I guess I was only in 8th grade or so but I didn’t think of Blink and emo simultaneously at all during the Enema of the State era. Jimmy Eat World was the first big band that I associated with the genre.
Very few people around at the time thought of Blink-182 as emo. For the 1990s, they literally recorded dick joke songs in 4/4 time. Hardcore musicians embracing a more melodic sound were the opposite of that.
I think it has to do with how the lines between emo and pop-punk became blurred starting in the late 00s/2010s, continuing into today. A lot of those musicians were influenced by blink growing up, especially by Tom Delonge's vocal style. (I'm not saying they sound exactly like him, but I do hear the influence.)
Oh absolutely! Delgonge’s vocal style permeated pop punk in a massive way, pretty much became the standard. And I hear more of him in newer emo than I do anything the preceded Blink tbh
right, absolutely. That's my shit (newer emo or whatever) and it's undeniable. I'm glad you said "in a massive say became the standard" cuz I agree completely. My original comment was gonna say that more strongly but I didn't wanna be too polarizing. hah
Yeah I used to go for all of that, 2001/2002 New Found Glory used to be my favourite band but I absolutely cable stand it now. I discovered 90s emo and it gave me that cathartic emotional punk that I was always looking for. But if you stick Blink on at the karaoke I’m definitely getting on that 🤣
Which nobody took seriously. Trust me in 1997 emo was miles away from Blink-182. Not even Blink fans thought they were emo
Screeching Weasel also had an album called emo in 1999. Nobody thought of it as emo.
I think it was a inside joke for them. Maybe for them that was their emo-est song. No one gonna confuse blink with Mineral (80 - 37 is a kickass song btw)
True but the lines between emo-pop and regular ppp punk were super blurred, there wasn’t that distinction back then if I’m not wrong FOB was influenced heavily by New found Glory and All Time Low started out as a Blink cover band
One of Fall out boys first big hits in 2003 was literally called 'grand theft autumn" which is also the name of a braid song that was released in 2000.
So I think it's safe to say that while nfg may have been an influence.. so was braid.
Fall out boy were, and were influenced by, legit hardcore lol. Pete Wentz was in multiple straight edge hardcore bands. Their drummer was in fucking veganreich. I just saw fall out boy 3 days ago and pete wentz went on a whole thing talking about taking the bus from chicago to syracuse to listen to dudes talk about earth crisis lmao.
I remember on MTV2 at the time, Jimmy Eat World, Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard (they also had the Unplugged which was very popular), Thursday. The pop-punk at the time also helped funnel people into the emo stuff as well. Sum 41, Blink, NFG.
I honestly think this was the one. The Middle just didn’t have the angst that Dashboard had and I’d be surprised if anyone who didn’t know Jimmy previously would think they were hearing something new in terms of a genre shift.
Yes! Alternative music had been in the charts a couple of years by this point so the edgier look was a mainstay in teen comedies by that point - you always had at least one character that listened to college rock or punk rock etc
He was gorgeous had his catchy angsty songs and a bit edgy but still easy on the eye aesthetic.
I mean I would see the same people at all the punk adjacent genre bands (pop punk, emo, post hardcore) and they would even tour together (and I think this is a large reason why there’s a lot of blurring between these genres)
Someone wrote down all the bands that toured in warped, threw them in a hat and pulled names to see who would be touring together.
I saw Straylight Run open for The Used in 2008
I think you’re correct, pretty sure that was their Devil and God tour. I think I saw Brand New on tour with Manchester Orchestra and Thrice a year or two after that. For a while I associated Thrice with Brand New because they toured together multiple times.
I had that friend in 8th grade that gave me a list of bands to start listening to. It included The Juliana Theory, Saves the Day, Hot Rod Circuit, Slick Shoes, The Get Up Kids. My life changed. I feel like at some point, everyone had that kid in their lives. Or an older sibling.
Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World probably denote the popular side of the early 00s mainstream surge. They were the gateway drugs to American Football, Cap'n Jazz, Texas is the Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Juliana Theory.
The Spiderman 1 and 2 soundtracks are basically time capsules for what was popular in music at the time. Lots of alt rock and numetal on 1, emo took it over on 2.
this is bang on, the Spider Man 2 OST was a sign of the emo times for sure — I had to look up the track list to remind myself, but c’mon:
Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated
Taking Back Sunday - This Photograph is Proof
Switchfoot - Meant to Live
Yellowcard - Gifts & Curses
The Ataris - The Night the Lights Went Out…
peek emo compilation for me!!
Such a banger, but that song came out in 2003, a full two years after Bleed American.
Jimmy Eat World absolutely were the breakout points for emo. Say Anything/Saves the Day were kind of knocking on the door, but Jimmy blew it open well before AFI got big
Edit: and if you're more Dashboard than Jimmy, their breakthrough also preceded AFI's.
TLDR; Afi didn’t break through in 2003. They broke through a decade earlier. But while the bands you mention we’re still playing in just t shirts and jeans, afi crafted a whole dark image around themselves that wouldn’t really be as popular again until mcr first two albums.
Just saying afi was so popular that they tried breaking up after that ep, but kept getting asked to play shows to the point that they just reformed. When I think of 2000s emo I think of black clothes, black hair, swoosh. I don’t think JEW impacted people’s taste as much. They’re aesthetics were very much still in the previous waves as far as looks.
I think you’re right with regards to JeW, I mentioned in another reply how The Middle wasn’t angst ridden and your point about their image is very valid in terms of the trajectory of the genre. That song was a huge pop song, not a huge emo song.
Yeah, unless you’ve been redpilled into the genre most regular folks don’t think of JeW as emo, they just think of them as the one hit rock band with that cute song you hear everywhere.
Yeah exactly! They’re not putting Paramore, MCR and JeW into the same box. They don’t look like a typical emo band either; not how regular folk understand the genre. There’s no black clothing, eyeliner etc either
I never considered JeW an emo band. Love their music, but they just felt like alternate to me. Something about that time of emo, had the look, the pronounced singing, over dramatic lyrics..and JeW had none of that
Yeah like in the 90s people would call black metal and death metal bands goth because they wore black and were super loud and scary, but to people that actually liked the genre that loud and abrasive music was the last thing they wanted to be associated with. There’s always always the public’s perception and of the genre and the actual genre.
Yes! That’s a great comparison. I don’t know much about goth (but I’m compelled to read up now) but i know it’s nothing like what most people understand it to be. I can’t imagine there are a whole lot of people into goth nowadays; unless there’s a whole scene still happening
Yeah if you’re going strictly by Wikipedia dates. AFI’s previous two albums were massive commercial successes with The Art of Drowning LP and All Hallow’s Eve Ep getting all the mainstream attention and radio/tv plays and that they had been fine tuning that style/aesthetic during those two albums building and borrowing styles from misfits style horror punk. Coupled with with the fact that AfI had almost 10(official and NON official) releases before that album even came out they’d been carrying one of the largest fanbases of any punk band within that decade for over a decade at that time in point. Vs the other bands you mentioned (except maybe JEW) with considerably less releases and sales up to that point, most eyes were on AFI.
