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Emo Music, not Emo Musician

Should emo songs be dismissed simply because a band member has been accused of sexual misconduct or another moral flaw? The question of separating art from the artist is especially relevant for the emo genre because emo lyrics are known for putting the musician’s personal vulnerabilities out on display. The art is not only expected to be directly related to the creator, but there are also those who argue that it is insincere. On the other hand, emo is a genre that is defined by its audience of angsty teenagers. Art should be judged by the effect that it has on its audience, and not by the intentions or morality of the artist, just as children should be judged separately from their parents.

In Ghost World, Enid presents an old poster in her remedial art class. The poster is an advertisement for Coon Chicken Inn, a restaurant with a rather racist theme. There are multiple possible intentions that I could see Enid having. One of the possibilities is the one that Enid tells her class, which is that the poster is a found art commentary about how racism is simply “white-washed over in our culture” (Ghost World). As interesting as the concept of racism lurking just beneath a happy facade is, Enid’s more likely intention was to simply have less work to do for her art class, because she is shown to be constantly annoyed by her classmates and the teacher, especially when she sees minimal-effort found-art hangers being praised over her sketchbook. Another possibility is that Enid just wants to get on her classmate’s nerves due to jealousy, and she uses similar language in her presentation of the poster.

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The true intention is irrelevant, however. At the art gallery, the audience settles for being offended, and simply demands that the poster is removed. Enid’s teacher pleads for the artist to have an opportunity to convey their intentions, but the viewers refuse to ponder the way that racism is hidden just out of sight, and instead force the art out of sight. Enid’s piece ends up being a failure. Her expressed intention is a flop, because the attendees of the art gallery do not examine the deeper meaning behind the poster. She is forced to fail the class, so turning in minimal-effort found art to get a good grade like her classmate did does not work out. The Coon Chicken Inn advertisement ends up being so offensive to the audience that it fails as a piece of art to convince the audience of re-examining racism or even of letting her pass art class.

Just because in Enid’s case the art was judged without the original intentions in mind, should emo songs also be interpreted the same way? Ghost World is certainly a work of fiction, and the poster episode could very well be a critique of judging creations and their inspirations separately. At the same time, the movie first seems to criticize the way that a stack of hangers can be explained to be commentary on abortion, and the art gallery scene may simply be a continuation of the analysis on the art teacher caring more about explanations than the way that the art actually carries the message across.

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Emo music, which is all about the audience relating to the emotions of the singer, can have a positive effect on the listeners even if that musician is a wretched human being. XXXTentacion’s death will never impact his lyrics, but maybe abusing his former girlfriend Geneva Ayala did. The allegations of verbal and physical abuse add to his confirmed history of violence and crime. I will admit that I am not a fan of X’s moral character, but I also think some of his songs are kind of catchy. Does that make me a wife beater? If so, our culture has a few too many sleeveless shirts given the success of the rapper’s albums.

X’s albums are not just a monetary success, because they provide awareness for issues that are not normally discussed. His album 17 is full of mental health issues, bringing awareness to suicide and depression. Even though XXXTentacion has a rough history, he is unapologetic for his violence. He does not inspire others to behave like he did through his music, however. “Jocelyn Flores,” a song from 17, clearly demonstrates the way that X sings about sensitive issues without adding ulterior motives. He expresses suicidal thoughts, and he is praised by his audience for bringing mental health issues under the spotlight. The song itself is not a testament to domestic violence. “Jocelyn Flores” inspires discussion of depression, and it should be judged for the way that its audience is forced to ponder the implications of suicide, not for the alleged actions of X.

In a way, Enid and X are direct opposites. Enid has innocent intentions but her art is thrown out due to its offensive nature, while XXXTentacion has a criminal past but his music is praised for what it inspires. The audience is the ultimate judge of art. What emo music evokes in the listener is the measure by which it should be evaluated instead of the musician’s personal life.

Quoted Sources:

Ghost World. Directed by Terry Zwigoff, performances by Thora Birch, Scarlett

       Johansson, and Steve Buscemi, United Artists, 2001.

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Jimmy Eat World and Their Songs

Jimmy Eat World is full of “nice guys.” Do they finish last? Well, they are far too successful for that, and when I accuse the members of the band, I actually mean the ideal nice guy. The members of Jimmy Eat World are what nice guys think they look like to the rest of the world. Jim Adkins, Zach Lind, Tom Linton, and Rick Burch are not “good listeners,” they are good musicians and people.

