Among the groups that will take part in the next edition of the Sanremo Festival is also La Sad, a Milanese band that came to prominence a few years ago and, for its aesthetic and musical characteristics, is often associated with Emo, a musical genre that descends from punk and looks back on at least four decades of history. However, emo only really gained worldwide popularity between the late 1990s and the second half of the 2000s, when some groups began to distance themselves from the violent and harsh sound of punk in favor of simpler and catchier melodies, creating successful albums, which they also managed to permanently enter the most important international charts and become pop in every respect.
Over the years, the term “emo” has come to mean not only a specific musical genre, but also a very heterogeneous cultural movement, characterized by a nihilistic worldview and some common aesthetic characteristics such as clothing and hairstyle. Recently, emo has come back into fashion, especially in Anglo-Saxon countries, thanks to an active and renewed listening niche: the “rebirth” of the genre is in fact attributed to the so-called Gen Z (a term that indicates this). (people born between the late 1990s and early 2010s), which also thanks to some widespread trends on TikTok, has begun to rediscover the production of groups that have contributed to the global spread of emo music and style, such as such as My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the disco.
This is what happened, for example, in 2021, when the song “Dear Maria, Count Me In”, released fourteen years earlier by the American emo-punk band All Time Low, was certified double platinum precisely because of its success on TikTok. With a lower intensity, emo has also come back into fashion in Italy, where some new musical groups base part of their offer on this genre, reproposing it in a more modern key and managing to appeal to a young and very loyal audience.
In addition to La Sad, this applies, for example, to Psicologi, a duo described in 2019 as “emo-rap”, which is listened to by more than a million people on Spotify every month, a more than remarkable figure for the Italian music market. Another well-known musician is Naska, pseudonym of Diego Caterbetti, a singer who explicitly refers to this style and defines his music as “emo-trap-pop-punk”.
To describe the return of emo to fashion, a specific neologism has been coined on social media: “RAWring Twenties”, a word that ironically recalls the “Roaring Twenties”, a term that in the United States refers to the period of 1920 to 1929 was characterized by general prosperity and well-being. The revival of emo is a much-discussed topic among American music critics, who are often puzzled in their analyzes by the timing of this reassessment. This music has actually managed to capture the interest of a generation that should, at least in theory, consider it anachronistic and outdated, having grown up in the decade that immediately followed what music journalist Patric Fallon called the “golden one.” Era” of music defines genre, that is, the decade in which it reached its greatest popularity, more or less between 1997 and 2007.
One of the possible explanations is related to the themes discussed in the texts, which, according to some experts, would be very similar to the worldview of Generation Z. For example, according to the American music psychologist Michael Bonshor, people born during this period tend to listen to sad songs with a very dark atmosphere, two characteristics that are very common in emo. In August, Spotify, the world's largest music platform, also confirmed this trend in a report that highlighted, among other things, that the term “sad” was the most searched term by Gen Z listeners. “There is something truly unique about this generation. They accept their feelings easily: they overcome the stigma of vulnerability,” said Krista Scozzari, Spotify’s head of marketing for North America.
In an interview with Esquire, Bonshor further expanded the concept, explaining that Generation Z is more inclined to listen to sad and melancholic music than any previous generation: this is due to some of their cultural peculiarities, such as the great importance attributed to it to empathy, the tendency to worry about the future of the planet, a greater ability to think and, above all, to express one's state of mind in public.
According to Judith Fathallah, professor of communications at Lancaster University, the return of emo “benefits from Generation Z's nostalgia for a youth they never experienced” but which they find emotionally very close. Fathallah also claims that listening to emo music represents one of the few forms of cultural consumption that Generation Z and Millennials, the previous generation born between the early 1980s and mid-1990s, have in common. According to Fathallah, millennials have experienced the transition into adulthood with some trepidation and therefore often find comfort in listening to songs reminiscent of their youth, particularly emo songs: “One of the recent emo festivals is called When We.” Were Young ( When we were young) and that’s no coincidence,” he wrote.
Some of the criticism instead offers a different reading, suggesting that in reality emo never really went out of style and that it simply evolved, adapting to new trends, hybridizing with other genres, and other forms from time to time adopts in order to adapt to the spirit of the times. Recently, some hip-hop musicians have actually integrated the aesthetics and typical themes of emo lyrics into their music production: for example, the American rapper Lil Peep, who died in 2017, is often cited as the founder and main representative of emo, so-called “emo rap”, a subgenre that combines various styles commonly used in hip hop music with the themes and melodies of emo music. In the early 2010s, following the example of Lil Peep, other rappers such as Juice WRLD, Lil Uzi Vert and XXXTentacion began to associate themselves with the emo rap label and achieved notable success by including samples of songs in their production, the very famous Emos and aids were to introduce them to younger generations. Sometimes Mac Miller, a critically acclaimed rapper who died in 2018, is also included in the genre.
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From a purely musical perspective, the origins of emo are usually attributed to Hüsker Dü, an extremely iconic hardcore punk band formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1979, and in particular Zen Arcade, their second studio-released album in 1984. Two years earlier Everything Falls Apart was released, their debut album, which was perceived by critics as somewhat classic and stereotypical and was characterized by rough sounds, concise and recognizable guitar riffs and very politically striking lyrics.
To make their sound less obvious, Hüsker Dü in Zen Arcade took some measures: while in many pieces they maintained the hardcore approach – and therefore of great intensity, dirty and musically aggressive – they added others in which the distortion The guitars were less ponderous, the melodies were catchier and frontman Bob Mold's vocals were cleaner. Some songs, such as “One Step At A Time” and “Broken Home Broken Heart”, incorporated some experiments that were unusual for the hardcore punk scene at the time, such as the inclusion of acoustic guitars and piano interludes.