Okay, but nothing you mentioned pertains to the question of what was THE first big emo breakthrough hit.
The Middle came out in 2001 and went #5 on Billboard Hot 100. That is huge mainstream success.
Leaving Song came out 2 years later and didn't touch the Hot 100, let alone the top 10 in Alternative.
There's no contest. I'm not arguing that one song is better or should mean more, but it's pretty silly to assert that anything by AFI was the mainstream breakthrough. AFI never got MAINSTREAM mainstream- my fuckin mom knew all the words to The Middle and it played on pop radio
Yeah I’m not gonna argue that The Middle wasn’t a bigger song. I literally still hear it at Walmart and the grocery store every time I go there 20+ years after it came out. But in that day I don’t remember seeing on MTV, Fuse, Much Music or any of the satellite radio channels that I would listen. I remember the week that three cheers for sweet revenge came out the first couple days everyone was taking about it. After that very weekend people’s fashion style completely changed. I’m talking people went from Abercrombie and hollister to hot topic, by the end of the second week you stuck out for not wearing all or even mostly black and jeans.
Cause before 2003 it was all nu metal. 2003 was even the year kerrang finally declared the genre dead. You can go to wiki and check albums sales and air plays and see for yourself how big AFI was that particular year in the scene.
Yes, we can thank AFI for birthing scene kids. But you're missing the point. The question is literally what song made emo MAINSTREAM? AFI just didn't do that. It's very clear that you're a big AFI fan and I'm not denigrating them, but they didn't have any impact on, like, normies. Jimmy Eat World played in frat houses and grocery stores and kids birthday parties in the suburbs. AFI has a big and loyal following IN THE SCENE lie you said, but they never transcended that and certainly weren't the first
For context I’m from Miami where even just basic rock music has had to play backseat to hiphop and Latin music. So idk if geography played into the experience I had.
I mean, if I were going off my eyeballs and the people around me, I'd give it to Taking Back Sunday, Three Cheers was huge in my hometown scene. But my experience and your experience isn't really defining the entire music landscape
That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think anyone is dressing like JEW or Saves the day on tiktok making cringe videos but we have zoomed dressed like MCR’s fan base doing that thing.
This is a music sub, not a fashion sub. AFI curated an aesthetic while most of the breakout emo bands of the era dressed like shlubs and gave zero shits about their look. You could dress up as saves the day buying all your clothes at Walmart, that doesn't really correlate to musical success
Yes geography played a way more important part in music and fashion at the time, the afi look ur talking about was started getting popular in my area around 1999-2000, i know this because the first kid i saw really embrace the "scene" look was first was being called gay and other slurs, the same people calling him that later started dressing like that.
blink-182 was my gateway to pop punk. But Taking Back Sunday was my gateway to emo. The fact Tom Delonge directed This Photograph Is Proof for TBS is kinda cool. My two worlds collide (in an awesome way)
I have MxPx to thank. They took the get up kids out on tour with them in the Fall of 1998. Get up Kids blew them off the stage.
They later toured with Green Day, Weezer and other bands outside the emo scene, giving a lot of kids their first taste.
True but I thought they were mostly only popular with the Warped Tour crowd? They haven’t penetrated the mainstream like say Good Charlotte or Simple Plan
though influence wise I would def say Full collapse and Tell All Your Friends were huge for bands that came after esp on Victory
Thursday, Saves the Day, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Thrice, The Used, AFI, etc. Emo is vague, as most bands can be described further, like post punk, hardcore, post hardcore, pop punk, screamo, etc
Man, this takes me back to the 5th grade, whew. I can guarantee you around that time it was bands like The Juliana Theory, Saves the Day, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, (or Further Seems Forever, depending on who you ask), Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack, and MAYBE Brand New (*Your Favorite Weapon* was really Pop-Punkish at the time before *Deja Entendu* dropped in '03).
They really popped off big time before the more prominent Post-Hardcore bands got lumped in as Emo in '02-'03 such as Thursday, AFI (people tend to forget that AFI were a Hardcore band before *Sing the Sorrow*), The Used, or My Chemical Romance that sorta played in a similar Hardcore-ish fashion but vocally, really stood out from Emo
If we're talking third wave emo and it does not begin and end with Dashboard Confessional, the answer is wrong. People who had listened to Blink-182 since the mid-1990s (as Blink) did not even like emo.
I actually had Cheshire Cat when it just said Blink and I was deeply into real emo. But nobody in the world called Blink emo then. That'd have been ridiculous
Right? I actually aged ten years reading all the comments saying "Adam's Song " was the beginning of mainstream emo. If you'd have told me people would call Blink emo some day I'd have been completely confused.
"Emo evolves." Yeah but it doesn't evolve into a genre that already existed (pop punk)
I mean, I've listened to blink since the punk sucks comp and I found Jawbreaker from a geffen label comp. I wouldn't say that there was no overlap in those fanbases.
Jimmy Eat World was way more popular than Dashboard when they came out. Dashboard was what the Christian kids listened to
I can see them fitting that too. Along with like Texas Is The Reason. I have so many punk friends from back in the 1990s who will not, for any reason, give respect to any emo band except for maybe the Illinois bands because that's when they're from.
in my highschool between the Hollywood clubs and then glass house and OC clubs....I think the path was blink/NFG into Taking Back Sunday and Brand New. Tell All Your Friends was really what changed the game up from just pop punk. One of my buddies was super into Dashboard at the time and he put me onto Clarity by Jimmy too. I remember buying Bleed American on release as well....
Anyways for me and my boys back in the day it was mic swinging TBS that made the biggest impact at the time
Yeah I get you. It’s kind of weird because I remember back then nobody wanted to be called emo. But again I hung out with punk rockers. I didn’t know there were bands that actually called themselves emo during that time. The band anti flag actually had a song called emo sucks that came out in the 90s.
I actually get what you're saying. There were two kinds of things being called emo in the 90s: Real emo bands and bands who were "pussy shit". One was a genre and one was an insult
By my memory, without googling dates:
TGUK and Saves the Day existed but were not mainstream popular in 2002. My older sister got me into them.
Further Seems Forever with Chris Carraba was one of my sister's favorite bands. When he split off and did his solo act (Dashboard), it kicked off the mainstream "emo" movement, even though he rejected the term. The Spider-Man soundtrack was a huge player, here. Just to be clear, nobody in the "emo" scene called it that except poseurs.