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Am I blowing common decency out of proportion? I would argue that being a pleasant human being is not something that you can expect of a musician. Promiscuous sex seems to plague almost every band. Even in the case of Jimmy Eat World, the crew at least sleeps around with groupies (Greenwald 95). Even Al Aronowitz, a journalist, feels entitled to some action due to introducing bands to artists. In an interview, he laments that he “was a dumb asshole. Everybody was getting laid and I was being faithful to my wife” (McNeil 8). Aronowitz tells the story of how he slept with Nico without having sex with her, while everybody else had a piece of her. Documentary Now mocks the ulterior motives of those seeking fame. The fictional band member Clark Honus decides to become a musician almost entirely on the grounds of vying for the attention of girls.

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Jimmy Eat World stands out as a stark contrast to the norms of a musician’s life. As Andy Greenwald observes while meeting the band on a tour, the artists favor intimate relationships over promiscuous sex with the strippers and groupies. The drummer, Zach Lind, asks “Well, did you make an emotional connection?” (Greenwald 95) to a member of the tech crew who claims to have found his future wife. The drum tech, Mike, spent time with a stripper, and was almost certainly enjoying that time in a licentious manner, but Zach prefers to think of their relationship as one of mutual understanding, and not of meaningless sex. Jim Adkins, the frontman of the band, is portrayed as a wholesome individual, and right after taking a faked picture with booze and bikini-clad girls, “he retired to the bus to call his fiancee and turn in at a reasonable hour for the long drive to New Orleans” (Greenwald 116). The scene is a polar opposite of how Aronowitz portrays the mentality of others in the business of music. Jim Adkins avoids the strippers to be faithful to his fiancee, and not necessarily for abstinence. The band does more than simply live a healthy lifestyle, however.

As Tumblr user ultimatecoffeecollector argues, Jimmy Eat World advocates for intimacy within their music video for “The Middle.” Although the band itself did not direct the video, they did agree to it and what it represents. The route that is eventually avoided is full of half-naked youth, which represents promiscuity. When the young couple leave the party, they leave behind meaningless sex. However, abstinence is not implied, because they have a rather flirtatious pose as they escape together. The music video that Jimmy Eat World agreed to portrays the ideal relationship as one that could eventually lead to sex, but is built on emotional connections.

Jimmy Eat World promoting intimacy makes them the ultimate nice guys, but in an entirely unironic use of the term. While a stereotypical nice guy is a good listener for good boy points that he assumes can be cashed in for sex, the band believes in relationships that are not built on physical desires. They believe in connections that form without promise of gratification.

Sources:

Greenwald, Andy. Nothing Feels Good: Punk rock, Teenagers, and Emo. New

        York, St. Martin’s Press, 2003.

McNeil, Legs and Gillian McCain. Please Kill Me. New York, Grove Press, 1996.

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Emo the Eternal

As long as there are angsty teenagers, there will be music that lets them vent those emotions. The emocore movement stands out as a genre because it is defined by its fans and topics rather than a specific sound, like the trap triplet. Teens that seek outlets for their troubled emotions do not have to venture into the past to find the songs that really speak to them, because just as the movement never lacks a new generation of fans, it also cannot find a shortage of new artists, like Lil Peep, who is pictured below. 

Music outlasting its creators, like the unfortunate tale of the Blue Jean Committee, is an issue that rarely seems to plague emo bands despite the endurance of their genre. The mockumentary about the BJC tells the story of two boys who create a record that outlasts their friendship and band. Clark Honus is able to sell various drinks, figures, and even a slot machine by using the name of the BJC’s hit Catalina Breeze album. I really cannot imagine a magazine being named after an emo band, even if a rock band could cut it. Almost thirty years after the song was released, “The Final Countdown” was still used for a superbowl ad, and almost fifty years after “Immigrant Song” was released, it was still used in a popular movie teaser.

As my classmates taught me about influential emo records, I was thunderstruck by how few of the songs I actually recognized. A few of the songs used styles that are still used today, and the topics and feelings of the records are still prevalent in modern music as well. I find it interesting that M.H. Miller chooses to use Dashboard Confessional as the example of emo music continuity in an article that describes the resurgence of early-2000’s topics in the present day. Outside of a class which delves into the history of emo culture, I had never even heard of Chris Carrabba before. I definitely have no acquaintances who are listening to his new album. Miller is correct that emo is as strong if not stronger than ever, but today’s angsty teenagers do not listen to Dashboard or its songs anymore.

