Andrew Greenwald writer of Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo explains that "The term 'emo' ... first came into common practice in 1985. If Minor Threat was hardcore, then Rites of Spring, with its altered focus, was emotional hardcore or emocore.". The popularity of bands like Rites of Spring and later Rites of Spring and Embrace supergroup, Fugazi, represented the beginning of a much larger transformation in the hardcore scene, Greenwald states that this was a "shift from anger to action, from extroverted rage to internal turmoil, from an individualized mass to a mass of individuals."
Although frontman of Embrace, Ian Mckaye called 'emo-core', "the stupidest fucking thing I've ever heard in my entire life" the term began to steadily gain nationwide popularity into the 90s after most bands from the original D.C scene had separated. These early emotional hardcore acts like Rites of Spring, Embrace, Indian Summer, Moss Icon and The Hated went on to lay the foundations for bands that solidified the emo sound like Sunny Day Real Estate, The Promise Ring, Jawbreaker and Jimmy Eat World.All jokes aside, what does 'Real Emo' consist of? As an emo historian such as myself, I have long wondered about this question but have come to the conclusion that it is up to the listener. Although emo emerged from the term emotional hardcore, by the mid-nineties more bands began to develop the sound further, like the Promise Ring and Braid taking a more pop route with their clearer vocals and catchier melodies. The popularity of this new sound changed what the public would categorise as being 'emo' forever. This created a rift between fans of these newer bands and fans of the original hardcore scene who claimed this new popular emo sound was fake and believed that, to quote the infamous copypasta, "EMO BELONGS TO HARDCORE NOT TO INDIE, POP PUNK, ALT ROCK OR ANY OTHER MAINSTREAM GENRE".
In the present day, most fans of emo music would consider the Promise Ring and Rites of Spring to be emo despite their different sounds. However, these days the discourse surrounding what constitutes as emo is a bit more complicated. Online, most arguments about whether someone is emo or not end in, 'Well if so and so isn't emo then I guess they are just post-hardcore, or pop-punk or math-rock or some other niche genre that isn't really emo but essentially is'. By attempting to define what consitutes as emo, fans just end up going round in circles and reaching brick walls - as listeners, rather than musicians do we really have the right to say what a band is or isn't? (However, if you really must know check out this cool site which will tell you if a band is emo or not and is probabaly based on... facts?)However, personally, I believe that emo is more of a social scene or movement rather than a genre of music. In his book Andy Greenwald states, "As long as there are feelings, teenagers will claim that they had them first. And as long as there are teenagers, music will get labelled emo." Even though this quote dates back to 2002, emo is still as relevant as ever to teenagers, irrelevant to what band is or isn't emo, I can't think of any other music movement which has been able to last nearly 40 years and mean so many different things to so many different people - whether it was just an awkward phase in their lives or records which they haven't been able to put down since they first heard them.