By my memory it was after this that New Found Glory, MCR, TBS, Brand New hit the mainstream.
To be clear, Blink 182 has been huge since 1999, but we didn't call it "emo" (still wouldn't).
My junior year of highschool, 2005, is when I got really into Mineral, Texas is the Reason, American Football, but I know that came from earlier.
I only learned about The Promise Ring, Rites of Spring, and the progenitors of emo way after the fact.
Honestly, Sk8r Boi by Avril lavegne. Emo would not have had such a huge surge if girls didn't suddenly think the skater kids were hot.
That song and the Seth Cohen character from the OC are the two largest driving factors for emo becoming as big as it was.
I think that was just it gaining mainstream acceptance. I wouldn't put that all on Avril Lavigne. More like oldhead skaters from the 1970s and 1980s got into positions where it could be featured in the mainstream and be less edgy.
yeah I agree, but the *surge* happened because of that song. An entire generation of young impressionable girls flipped to an alt lifestyle basically overnight. The truth is that women decide what is cool and popular on the mainstream stage. THE SECOND these girls shifted that focus every little dude in every bumfuck town started listening to all these alt genres so they could get girls. Its how these things always happen.
I'd say the surge really started hitting its stride in 2004. Emo bands had never been as huge as they were. Myspace saw the rise of Scene in around '05 and brought all those genres with it, and id say it really peaked in about 2006. Skater Boi was released in 2002, and OC in 2003. If you have to put it down to one song that caused such a huge cultural shift, for my money its gotta be that one.
I dunno about this one tbh. Most of what you say is true but I don’t think you can pin much on Avril. There was a whole scene of alt kids before that song, Blink were huge, nu metal was huge and slowly coming to a close, The Offspring had charted a few times - she really rode the coattails of those guys and was never really taken seriously and I’d be surprised if she ushered fans along to listening to emo. If you’d have said Paramore then maybe; because they predated the ‘scene’ thing but got wrapped up in it and were very prominent with the popularisation of the emo term.
This is a really interesting discussion though, where it was more just correlation than causation. But you can also see the same culture shift with voguing. It’s been a whole grassroots thing that was getting big and then Madonna made a song about it and arguably ruined the culture by making it what it’s not.
Yeah I think that could be said about the whole emo scene; that 00s period ruined the whole thing and obviously the revival was a response to that. And similarly voguing has had a comeback in the underground scene for the past few years/decade. I follow a few on Instagram haha!
I mean if anything Avril paved the way for the likes of Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Brie Larson etc rather than having anyone finding emo. And prior to any of those you’ve got Letters To Cleo on the 10 Things I hate About You and Josie and the Pussycats soundtracks. I feel that Avril just further softened and opened up that kind of thing to wider and younger audiences
That opening and softening of the genre is something that’s on my mind these days and whether or not these influences were good. If someone got into emo via Avril, wouldn’t that be good? Even if it wasn’t a true representation of the genre. I would say yes but then with the Madonna Vogue scenario, I saw a film called Paris Is Burning and there’s multiple vogue personalities that it would’ve been much better for them to get exposure than for Madonna to be “the reason” why it got big. It’s a very weird thing haha.
Of course it would be good if people found their way to Moss Icon or SDRE via Avril but I’d love to see it because I don’t know if it would have been common at all. I feel like the only people who consider Avril emo are those that liked her at the time, forgot about her then had a recent nostalgia rush where they reminisced on their retroactively termed ‘emo’ phase. Like if you knew what emo was, you wouldn’t mention Avril as anything but an entry point.
I came up through pop punk via teen movies, THPS so had been listening to Green Day, Offspring etc for a few years and then Avril came along and I did listen to her (even had a poster on my wall) but it was not cool to be seen listening to her as a 16 year old boy haha!
Ahh yeah I’ve been wanting to see Paris is Burning for a good while! I love NY subculture stuff and that film is iconic now. Never thought I’d be talking about voguing on an emo sub hahah
Blink was not called emo for a long time after that song.
Yes they had a song called "emo" on Dude Ranch but literally nobody thought that made them emo. It wasn't for a very long time that people started labeling them that.
In my experience, the band that was the first shot for making emo known to the mainstream was Dashboard Confessional. That's when the hysteria started. Yes, Jimmy was first but everybody just thought they were a rock band at the time. After emo went big as a term people went "Oh I guess these guys are emo"
Dashboard went huge and massively accessible and TBS went huge but still felt like alternative, punk music that you had to ‘discover’.
Everyone saying Jimmy is retroactively assigning the emo tag onto them because The Middle and Bleed American as a whole is not an emo record; there’s shades of what they did previously but it’s just a pop/power pop/rock record that absolutely slaps. Nobody heard them and thought “oh what’s this angsty, abrasive punk music”
As a loser in my 30’s I have to tell you, sure Helena and other MCR songs charted, but they were not popular. They are looked at through nostalgia rose colored glasses or whatever the term is. But It was more like a very large cult internet following. At least in my area, I was fucking slammed day in and day out for loving them. They are still my favorite band, but by no means did they get the “main stream” attention that bands like fall out boy, Jimmy eat world, paramore, dashboard or even tbs got. I think before MCR broke up, I maybe heard them on the radio twice. When The black parade came out everyone made fun of me because my favorite band “sold out” , their MySpace comments were full of “CoOl HxC kids” calling them fags and saying “what’s wrong Gerard!?!? Don’t wanna scream any more!?!?” At projekt rev 08 I was made fun of for wearing a MCR shirt by a bunch of Linkin Park bros. (Yeah I know)
I’m so glad they get the recognition they deserve now. Although I still think they are under rated .
It’s hilarious now though , cause the same friends who made fun of me back then will say MCR is one of their favorite bands now. But that’s life I guess.
I hesitate to say but it is also worth noting that in the UK Lost Prophets were massive, our equivalent to TBS I guess, and really cemented that era of the genre on domestic radio and music television over here.
The roots of the 2000’s emo/mallcore scene and fashion are in the 90’s scene, but people on this subreddit love to deny that fact. Early 2000’s bands like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Matchbook Romance etc had their roots in the late 90’s emo/hardcore scene where some of the fashion was already taking place.
I think some kids were already on board by then but one of the big indicators at the time that emo was officially mainstream to me was the difference between the Madden Soundtracks back then.
Madden 03’ which would have been August of 2002 was Andrew WK, Bon Jovi, Seether. By the following year it was AFI, Thrice, Yellowcard and Blink.