Due to emo’s nature as music with a shared subject matter and audience, the genre has survived through shifts in popular noise preference. The new generation of emo kids can listen to emo rap, which has become so widespread that even my roommate listens to it, and if I was not on such great terms with him, I could refer to him as a jock. Emo rap is a new subgenre of emo, and not a replacement, in the opinion of Lil Peep, one of the few artists to ever accept the label of emo. The young emo rapper died last year after a drug overdose. Despite the accidental nature of his death, he also did feel suicidal and depressed. Those feelings are carried through his tone, and yet the style and instruments are very different from earlier emo. “Spotlight,” for example, uses lyrics that are emo in nature, but those words are sung by a rapper, and the song is produced by Marshmello, an EDM producer, whose beats bear no semblance at all to early emo.

Emo has grown and evolved through the ages, because although society keeps changing its mind on which noises sound the best, the emotions of teenagers remains a constant. Those teens reach out to music that they can relate to, but they do not appreciate the tunes they hear when searching through emo’s past. Emo artists do not see their songs endure the test of time even though their genre is able to adapt.

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“But what about Taylor Swift?”

If you are a Georgia Tech student taking English 1102 Emo, you may already know where this blog post is headed from the GIF. I am the guy who engaged in whataboutism by arguing against the article by Jessica Hopper we read for last Thursday by bringing up Taylor Swift. To be completely honest, I should have kept my mouth shut given how little I know about Taylor and her music other than jokes about her breakup songs. I thought that the emo movement was exempt from being called sexist simply because the core topics of the songs were the same as those of a female musician. After doing a bit of further research, however, I have changed my stance. Taylor Swift does not counter the sexism in newer emo music by using similar lyrics against men. Instead, the content that she uses is closer to that of Jawbreaker and other earlier bands that Jessica Hopper insists describe women as “unidealized, realistic characters” (1). The emo bands that rose in popularity at the turn of the millennium tend to have misogynistic lyrics.

Although the GIF from Fans of Taylor shows Taylor singing and dancing in emo-style garb, she is quite different from the bands that rose to fame at the turn of the millennium. Taylor Swift is not normally considered to be an emo musician, but she frequently sings about ex-boyfriends, which follows a tradition of emo bands singing of lost love. Swift does attack men in her breakup songs, but the key difference is that her victims are specific muses, and she does not objectify men through generalization. For example, when she kicks John Mayer while he is already down, Taylor is criticizing the actions of an individual instead of a gender. She sings about the pain that boys have caused, but those men also have names and stories that she refers to or shares. By attacking individuals and not categories, Taylor Swift does not venture into reverse-sexism. 

The lack of specificity is exactly what makes early twenty-first century emo bands so misogynistic. To paint the complete picture, I will admit that I initially only read the second page of the article “Where the Girls Aren’t.” I first thought to myself that singing about breakups and heartbreak could not be inherently sexist because mistreatment by an individual does not necessarily suggest that the person’s entire gender is to blame. When Dr. Marzoni explained that he had accidentally linked to the second page, I realized that I had missed the first half of Hopper’s argument.

Once I decided to give Jessica Hopper another chance, I took her advice and listened to a few Dashboard Confessional songs. Specifically, I rewatched the MTV Unplugged episode in which a crowd sings with Chris Carrabba. I now have a different answer to Dr. Marzoni’s question about things that stand out in the video as odd. The most peculiar detail is how many girls are singing along to the lyrics. At twenty seconds into the video, Chris already calls the audience insincere, but starts singing about a girl in the second, and turns the artificiality into that of unfaithfulness. Theoretically, he could be addressing all cheaters, and is simply doing so from the perspective of a guy, but Carrabba’s lyrics as they are sung can only be interpreted as addressing a female. The content of the songs treat the woman as a sex object. In the second song, “The Best Deceptions,” the cheater’s only identity is that she slept with other guys. The speaker mourns the loss of the exclusive rights to the cheater’s body, noting that the lips have touched others (4:57). In the following song, more lips are the subject of Carrabba’s attention. He simply sings about a girl being the perfect fashionable specimen, who knows what to wear. There is no depth or backstory to the girl, like there would be in one of Swift’s songs. Dashboard Confessional portrays women by appearances, and only describes their personalities by calling them deceitful. 

