Bayside. These guys got pretty big in the early to mid 00s, even playing some late night shows (a lot of bands did, which was super cool), and they’re still around now, but they’re not on the level they once were.

My introduction to them was 2007’s The Walking Wounded, which was their third album, but I found them through an Alternative Press compilation of with an acoustic version of a song from that album. I picked up the album, because I really enjoyed the song, especially Anthony Raneri’s lyrics and vocals, and the album surprised me quite a bit when I heard a pop-punk album with heavier guitar riffs than your average pop-punk album. This remains my favorite album from them today, although their newest album from this year is great, too, and really reminds me of the inventiveness I heard on that record. It showed me that pop-punk can be both catchy and heavy at the same time, and the record still rules today.

Forever The Sickest Kids - Underdog Alma Mater

In the late 00s, a lot of the emo / pop-punk in the mainstream started to disappear, and popularity waned for that style, despite a few bands still being popular. Paramore, Fall Out Boy, Panic, and MCR still reigned as kings and queens of the genre. A new challenger emerged, at least in the underground, and that was neon pop-punk. Retrospectively named for its bright and colorful aesthetic, as well as how catchy and pop-focused the music was, neon pop-punk was the early 00s pop-punk fun-loving cousin that didn’t really take itself too seriously.

One of the most important albums of that movement, and while it’s probably not the first album that you could call neon pop-punk, Forever The Sickest Kids’ debut album, 2008’s Underdog Alma Mater, is a big moment for the genre. This album is catchy, slick, energetic, fun, and a little immature at times, but it also doesn’t take itself seriously and knows what it is. I always loved this record, because as catchy and synth-laden as their music, they had some good hooks and riffs to match. They were more than just a vapid pop-punk / pop-rock band, and this record shows it. They should have been a lot bigger, but they kind of fumbled the bag by releasing mediocre albums after and then just disappearing by the 2010s, so it’s unfortunate, but their debut is still one of my favorite albums from the scene.

New Found Glory - Sticks & Stones

Outside of Take This To Your Grave, I wasn’t familiar with a lot of early 00s pop/punk and emo, but where that album got me into that style of pop-punk, New Found Glory’s 2002 record, Sticks & Stones solidified it. Funnily though, this wasn’t the first NFG album I heard, that would be 2009’s Not Without A Fight, but it took me a few years to go back in their discography and listen to the album with their most iconic song “My Friends Over You.” This is easily one of my favorite 00s pop-punk records, and it’s kinda for that song alone. This record is so much fun, and it’s one of the first examples of easycore, where pop-punk and hardcore breakdowns met. You can hear it on this record a lot, and it’s awesome, but even after listening to this album for the first time in over a decade, I still enjoy it quite a bit.

Taking Back Sunday - Tell All Your Friends

Taking Back Sunday is one of the OG pop-punk and emo bands of the 00s, including New Found Glory, but I found their debut album, 2002’s Tell All Your Friends through word of mouth almost. This album was my all my favorite bands’ favorite album, especially in the 2010s “defend pop-punk” scene. Tell All Your Friends was a generation before mine, as I was too young when this record came out, but when I heard it, it blew my mind. I kept thinking, “This is what my favorite bands are influenced by? This is great!” There are loads of catchy hooks, one-liners, and mosh-ready instrumentation galore. These guys really helped to bring a new style of pop-punk to the forefront and you can hear the influence in a lot of records afterwards.

Panic! At The Disco - A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out

Panic! At The Disco’s debut album, 2005’s A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out, is lightning in a bottle; this record could only have come out in the mid-00s. It has a really unique sound, especially for the time, but it helped to catapult emo to the mainstream. Hell, “I Write Sins” is one of the biggest songs from that era, and it’ll be a song that people always remember, let alone gets played at emo nights across the country. Fever is such an iconic record, but it’s also a unique and interesting album that showcases Panic wanting to aim higher in terms of emo and pop-punk. The album is split into two halves — an electronic first half and a baroque pop second half, but it doesn’t feel jarring or strange.

It’s funny, because I remember downloading only a few songs from this album at first on iTunes back in 2007. I found the band through the Alternative Press compilation I’ve mentioned over and over again. I heard a live version of album closer “Build God, Then We’ll Talk,” and I loved it. I ended up listening to the rest of the album sometime later, but Fever is still such an iconic and nostalgic album for me. It still holds up all these years later, too, especially for its unique sound.

MCR - The Black Parade

Talk about another nostalgic album, because The Black Parade is very much another album that defined not only my adolescence, but the entire scene during the mid-00s. Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Panic! At The Disco, and My Chemical Romance were the big four of the scene at the time, but The Black Parade is really what cemented MCR on that list. Their first two albums were a darker version of the emo and pop-punk sounds that came slightly before them, and during their rise, but The Black Parade was a new sound entirely. Dubbed the emo Queen, these guys made an emo rock opera that really justified that description.

This record is huge, expansive, melodramatic, fun, dark, poignant, and incredibly interesting in all facets. I just absolutely love this record. I don’t remember how I found them, because I found them at the same time as Panic and Fall Out Boy (Paramore came last, as I found All We Know Is Falling a bit before Riot came out), but I was obsessed with this record as a kid. It’s one of those rare albums that I can listen to as an adult and still appreciate what it does on a purely technical and artistic level, because there are a lot of nuances that I didn’t pick up back then. It’s easily their best album to me, despite how they only put one more and disappeared (they still haven’t put out another album despite coming back a few years ago), and it’s the one that I always go back to.

The Cab - Whisper War

For my last pick, I wanted to include another “neon” album, but a bit of an obscure pick. The Cab were a band that were heavily involved with Fueled By Ramen, as well as Pete Wentz’s Decaydance imprint, even including both Patrick Stump and Brendon Urie on the main single for their debut album, 2008’s Whisper. Called “One Of THOSE Nights,” the song showcased what they were all about, and they had a really unique R&B and soulful take on neon pop-punk. Their vocalist had a lot of range, and reminded me a ton of Patrick Stump, but I just fell in love with how catchy and groovy that album was (and still is). It showed me that pop-punk could utilize more outside influences, and while The Cab never got as huge as the bands that they clearly were inspired by, they had a rather dedicated following in the scene, but they just never got as big as they really should have.

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