hello! i have had this topic on my mind all day and i wouldn't shut up about it in the car and i read some articles on it and they were all totally off the mark imo so i figured i'd make a little blog post about this subject and just info dump on my readers for a few minutes. i wanted to talk about emo and the five waves of it. essentially, the genre of emo can be divided into five different waves based on specific time periods, so i'll talk about each wave rly briefly, and i've made a playlist that i'll link for each time period.

so emo began as a genre in dc in the 80s, as a derivative of hardcore punk. the main band referenced for this time period is "rites of spring", a hardcore band inspired by minor threat, turned emo due to the inclusion of more melodic guitar work and emotional lyricism (although guy picciotto, their lead singer, insists that there was no difference between the music that rites of spring and his previous bands had made in terms of lyricism. as if every song he had written prior was not emotional, or something, but i digress). other popular bands of this time period were beefeater, husker du, and soulside. i think the main appeal of what was happening was that the hardcore scene was seeing a bit of deep emotion that other songs of that genre and era hadn't played around with much, like nostalgia, depression, romance, etc. this wave of emo was, in my opinion, most similar to punk rock of the 90s in terms of sound.
[playlist]

the second wave is, in my opinion, where it gets more interesting. the second wave of emo, which took up the whole of the 90s, was popular throughout the country, but more notably, in the midwest. some essential bands for this era were cap'n jazz, the promise ring, and, the one and only, sunny day real estate (i couldn't help but fit in a fun fact here: you've heard of the foo fighters right? that band that dave grohl formed after nirvana and kurt's death? well when dave grohl decided he wanted to start a new band, he loved the sound of sunny day real estate, and after they disbanded, recruited nate mendel and will goldsmith, bassist and drummer of sunny day real estate, to be part of foo fighters. it's pretty cool that foo fighters is half sunny day real estate and half nirvana, an unlikely combo if you ask me). although midwest emo, in current day, is more of a folky emo sound, second wave emo was nothing like that. in fact, it was as grungy and heavy as the first wave, and an important factor was the popularity of small, intimate house shows that concerts of this genre were found in. a lot of the math rocky typa emo branched off from this wave of emo at the same time as well, mainly spawned from american football, who rose at the very end of this wave from mike kinsella, an ex-member of cap'n jazz and another notable emo band from this era, joan of arc. bro was prolific.
[playlist]

then, the third wave of emo came to be in the early 2000s, and a big issue with this wave was that the definition of emo became really ambiguous. a lot of debate over what is and isn't emo started from this time frame (there's even a whole website that you can look at that tells you if a band is emo or not, but you can disagree with their definition if you want to). a lot of what people divide as pop punk, emo rock, etc, was what formed this wave, so mainly bands like jimmy eat world, brand new, etc. i'm also gonna address the elephant in the room with this wave; the scene genre. i personally don't like classifying scene as a part of emo, but i SUPPOSE you could if you really wanted to. scene was a genre made up of bands like my chemical romance, fall out boy, panic! at the disco, etc etc, hot topic ass music in my opinion. i think scene sounds a bit too far from emo, with the exception of some of mcr's earlier discography, but i have no issue with others grouping them together. for this reason, i'll briefly touch on them as well. scene sort of became this counter culture, mtv, monster energy, skinny jeans typa sound that really rose to popularity. so while i don't think they count as emo, i do think that they are so commonly associated with emo, and confused as emo, that they brought the genre of emo to the public eye better than before. so, hey, there's that. but anyways, third wave emo was explosive, like there were so many more bands making emo music than the first two eras that new music was rapidly releasing and growing the genre as a whole. it would be really tough for me to list all the notable bands of this time period, as there were just so many influential projects coming out. emo was becoming younger and even a bit experimental during this period, where the genre had historically remained relatively rigid, and something that older listeners enjoyed more.
[playlist]

anyways, what came after was the fourth wave of emo, my personal favorite wave. this wave saw a lot more of that folky emo sound, as well as indie rock influences in emo. a lot less punk moshing hardcore house show, and a lot more sad, whiny, acoustic guitar alternate tuning, i hate this town typa stuff. the big boys in this era were modern baseball, the hotelier, the front bottoms, algernon cadwallader, etc (btw, if you like modern baseball, and you're interested in hearing more, but from a more folky indie angle, check out slaughter beach, dog. basically, after modern baseball broke up, their lead singer and bassist, jake ewald and ian farmer formed slaughter beach, dog, and they're still goin strong to this day). i'm not going to talk about emo rap and stuff, like lil peep, or anything, because i just don't have the experience listening to that sort of stuff to talk about it. anyways, bands from this era saw something interesting happening; people were sort of getting sick of the third wave emo stuff, and as a result, bands decided to go back to their roots and make music closer to the second wave. that's why there's a lot more similarities between the second and fourth wave than other genres, and why this period is called the emo revival.
[playlist]

ok and lastly the fifth wave of emo, end of the 2010s to the 2020s, pretty much anything that came after modern baseball broke up. fifth wave emo is pretty vast and vague, as there are a lot of bands that compose this genre that don't really...sound emo? in the sense that what has historically been the "emo sound" was less common in newer emo music, and you could put some of these songs in like an indie rock or slowcore playlist and they'd fit right in. that's not to say these songs are bad by any means, but a lot of musicians have definitely gotten really creative and experimental with what emo is, mixing it with other genres, which is why people consider this wave "post-emo". a lot of stuff from the record label 'counterintuitive records' is the main meat of fifth wave emo, including bands like origami angel, mom jeans, prince daddy & the hyena, etc. records like the first glass beach album by glass beach, come in by weatherday, somewhere city by origami angel, etc, are some of the main products of this period. an interesting thing is that the popularity of emo seemed to have gone down as a whole since the mid-2010s, but some fifth wave emo bands are reaching heights far higher than any other emo band in the past, sans mega stars like mcr. as a result, this whole wave is about emo becoming a fluid, unconventional genre, an entirely different beast, one that no one can really categorize or define.
[playlist]

anyways, that's the five waves of emo. i think they're all really great and have some really incredible music that came out of them, and there is a lot of treasure to be found within this genre as a whole, if you know where to look. hope you enjoyed! thx