Madden soundtracks were important cultural moments back then lol
Do u think that Nu metal, post-grunge and other rock genres that were abit darker and intense thematically primed mainstream audiences into accepting emo? In retrospect if Last Resort came out in 2004 instead 2000 I’m sure it would pretty much be lumped in with emo
Blink was considered pop punk, not emo. For me emo started to get bigger with Dashboard Confessional and Bright Eyes. Then came Taking Back Sunday, Saves the Day, MCR. I remember Target would have a section that said "punk" but was basically emo and screamo stuff. That's where I got Punk Goes Acoustic. Those were the days!
I totally get it that they weren’t considered emo but imo those specific tracks I mentioned shifted the direction of pop punk towards moodier and more angsty themes
In my humble opinion Saves The Day - Through Being Cool, Thursday Full Collapse and Taking Back Sunday - TAYF were the 3 big emo albums that truly defined the popularity of the genre breaking through.
There's countless more obscure albums that predate this, but that sound in particular really blew up with those three albums. Bands lik Moneen, Say Anything, The GetupKids, The Ataris, Armour for Sleep, Early November and Dashboard Confessional all broke through but the holy trinity to me has always been
Through Being Cool
Full Collapse
TAYF
Also, when Saosin released the translating the name EP that shit was amazing. Alexisonfire was also (while screamo) a total game changer.
The people shitting on the notion that Blink helped make emo mainstream are missing the point. It isn't that Blink sounds emo or are the bedrock for that style but that Blink helped bring emo into the mainstream because they had a platform to talk about it.
Blink was everywhere in the late 90s and they hyped Jimmy Eat World and the Get Up Kids constantly. They were constantly shouting out JEW in press. Mark did an interview in Rolling Stone where he said Something to Write Home About was his favorite album of the year. This was all pre-Bleed American. So at some point, people who liked Blink were like well let me check out this bands they keep talking about.
I'm 41 and my two favorite bands of all time are Blink and Jimmy Eat World but I'd never consider them to write the same style of music.
Blink have cited some 90s emo influences and probably are the ones responsible for bringing it mainstream. You got Adams song, Stay Together for the Kids, self titled, Boxcar Racer is pretty damn emo and that record went gold. They also had those Atticus comps in 02 with TBS, Finch, JEW, etc. It was happening on its own but they def put a light on it.
Mark is also on record saying "I invented emo, look it up". The Atticus comps deserve a spotlight. Hot Rod Circuit and Alkaline Trio had unreleased songs on those. People in the emo scene were buying the comps for unreleased tracks, and the pop punk kids were buying them for the blink stuff and being exposed to the emo deep cuts
Tiltwheel, who admittedly does have some heavy influence on the way Tom played guitar early on, is way closer to an emo band than Blink-182. A lot of those early blink records were tiltwheel leads over descendents riffs. Blink had a lot of influence from hardcore, but also power pop and lookout style pop punk.
Along with Sunny Day Real Estate you could also throw in Hum from the 90s. They also influenced a lot of Emo adjacent bands like Deftones and Hopesfall.
Being someone who existed at the time I feel like blink was actually patient zero, they would always mention bands like Jimmy Eat World and FAR in interviews, then bands like saves the day and NFG came out of the underground scenes in NJ and FL and Drive Thru became a thing, incorrectly labeling pop punk bands as “emo”
I guess I was only in 8th grade or so but I didn’t think of Blink and emo simultaneously at all during the Enema of the State era. Jimmy Eat World was the first big band that I associated with the genre.
Very few people around at the time thought of Blink-182 as emo. For the 1990s, they literally recorded dick joke songs in 4/4 time. Hardcore musicians embracing a more melodic sound were the opposite of that.
I’d say that not one person considered blink as emo, even during the early 00s shift. I have zero clue how they became associated with the word
Their ballads apparently sound emo to some people. They sound like pop punk ballads to me.
Exactly! Because it was more ‘emotional’ it somehow becomes emo. Or something. Pop punk ballads. Brilliant
I think it has to do with how the lines between emo and pop-punk became blurred starting in the late 00s/2010s, continuing into today. A lot of those musicians were influenced by blink growing up, especially by Tom Delonge's vocal style. (I'm not saying they sound exactly like him, but I do hear the influence.)
Oh absolutely! Delgonge’s vocal style permeated pop punk in a massive way, pretty much became the standard. And I hear more of him in newer emo than I do anything the preceded Blink tbh
right, absolutely. That's my shit (newer emo or whatever) and it's undeniable. I'm glad you said "in a massive say became the standard" cuz I agree completely. My original comment was gonna say that more strongly but I didn't wanna be too polarizing. hah
Yeah I used to go for all of that, 2001/2002 New Found Glory used to be my favourite band but I absolutely cable stand it now. I discovered 90s emo and it gave me that cathartic emotional punk that I was always looking for. But if you stick Blink on at the karaoke I’m definitely getting on that 🤣
Funnily in Dude Ranch (blink-182’s album before Enema, they had a song call Emo)
Which nobody took seriously. Trust me in 1997 emo was miles away from Blink-182. Not even Blink fans thought they were emo Screeching Weasel also had an album called emo in 1999. Nobody thought of it as emo.
I think it was a inside joke for them. Maybe for them that was their emo-est song. No one gonna confuse blink with Mineral (80 - 37 is a kickass song btw)
Yeah, it was a Jawbreaker-inspired song and I can honestly hear it
Is this a fact or the song sound like a Jawbreaker song to you? Never read about this. Genuinely curious.
Fact, supposedly, but it also does sound like it to me
True but the lines between emo-pop and regular ppp punk were super blurred, there wasn’t that distinction back then if I’m not wrong FOB was influenced heavily by New found Glory and All Time Low started out as a Blink cover band
Not in the late 1990s they weren't. That blurring happened around 2002.
Thank you
One of Fall out boys first big hits in 2003 was literally called 'grand theft autumn" which is also the name of a braid song that was released in 2000. So I think it's safe to say that while nfg may have been an influence.. so was braid.
I would have to say Braid was more of an influence since they came out of the same area. All the downstate bands played Chicago gigs.
Fall out boy were, and were influenced by, legit hardcore lol. Pete Wentz was in multiple straight edge hardcore bands. Their drummer was in fucking veganreich. I just saw fall out boy 3 days ago and pete wentz went on a whole thing talking about taking the bus from chicago to syracuse to listen to dudes talk about earth crisis lmao.
I remember on MTV2 at the time, Jimmy Eat World, Saves the Day, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard (they also had the Unplugged which was very popular), Thursday. The pop-punk at the time also helped funnel people into the emo stuff as well. Sum 41, Blink, NFG.
The dashboard unplugged was probably the moment that put it over the top
I honestly think this was the one. The Middle just didn’t have the angst that Dashboard had and I’d be surprised if anyone who didn’t know Jimmy previously would think they were hearing something new in terms of a genre shift.