The real breaking point, however, were the lyrics, which were more intimate and thoughtful, tied together by the common narrative thread of youthful alienation, a distinctive feature that led critics at the time to hail Zen Arcade as the first example of a concept album (records containing all the songs). revolve around a specific theme) in the history of hardcore punk. This formula was revisited the following year by Chicago band Naked Raygun with the release of their debut album Throb Throb, another oft-cited album when discussing the origins of emo.
The city where emo became most widespread, however, was Washington, where from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, groups such as Embrace, Rites of Spring, and Nation of Ulysses further refined the formula established by Hüsker Dü and created a market for this music . which was defined as the “emo core” and triggered the so-called “first emo wave”. This period was particularly associated with the figure of the American musician and record producer Ian MacKaye, singer of Embrace and before Minor Threat, who founded Dischord Records in 1980, a label created to release the records of the groups that surrounded him moving Washington punk scene.
According to an anecdote often quoted in the trade press, MacKaye almost unconsciously opened the way to the emerging emo scene in Washington for reasons that were partly personal and partly political. It often happened that groups of skinheads appeared at his concerts, members of the well-known punk subculture, which was characterized by shaved heads and widespread right-wing extremist sympathies and angered the audience with violent behavior. To solve the problem, MacKaye came up with a solution: the most immediate idea was to play a different, more melodic and thoughtful style of punk, which probably wouldn't have been to her taste and might have convinced her to stay away from his performances.
This particular concept of punk, less harsh in its sounds and more introspective in its lyrics, would become the defining characteristic of emo for the next twenty years. Things changed in the 2000s when the genre began to take on a more obvious pop connotation. Emo's move into the mainstream is generally associated with Bleed American, the first studio album by Jimmy Eat World, an Arizona punk band, from which singles charted well. Most famously, “The Middle” reached number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and number four on the Billboard Pop 100, two of the most important US music charts.
From that moment on, emo experienced considerable commercial diffusion, and the label became quite bloated: it was used to describe groups that were quite different from a musical point of view, but united by some aesthetic codes and highly emotional lyrics, like Get Up Kids at Fall out Boy.
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Because of the particular circumstances in which it emerged and how it evolved over the decades, two macro trends have developed within what is now variously defined as “emo”: one more commercial and pop, the other more experimental and demo Alternative rock close. This fact often causes confusion: thanks to the worldwide success of groups such as Tokio Hotel, My Chemical Romance and Panic! achieved in the early 2000s! In disco, the term “emo” is often used in a derogatory manner and is associated with a type of frivolous and commercial pop-punk music, as well as a youthful aesthetic that essentially consists of dark clothing, studs, and colored tufts over the eyes.
In fact, the history of the genre is full of bands and records that still have a certain niche cult and critical acclaim today, such as Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary (1994), Do You Know Who You Are? from Texas Is The Reason (1996), Day Three of My New Life from Knapsack (1997), American Football from American Football (1999), Dance Tonight! Revolution tomorrow! by Orchid (2000) and Peripheral Vision by Turnover (2015).
In Italy, too, there have always been two different currents in emo: one independent and cultivated, the other more pop and with commercial ambitions. In the first case, the main examples are Fine Before You Came, an Italian emo core group founded in Milan in 1999, which over the years has also built a solid and quite extensive fan base abroad, as well as groups such as La Quiete, Pavillon-Penguine and Cosmetics. In the second part, Finley and Dari are particularly remembered, two bands that achieved a certain popularity in the early 2000s with songs like Fumo ecene and Wale (tanto wale).
Recently, alongside more mainstream groups such as La Sad and Naska, bands have emerged that identify with the emo genre but are characterized by a more sophisticated musical offering, such as Gomma, a band from Caserta founded in 2016.
Emos are usually associated with a nihilistic worldview and some rumors that began to spread in the early 2000s. One of them claimed that people belonging to this subculture had developed a certain tendency towards depression and self-harm. However, the scientific evidence of such a connection is very complex: one of the few scientific studies on this subject, carried out in 2018 by the Department of Psychology at the University of Manchester and based on a sample of 6,000 British students, says that people who recognize in certain subcultures , including emo and goth subcultures, people are actually at greater risk of self-harm and suicidal thoughts due to the social stigma they face. In addition, according to the study authors, belonging to these groups would increase the likelihood of experiencing verbal harassment and aggression.
Already since the late 1990s, the word “emo” was used not only to describe the musical genre associated with it, but also a subculture with a very recognizable iconography of reference, emanating from clothing and characterized by very dark clothing, denim tights and skateboard shoes. Another aesthetic element that most characterizes the emo style is the hairstyle: it usually has side-cut curls of different lengths and fringes that reach the eyebrows and are intensely black or sometimes dyed with bright colors.
Within the emo subculture, several subgroups are distinguished, differentiated by a few characteristics: the 2007 essay “Everybody Hurts: An Essential Guide to Emo Culture” by Trevor Kelley and Leslie Simon identifies dozens of them, such as the “skater” Emo”, described as “the emos who are closest to skate culture and therefore spend the most time practicing the sport rather than being around other emos”, and the “alt-country emo”, i.e. the Emos who grew up in rural areas.
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Where you can ask for help
If you find yourself in an emergency situation, Call 112. If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call the helpline at 02 2327 2327 or via the Internet from here, daily from 10 a.m. to midnight.
You can also contact the Samaritan Association 06 77208977, daily from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m.