I will admit that I had some trouble deciphering Glassjaw’s melody, so I had to turn to another source to understand the lyrics, and the sexism was shocking to say the least. Little of the misogynistic tone is left to speculation, as Glassjaw’s vocalist calls the subject of his anger a whore. He also calls her a sinner, which corresponds to how Carrabba describes women as insincere. Although I could see how anyone could reasonably be criticized for character flaws, the way that these emo bands do so carries a sexist undertone, even if undertones are a bit hard to hear in a Glassjaw song. They are venting frustration at females, and without a muse, the songs are attacking womankind. Simply using the language that is present in “Pretty Lush” would result in an accusation of misogyny here in 2018. 

Early twenty-first century emo music may not have been calling for women to stay in the kitchen, but Dashboard Confessional, which was an iconic part of the scene, demonstrates misogynistic attitudes that are not directed at a specific muse, but at all whom the singer is attracted to. Glassjaw takes a more blatant approach at sexist lyrics, and makes me wonder why they even had fan-girls. I made a serious mistake in comparing these bands to Taylor Swift, because the context of her songs is completely missing in the music of the emo bands of the early twenty-first century. Generalizing women as flawed characters thrown into rootable bodies. 

Quoted Sources:

Hopper, Jessica. “Where the Girls Aren’t.” Rookie, 13 July 2015. www.rookiemag.com/2015/07/where-the-girls-arent/.

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If you are a Georgia Tech student taking English 1102 Emo, you may already know where this blog post is headed. I am the guy who engaged in whataboutism by arguing against the article we read for last Thursday by bringing up Taylor Swift.

To be completely honest, I should have kept my mouth shut given how little I know about Taylor and her music other than jokes about her breakup songs. After doing a bit of further research, however, I have changed my stance. Taylor Swift does not counter the sexism in newer emo music by using similar lyrics against men. Instead, the content that she uses is closer to that of Jawbreaker and other earlier bands that Jessica Hopper insists describe women as “unidealized, realistic characters” (1).

Although the GIF from Fans of Taylor shows Taylor singing and dancing in emo-style garb, she is quite different from the bands that rose to fame at the turn of the millenium. Swift does attack men in her breakup songs, but the key difference is that her victims are specific muses, and she does not objectify men through generalization. For example, when she kicks John Mayer while he is already down, Taylor is criticizing the actions of an individual instead of a gender. She does sing about the pain that boys have caused, but those men also have names and stories that she refers to or shares.

The lack of specificity is exactly what makes early twenty-first century emo bands sexist. To paint the complete picture, I will admit that I only read the second page of the article “Where the Girls Aren’t” initially. I thought to myself that singing about breakups and heartbreak could not be inherently sexist because mistreatment by an individual does not necessarily suggest that the person’s entire gender is to blame. When Dr. Marzoni explained that he had accidentally linked to the second page, I realized that I had missed the first half of the argument.

Once I decided to give Jessica Hopper another chance, I took her advice and listened to a few Dashboard Confessional songs. Specifically, I rewatched the MTV Unplugged episode in which a crowd sings with Chris Carrabba. I now have a different answer to Dr. Marzoni’s question about things that stand out in the video as odd. The most peculiar detail is how many girls are singing along to the lyrics. Right off the bat, the second song features grievances against girls who are insincere. Chris calls the audience “plastic just like everyone” (0:20) in the first song, but starts singing about a girl in the second, and turns the artificiality into that of unfaithfulness. Theoretically, he could be addressing all cheaters, and is simply doing so from the perspective of a guy, but Carrabba’s lyrics as they are sung can only be interpreted as either a female or homosexual male cheater. By the third song, has finally used a second-person pronoun, so the listener can ascertain that the romantic interest is a woman. The content of the songs treat the woman as a sex object. In the second song, “The Best Deceptions,” the cheater’s only identity is that she slept with other guys. The speaker mourns the loss of the exclusive rights to the cheater’s body, noting that the lips have touched others (4:57). In the following song, more lips are the subject of Carrabba’s attention. He simply sings about a girl being the perfect fashionable specimen, who knows what to wear. There is no depth or backstory to the girl, like there would be in one of Swift’s songs.

Early twenty-first century emo music may not have been calling for women to stay in the kitchen, but Dashboard Confessional, which was an iconic part of the scene, demonstrates misogynistic attitudes that are not directed at a specific muse, but at all whom the singer is attracted to.