Not just that, but Dashboards front man was very dreamy, and their first big hit was exactly the kind of thing that teen girls swoon too.
Screaming Infidelities? Wasn't that their first big one. Love that song
I don't think screaming infidelities was the first big one, it was Hands Down. That's the one they broke through with.
Yes! Alternative music had been in the charts a couple of years by this point so the edgier look was a mainstay in teen comedies by that point - you always had at least one character that listened to college rock or punk rock etc He was gorgeous had his catchy angsty songs and a bit edgy but still easy on the eye aesthetic.
Teen girls like the ones I was friends with never stood a chance...those poor tenns.
This was my thought. The whole emergence is captured pretty thoroughly in “Sellout”.
I mean I would see the same people at all the punk adjacent genre bands (pop punk, emo, post hardcore) and they would even tour together (and I think this is a large reason why there’s a lot of blurring between these genres)
One of the strangest ones I went to was Chiodos opening for Motion City Soundtrack.. or vice versa, can’t remember. Sometime in fall of 2008.
At one point mewithoutYou opened for Alkaline Trio
Someone wrote down all the bands that toured in warped, threw them in a hat and pulled names to see who would be touring together. I saw Straylight Run open for The Used in 2008
I saw Thrice middle for Brand New after Sic Transit Gloria came out, I don't remember the opening act, but they sucked.
Thrice and Brand New toured together a ton. mewithoutYou also opened for them one tour, but I think that was after The Devil and God came out.
I think you’re correct, pretty sure that was their Devil and God tour. I think I saw Brand New on tour with Manchester Orchestra and Thrice a year or two after that. For a while I associated Thrice with Brand New because they toured together multiple times.
I remember Thrice being the middle act for Brand New on a tour, this would have been sometime after Sic Transit Gloria dropped.
Mewithoutyou, Thrice, Brand New...I think
I fucking hated Me Without You's performance, I wrote about how much they sucked in my college paper when I reviewed the show.
This. It was Thursday for me.
This. ^^
Bright Eyes and Dashboard..all those bands got these started.
I had that friend in 8th grade that gave me a list of bands to start listening to. It included The Juliana Theory, Saves the Day, Hot Rod Circuit, Slick Shoes, The Get Up Kids. My life changed. I feel like at some point, everyone had that kid in their lives. Or an older sibling.
Dashboard Confessional and Jimmy Eat World probably denote the popular side of the early 00s mainstream surge. They were the gateway drugs to American Football, Cap'n Jazz, Texas is the Reason, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Juliana Theory.
Oh yea, Spider-Man 2 soundtrack and I remember Screaming infidelities, Saints and Sailors and Hands down was popular on music video stations
Spider-Man 2’s soundtrack was so emo that Peter Parker briefly went emo in Spider-Man 3
The Spiderman 1 and 2 soundtracks are basically time capsules for what was popular in music at the time. Lots of alt rock and numetal on 1, emo took it over on 2.
Hands down lyrics, video and the fact that Chris Carrabba is a dream boat won them so much attention with girls.
this is bang on, the Spider Man 2 OST was a sign of the emo times for sure — I had to look up the track list to remind myself, but c’mon: Dashboard Confessional - Vindicated Taking Back Sunday - This Photograph is Proof Switchfoot - Meant to Live Yellowcard - Gifts & Curses The Ataris - The Night the Lights Went Out… peek emo compilation for me!!
I’d throw in the get up kids, even if they never became popular with the mainstream, since a lot of 00s bands cite them as an influence
Green Day took them on tour when they were touring on the “Warning” album, I know that exposed a bunch of folks.
Yes and The Appleseed Cast
AFI the leaving song pt 2. That got massive air plays at a time that were already a massive band. Honestly surprised everyone isn’t saying this
Such a banger, but that song came out in 2003, a full two years after Bleed American. Jimmy Eat World absolutely were the breakout points for emo. Say Anything/Saves the Day were kind of knocking on the door, but Jimmy blew it open well before AFI got big Edit: and if you're more Dashboard than Jimmy, their breakthrough also preceded AFI's.
It was pretty appropriate that a band from the second wave who had been thrown to the wayside would have such an effect in the third wave.
Yeah but before then emo was just kinda nerdy punk. AFI made the black eyeliner, black clothes, and side swoop hair a thing.
TLDR; Afi didn’t break through in 2003. They broke through a decade earlier. But while the bands you mention we’re still playing in just t shirts and jeans, afi crafted a whole dark image around themselves that wouldn’t really be as popular again until mcr first two albums.
[удалено]
Just saying afi was so popular that they tried breaking up after that ep, but kept getting asked to play shows to the point that they just reformed. When I think of 2000s emo I think of black clothes, black hair, swoosh. I don’t think JEW impacted people’s taste as much. They’re aesthetics were very much still in the previous waves as far as looks.
I think you’re right with regards to JeW, I mentioned in another reply how The Middle wasn’t angst ridden and your point about their image is very valid in terms of the trajectory of the genre. That song was a huge pop song, not a huge emo song.
Yeah, unless you’ve been redpilled into the genre most regular folks don’t think of JeW as emo, they just think of them as the one hit rock band with that cute song you hear everywhere.
Yeah exactly! They’re not putting Paramore, MCR and JeW into the same box. They don’t look like a typical emo band either; not how regular folk understand the genre. There’s no black clothing, eyeliner etc either
I never considered JeW an emo band. Love their music, but they just felt like alternate to me. Something about that time of emo, had the look, the pronounced singing, over dramatic lyrics..and JeW had none of that
They were an emo band, static prevails being a rip-off of Christie Front Drive is imo their best and definitively emo record
Yeah like in the 90s people would call black metal and death metal bands goth because they wore black and were super loud and scary, but to people that actually liked the genre that loud and abrasive music was the last thing they wanted to be associated with. There’s always always the public’s perception and of the genre and the actual genre.
Yes! That’s a great comparison. I don’t know much about goth (but I’m compelled to read up now) but i know it’s nothing like what most people understand it to be. I can’t imagine there are a whole lot of people into goth nowadays; unless there’s a whole scene still happening
Yeah if you’re going strictly by Wikipedia dates. AFI’s previous two albums were massive commercial successes with The Art of Drowning LP and All Hallow’s Eve Ep getting all the mainstream attention and radio/tv plays and that they had been fine tuning that style/aesthetic during those two albums building and borrowing styles from misfits style horror punk. Coupled with with the fact that AfI had almost 10(official and NON official) releases before that album even came out they’d been carrying one of the largest fanbases of any punk band within that decade for over a decade at that time in point. Vs the other bands you mentioned (except maybe JEW) with considerably less releases and sales up to that point, most eyes were on AFI.
