The Emo Revival

After the divisive Machine Gun Kelly and Willow Smith song Emo Girl dropped in February, emos elder and new have been once again arguing over what “real” emo is, mirroring the 2005 arguments over whether emo was My Chemical Romance or Sunny Day Real Estate. Lyrics such as “she knows all the words to the trap songs” have left elder emos and Gen Z emos divided, but one thing that is for sure, is that emo is alive and well in 2022.

Emo Girl currently has over 50 million plays on Spotify (30 million more than Saturday by Fall Out Boy), Hayley Williams’ “Everything is Emo” podcast launched on the BBC at the end of April, and My Chemical Romance are in the midst of a worldwide stadium tour.

With this increase in interest in the subculture, you are left wondering, is this revival down to the pandemic, TikTok, or copycats looking for their slice of the successful MGK approved emo pie?

_{What is emo: Emo is a subculture which is associated with various aspects of fashion, music, and behaviour. Emo fashion is linked with skinny jeans, black eyeliner, band t-shirts, studded belts, and straight hair with long fringes, either black or dyed an artificial colour. Since the 2000s, fans of emo music were known for listening to bands like My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Escape the Fate, Hawthorne Heights, The Used, and AFI. However, since the 2020s revival they are also known for listening to emo rap artists such as Lil Peep and Juice Wrld, or Hyperpop artists such as 100 Gecs, or even Kpop artists. Emos are stereotypically associated with social alienation, sensitivity, introversion and angst. They are also often linked to depression, self-harm and suicide, however this link is often controversial and used to make fun of the subculture.}

Michael Vampire is a 42-year-old musician from Los Angeles, and the frontman of Vampires Everywhere! and Dead Girls Academy, both bands that can be considered to fall under the emo umbrella. Michael describes his look as a blend between emo, pop punk, and goth. I speak to him as he prepares for Vampires Everywhere! to play their first show in London, despite the band having been around since 2009. Despite this fact, the show tonight is sold out. Michael feels like this is as good a sign as any that emo is truly alive and well in 2022.

I asked Michael whether increased nostalgia during the pandemic had given birth to the revival, but he felt that while he wanted to believe that, he thought it was more to do with people seeing someone doing something successful, and following in their footsteps.

“It started with a small pop punk revival. And I think even the mainstream, especially MGK, the changeover he did really got a lot of attention for people. And I think it's always been there on some level. But now the kids are listening to emo rap, all that kind of stuff. There's just a brand new discovery of a whole genre that's been around, it's age of time especially for me, I've been around for 20 years doing it. And I think, I don't want to attribute it all to him (MGK). I'm sure there's a bunch of artists that have been kind of helping that out in the mainstream, but I feel like kids were just like, wow, this is super cool.

“Unfortunately, the way music works, once somebody comes out and does something prolific, classic, we're all just like he's doing that, it ain't gonna last for him. And then it does. And then more and more people come out of the woodworks and Atlantic Records signs this one and this one. It was like the Sum 41 era when everyone was doing that, Sr71, Sum 41, yada, yada. It's the same thing now. Unfortunately, I think riding the trend is where it kind of came.”

Roxy Katrina, known as trashmob online, is a “scemo” (a mix between scene (think colourful emo) and emo) influencer with 189 thousand followers on TikTok, however she brands herself as an “Og myspace scenekid”, as she was also big on MySpace (for any zoomers in attendance, MySpace was the most popular social media from 2005 to 2009), and has been scemo since 2007 non-stop, so she has seen its change over time.

She believes that emo is part of a cultural cycle, together with all subcultures, where they all rotate in and out of fashion as time goes on. That being said, she also mentions TikTok as a big driving force in the emo revival.

“I feel like everything that goes around comes around. I mean, it happened with the 90s, the 80s. It's gonna happen with everything. So I think that is a big part of it. All the millennials that were on MySpace are now adults, and we're kind of like, bring it back! You know what I mean? But then I also think that TikTok grabbed it, and it's just kind of like blown up.”

In terms of why TikTok picked up emo and scene culture, Roxy points to identity and image being so important to a lot of Gen Z on TikTok, and with emo and scene’s loud image it was a match made in heaven.

“It's so in your face, it is what it is. And I think that a lot of people like younger kids on TikTok really look for something that really just like, sets it in stone, who they are, and what their identity is. And so it's a very easy one to grasp onto in that aspect, I feel.”

Roxy's old MySpace photos

Clawed_beauty101 is a Christian emo influencer with 2.8million followers on TikTok.

She is known for posting Storytime, POV, comedy and cosplay videos. She is 22, born only three years before Michael Vampire started dressing up emo, yet her posts wouldn’t look out of place on MySpace in its prime.

Like Roxy, she also attributes emo’s revival to TikTok, highlighting the “safety in numbers” it provides, but she also points to the effects of the Corona Virus.

“When COVID hit we weren’t interacting with anybody so what was the source of interactions? Social Media, which is what TikTok was, it was a way to interact with people. And with the For You page as it is you get more videos of what you like, so if you like emo girls or any alternative place you're gonna get more people who look alternative. And that's gonna then encourage you feel like oh my gosh, there's so many people out there like me, if they're so confident doing this, I can have the confidence in doing this.”

Whether it is down to trend riding, cultural recycling, the importance of a loud image online, Covid 19, or strength in numbers, what’s clear is that emo is most certainly not dead, and doesn’t look like it’s dying any time soon. One thing all three emos can agree on, is that the subculture never truly left, and there is every reason to believe that every new generation will stumble on it and give it their own take. 2022 emo is not the same as its 2005 counterpart, but it is very much still emo, and the subculture being so malleable may well be the key to its longevity.