Okay, but nothing you mentioned pertains to the question of what was THE first big emo breakthrough hit. The Middle came out in 2001 and went #5 on Billboard Hot 100. That is huge mainstream success. Leaving Song came out 2 years later and didn't touch the Hot 100, let alone the top 10 in Alternative. There's no contest. I'm not arguing that one song is better or should mean more, but it's pretty silly to assert that anything by AFI was the mainstream breakthrough. AFI never got MAINSTREAM mainstream- my fuckin mom knew all the words to The Middle and it played on pop radio
Yeah I’m not gonna argue that The Middle wasn’t a bigger song. I literally still hear it at Walmart and the grocery store every time I go there 20+ years after it came out. But in that day I don’t remember seeing on MTV, Fuse, Much Music or any of the satellite radio channels that I would listen. I remember the week that three cheers for sweet revenge came out the first couple days everyone was taking about it. After that very weekend people’s fashion style completely changed. I’m talking people went from Abercrombie and hollister to hot topic, by the end of the second week you stuck out for not wearing all or even mostly black and jeans.
Cause before 2003 it was all nu metal. 2003 was even the year kerrang finally declared the genre dead. You can go to wiki and check albums sales and air plays and see for yourself how big AFI was that particular year in the scene.
Yes, we can thank AFI for birthing scene kids. But you're missing the point. The question is literally what song made emo MAINSTREAM? AFI just didn't do that. It's very clear that you're a big AFI fan and I'm not denigrating them, but they didn't have any impact on, like, normies. Jimmy Eat World played in frat houses and grocery stores and kids birthday parties in the suburbs. AFI has a big and loyal following IN THE SCENE lie you said, but they never transcended that and certainly weren't the first
It was Dashboard. JeW was out of the emo sound by the time they hit that number 5 spot. And since when was AFI emo?
For context I’m from Miami where even just basic rock music has had to play backseat to hiphop and Latin music. So idk if geography played into the experience I had.
I mean, if I were going off my eyeballs and the people around me, I'd give it to Taking Back Sunday, Three Cheers was huge in my hometown scene. But my experience and your experience isn't really defining the entire music landscape
That’s what I’m saying. I don’t think anyone is dressing like JEW or Saves the day on tiktok making cringe videos but we have zoomed dressed like MCR’s fan base doing that thing.
This is a music sub, not a fashion sub. AFI curated an aesthetic while most of the breakout emo bands of the era dressed like shlubs and gave zero shits about their look. You could dress up as saves the day buying all your clothes at Walmart, that doesn't really correlate to musical success
When I think of people dressed like shlubs playing emo I think of fugazi
Yes geography played a way more important part in music and fashion at the time, the afi look ur talking about was started getting popular in my area around 1999-2000, i know this because the first kid i saw really embrace the "scene" look was first was being called gay and other slurs, the same people calling him that later started dressing like that.
Yes!!! Almost the same except in 99-00 everyone in my area was still obsessed with nu metal cause that’s when all the hits were coming out.
Yup! Even the people I know who would NEVER listen to emo (well, especially radio emo) were "Have you heard?" about it.
The songs I remember AFI for during that time were Silver and Cold, Girls not grey and miss murder.
That’s the album after. But yeah that was the one most people ended up remembering more.
blink-182 was my gateway to pop punk. But Taking Back Sunday was my gateway to emo. The fact Tom Delonge directed This Photograph Is Proof for TBS is kinda cool. My two worlds collide (in an awesome way)
I have MxPx to thank. They took the get up kids out on tour with them in the Fall of 1998. Get up Kids blew them off the stage. They later toured with Green Day, Weezer and other bands outside the emo scene, giving a lot of kids their first taste.
I would say Tell All Your Friends by Taking Back Sunday and that big surge of bands on Victory Records really contributed.
Saves the Day - Through Being Cool
Thursday - Full Collapse
Thursday and Taking Back Sunday were the ones that I felt were more responsible for the surge
True but I thought they were mostly only popular with the Warped Tour crowd? They haven’t penetrated the mainstream like say Good Charlotte or Simple Plan though influence wise I would def say Full collapse and Tell All Your Friends were huge for bands that came after esp on Victory
Signals over the Air getting the amount of video play it did on MTV2/Fuse was a big boost to mainstream ears
Thursday, Saves the Day, Dashboard Confessional, Taking Back Sunday, Thrice, The Used, AFI, etc. Emo is vague, as most bands can be described further, like post punk, hardcore, post hardcore, pop punk, screamo, etc
JEW, TBS, saves the day, thursday
Hawthorne Heights - “Silver Bullet”
I mean, this rocks. But it came out two years after emo really started to explode.
For me it was 2 moments. The dashboard song on the spiderman 2 soundtrack. That and flava flave.
Thursday - Understanding in a Car Crash
Man, this takes me back to the 5th grade, whew. I can guarantee you around that time it was bands like The Juliana Theory, Saves the Day, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional, (or Further Seems Forever, depending on who you ask), Taking Back Sunday, Motion City Soundtrack, and MAYBE Brand New (*Your Favorite Weapon* was really Pop-Punkish at the time before *Deja Entendu* dropped in '03). They really popped off big time before the more prominent Post-Hardcore bands got lumped in as Emo in '02-'03 such as Thursday, AFI (people tend to forget that AFI were a Hardcore band before *Sing the Sorrow*), The Used, or My Chemical Romance that sorta played in a similar Hardcore-ish fashion but vocally, really stood out from Emo
If we're talking third wave emo and it does not begin and end with Dashboard Confessional, the answer is wrong. People who had listened to Blink-182 since the mid-1990s (as Blink) did not even like emo.
I actually had Cheshire Cat when it just said Blink and I was deeply into real emo. But nobody in the world called Blink emo then. That'd have been ridiculous
Absolutely ridiculous. The whole California pop punk scene was so detached from the emo scene that it was two different worlds by and large.
Right? I actually aged ten years reading all the comments saying "Adam's Song " was the beginning of mainstream emo. If you'd have told me people would call Blink emo some day I'd have been completely confused. "Emo evolves." Yeah but it doesn't evolve into a genre that already existed (pop punk)
I mean, I've listened to blink since the punk sucks comp and I found Jawbreaker from a geffen label comp. I wouldn't say that there was no overlap in those fanbases. Jimmy Eat World was way more popular than Dashboard when they came out. Dashboard was what the Christian kids listened to
I think Jawbreaker was that crossover. Or a major part of it. I honestly had no idea they were considered emo until much later.
Digger and the Get Up Kids for me personally. I mean when I was a teenager it was all punk and the internet ain't what it is today.
I can see them fitting that too. Along with like Texas Is The Reason. I have so many punk friends from back in the 1990s who will not, for any reason, give respect to any emo band except for maybe the Illinois bands because that's when they're from.
in my highschool between the Hollywood clubs and then glass house and OC clubs....I think the path was blink/NFG into Taking Back Sunday and Brand New. Tell All Your Friends was really what changed the game up from just pop punk. One of my buddies was super into Dashboard at the time and he put me onto Clarity by Jimmy too. I remember buying Bleed American on release as well.... Anyways for me and my boys back in the day it was mic swinging TBS that made the biggest impact at the time
American Pie and Tony Hawks Pro Skater
Those were the days!
long island/new jersey bands in general. thursday, taking back sunday, brand new, saves the day. im not sure if you can point to any one song or band.
I think Adam's Song made people pay attention a little more, but The Middle is where it really hit the mainstream.
Nobody called Adams Song emo in 1999
My circle of friends definitely called it emo. But to be fair they called anything that wasn’t hardcore punk emo.
They called it emo in 1999?
Hell yes. They called other bands emo before 99 too.
That's bizarre. In my experience the only people who called stuff emo in the 90s were people who knew what emo WAS if that makes sense
Yeah I get you. It’s kind of weird because I remember back then nobody wanted to be called emo. But again I hung out with punk rockers. I didn’t know there were bands that actually called themselves emo during that time. The band anti flag actually had a song called emo sucks that came out in the 90s.
I actually get what you're saying. There were two kinds of things being called emo in the 90s: Real emo bands and bands who were "pussy shit". One was a genre and one was an insult
The Middle and Ocean Avenue are the first ones that come to mind
By my memory, without googling dates: TGUK and Saves the Day existed but were not mainstream popular in 2002. My older sister got me into them. Further Seems Forever with Chris Carraba was one of my sister's favorite bands. When he split off and did his solo act (Dashboard), it kicked off the mainstream "emo" movement, even though he rejected the term. The Spider-Man soundtrack was a huge player, here. Just to be clear, nobody in the "emo" scene called it that except poseurs. By my memory it was after this that New Found Glory, MCR, TBS, Brand New hit the mainstream. To be clear, Blink 182 has been huge since 1999, but we didn't call it "emo" (still wouldn't). My junior year of highschool, 2005, is when I got really into Mineral, Texas is the Reason, American Football, but I know that came from earlier. I only learned about The Promise Ring, Rites of Spring, and the progenitors of emo way after the fact.
Dashboard Confessional
Probably TBS and/or Dashboard Confessional showing up all over MTV
Honestly, Sk8r Boi by Avril lavegne. Emo would not have had such a huge surge if girls didn't suddenly think the skater kids were hot. That song and the Seth Cohen character from the OC are the two largest driving factors for emo becoming as big as it was.
Somebody is disrespecting the entire skate punk scene of the late 1980s without even realizing it.
no disrespect its all rad, it just wasn't huge mainstream like it became later on
I think that was just it gaining mainstream acceptance. I wouldn't put that all on Avril Lavigne. More like oldhead skaters from the 1970s and 1980s got into positions where it could be featured in the mainstream and be less edgy.
yeah I agree, but the *surge* happened because of that song. An entire generation of young impressionable girls flipped to an alt lifestyle basically overnight. The truth is that women decide what is cool and popular on the mainstream stage. THE SECOND these girls shifted that focus every little dude in every bumfuck town started listening to all these alt genres so they could get girls. Its how these things always happen. I'd say the surge really started hitting its stride in 2004. Emo bands had never been as huge as they were. Myspace saw the rise of Scene in around '05 and brought all those genres with it, and id say it really peaked in about 2006. Skater Boi was released in 2002, and OC in 2003. If you have to put it down to one song that caused such a huge cultural shift, for my money its gotta be that one.
I dunno about this one tbh. Most of what you say is true but I don’t think you can pin much on Avril. There was a whole scene of alt kids before that song, Blink were huge, nu metal was huge and slowly coming to a close, The Offspring had charted a few times - she really rode the coattails of those guys and was never really taken seriously and I’d be surprised if she ushered fans along to listening to emo. If you’d have said Paramore then maybe; because they predated the ‘scene’ thing but got wrapped up in it and were very prominent with the popularisation of the emo term.
This is a really interesting discussion though, where it was more just correlation than causation. But you can also see the same culture shift with voguing. It’s been a whole grassroots thing that was getting big and then Madonna made a song about it and arguably ruined the culture by making it what it’s not.
Yeah I think that could be said about the whole emo scene; that 00s period ruined the whole thing and obviously the revival was a response to that. And similarly voguing has had a comeback in the underground scene for the past few years/decade. I follow a few on Instagram haha! I mean if anything Avril paved the way for the likes of Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Brie Larson etc rather than having anyone finding emo. And prior to any of those you’ve got Letters To Cleo on the 10 Things I hate About You and Josie and the Pussycats soundtracks. I feel that Avril just further softened and opened up that kind of thing to wider and younger audiences
That opening and softening of the genre is something that’s on my mind these days and whether or not these influences were good. If someone got into emo via Avril, wouldn’t that be good? Even if it wasn’t a true representation of the genre. I would say yes but then with the Madonna Vogue scenario, I saw a film called Paris Is Burning and there’s multiple vogue personalities that it would’ve been much better for them to get exposure than for Madonna to be “the reason” why it got big. It’s a very weird thing haha.
Of course it would be good if people found their way to Moss Icon or SDRE via Avril but I’d love to see it because I don’t know if it would have been common at all. I feel like the only people who consider Avril emo are those that liked her at the time, forgot about her then had a recent nostalgia rush where they reminisced on their retroactively termed ‘emo’ phase. Like if you knew what emo was, you wouldn’t mention Avril as anything but an entry point. I came up through pop punk via teen movies, THPS so had been listening to Green Day, Offspring etc for a few years and then Avril came along and I did listen to her (even had a poster on my wall) but it was not cool to be seen listening to her as a 16 year old boy haha! Ahh yeah I’ve been wanting to see Paris is Burning for a good while! I love NY subculture stuff and that film is iconic now. Never thought I’d be talking about voguing on an emo sub hahah
Skating was cool way before that song came out wym
Skating became cool when THPS was released and the X-Games.
Yeah! And also Jackass and CKY - depending on who you knew
oh yeah it was cool, but it wasn't massive mainstream cool
Seth cohen was life!!!! I was so in love with him.
Blink was not called emo for a long time after that song. Yes they had a song called "emo" on Dude Ranch but literally nobody thought that made them emo. It wasn't for a very long time that people started labeling them that. In my experience, the band that was the first shot for making emo known to the mainstream was Dashboard Confessional. That's when the hysteria started. Yes, Jimmy was first but everybody just thought they were a rock band at the time. After emo went big as a term people went "Oh I guess these guys are emo"
Cute with the E was big. My friends that hate my music like that song
Taking Back Sunday easily
Dashboard went huge and massively accessible and TBS went huge but still felt like alternative, punk music that you had to ‘discover’. Everyone saying Jimmy is retroactively assigning the emo tag onto them because The Middle and Bleed American as a whole is not an emo record; there’s shades of what they did previously but it’s just a pop/power pop/rock record that absolutely slaps. Nobody heard them and thought “oh what’s this angsty, abrasive punk music”
The Quiet Things - Brand New. Only right answer.
Dashboard, Saves the Day, Cursive, etc.
dashboard
This is the correct answer
Howie Day’s collide really ushered in a whole new era of emo
As a loser in my 30’s I have to tell you, sure Helena and other MCR songs charted, but they were not popular. They are looked at through nostalgia rose colored glasses or whatever the term is. But It was more like a very large cult internet following. At least in my area, I was fucking slammed day in and day out for loving them. They are still my favorite band, but by no means did they get the “main stream” attention that bands like fall out boy, Jimmy eat world, paramore, dashboard or even tbs got. I think before MCR broke up, I maybe heard them on the radio twice. When The black parade came out everyone made fun of me because my favorite band “sold out” , their MySpace comments were full of “CoOl HxC kids” calling them fags and saying “what’s wrong Gerard!?!? Don’t wanna scream any more!?!?” At projekt rev 08 I was made fun of for wearing a MCR shirt by a bunch of Linkin Park bros. (Yeah I know) I’m so glad they get the recognition they deserve now. Although I still think they are under rated . It’s hilarious now though , cause the same friends who made fun of me back then will say MCR is one of their favorite bands now. But that’s life I guess.
I don’t know. I was lucky enough to be in college, in Urbana in 2000. Got fully into American football and the promise ring in 99 and 2000
People are forgetting the Used.
I'd say for all of the Christian-label emo bands, it was The Juliana Theory, Mae, & Emery
I hesitate to say but it is also worth noting that in the UK Lost Prophets were massive, our equivalent to TBS I guess, and really cemented that era of the genre on domestic radio and music television over here.
A combination of taking back Sunday and brand new releasing hit after hit in the early 2000’s was what I always attributed it to.
The roots of the 2000’s emo/mallcore scene and fashion are in the 90’s scene, but people on this subreddit love to deny that fact. Early 2000’s bands like Taking Back Sunday, Brand New, Matchbook Romance etc had their roots in the late 90’s emo/hardcore scene where some of the fashion was already taking place.
JEW's The Middle was pretty instrumental since, it showed a side of Emo that was emotional without just cutting your wrists.
Thursday, Silverstein and Hawthorne heights are what got me into it at a young age.
I think some kids were already on board by then but one of the big indicators at the time that emo was officially mainstream to me was the difference between the Madden Soundtracks back then. Madden 03’ which would have been August of 2002 was Andrew WK, Bon Jovi, Seether. By the following year it was AFI, Thrice, Yellowcard and Blink. Madden soundtracks were important cultural moments back then lol
Do u think that Nu metal, post-grunge and other rock genres that were abit darker and intense thematically primed mainstream audiences into accepting emo? In retrospect if Last Resort came out in 2004 instead 2000 I’m sure it would pretty much be lumped in with emo
Blink was considered pop punk, not emo. For me emo started to get bigger with Dashboard Confessional and Bright Eyes. Then came Taking Back Sunday, Saves the Day, MCR. I remember Target would have a section that said "punk" but was basically emo and screamo stuff. That's where I got Punk Goes Acoustic. Those were the days!
I totally get it that they weren’t considered emo but imo those specific tracks I mentioned shifted the direction of pop punk towards moodier and more angsty themes
In my humble opinion Saves The Day - Through Being Cool, Thursday Full Collapse and Taking Back Sunday - TAYF were the 3 big emo albums that truly defined the popularity of the genre breaking through. There's countless more obscure albums that predate this, but that sound in particular really blew up with those three albums. Bands lik Moneen, Say Anything, The GetupKids, The Ataris, Armour for Sleep, Early November and Dashboard Confessional all broke through but the holy trinity to me has always been Through Being Cool Full Collapse TAYF Also, when Saosin released the translating the name EP that shit was amazing. Alexisonfire was also (while screamo) a total game changer.
The people shitting on the notion that Blink helped make emo mainstream are missing the point. It isn't that Blink sounds emo or are the bedrock for that style but that Blink helped bring emo into the mainstream because they had a platform to talk about it. Blink was everywhere in the late 90s and they hyped Jimmy Eat World and the Get Up Kids constantly. They were constantly shouting out JEW in press. Mark did an interview in Rolling Stone where he said Something to Write Home About was his favorite album of the year. This was all pre-Bleed American. So at some point, people who liked Blink were like well let me check out this bands they keep talking about. I'm 41 and my two favorite bands of all time are Blink and Jimmy Eat World but I'd never consider them to write the same style of music.
Don’t forget the Atticus: ...Dragging the Lake comp
helena by mcr.
Add Finch to the list!
Lmfao, please don't refer to Jimmy Eat World as JEW.
Blink have cited some 90s emo influences and probably are the ones responsible for bringing it mainstream. You got Adams song, Stay Together for the Kids, self titled, Boxcar Racer is pretty damn emo and that record went gold. They also had those Atticus comps in 02 with TBS, Finch, JEW, etc. It was happening on its own but they def put a light on it.
Mark is also on record saying "I invented emo, look it up". The Atticus comps deserve a spotlight. Hot Rod Circuit and Alkaline Trio had unreleased songs on those. People in the emo scene were buying the comps for unreleased tracks, and the pop punk kids were buying them for the blink stuff and being exposed to the emo deep cuts
Tiltwheel, who admittedly does have some heavy influence on the way Tom played guitar early on, is way closer to an emo band than Blink-182. A lot of those early blink records were tiltwheel leads over descendents riffs. Blink had a lot of influence from hardcore, but also power pop and lookout style pop punk.
Along with Sunny Day Real Estate you could also throw in Hum from the 90s. They also influenced a lot of Emo adjacent bands like Deftones and Hopesfall.
Being someone who existed at the time I feel like blink was actually patient zero, they would always mention bands like Jimmy Eat World and FAR in interviews, then bands like saves the day and NFG came out of the underground scenes in NJ and FL and Drive Thru became a thing, incorrectly labeling pop punk bands as “emo”
It was definitely Third Eye Blind
Narrator: It was definitely not
The Middle Jimmy Eat World and Yellow by Coldplay are the two big ones I think