The word emo has a certain stigma attached to it. People’s minds often go to MySpace, massive haircuts, and Hot Topic.
In truth, emo music has a deep history from its origins in the burgeoning post-hardcore punk scene to its rebirth in the late ‘90s with bands such as American Football, Cap’n Jazz, and Sunny Day Real Estate, and of course, its most famous era in the early to mid-2000s where many popular stereotypes come from. However, it is clear now that in the past two to three years, a new era of emo is developing. This new “wave” of emo has been slowly gaining traction on social media, especially TikTok.
Since its release in 2016, TikTok has been a launching pad for musical artists and even entire music subgenres. This launch into the mainstream happened with genres such as shoegaze and folk punk. Now emo has felt this same phenomenon. Originally, most of the music found an audience on TikTok at the beginning of this wave, and it was already popular within the subculture. Reigning acts like Modern Baseball, Marietta, and Tiger’s Jaw all found a myriad of listeners within the new social media landscape even after some of them broke up. However, as these bands became more popular on social media, their influence soon became more and more apparent.
Cover of emo band Pennines’ EP “Demos”-Credit to Spotify
In the era of music streaming and social media, it is easier than ever to learn about subcultures and their music. Because of this wealth of information, many forgotten bands have come back into the limelight.
One such band is the UK act Pennines. Their song “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.” became incredibly popular on TikTok last year, even though their band stopped recording music in 2009 without a proper album release.
When asked about the band’s increase in popularity, member Michael Wightman said “We have more monthly listeners on Spotify than I can possibly comprehend… It is, however, an incredible privilege to see so many people engaging with something we created together”.
The members of Pennines hadn’t realized their musical impact until very recently but their rise from semi-obscurity coincided with a return together to distribute a compilation album and possibly record currently unreleased songs from that period.
Wightman explained, “If we get to write new songs or play live, then we will, but this is some way off at this time. We’re not putting any pressure on ourselves to achieve any specific goals”.
Wightman believes that a large part of why Pennines and emo in general are gaining such a resurgence is because of the ways that streaming has affected listening habits. Without the need to purchase CDs or invest in music, it is much easier to try out different genres of music and find what you individually like. A person’s listening habits are no longer dependent on their purchasing power or unnecessary genre lines.
As Wightman describes it, “ I had a limited budget for purchasing music, so I would stick to genres I was familiar with…This doesn’t need to happen anymore, so if people vibe with a song, regardless of genre, they can add it to a playlist and live with it for a while, so it becomes part of their musical lexicon”.
It is an exciting time for the genre of emo. New acts like Harrison Gordon, The Casper Fight Scene, and Heart Attack Man are breathing life into the genre while older groups are coming back from retirement for touring and even new releases. If the genre continues its upward momentum it could become even larger than its peak in that Y2K era. Only time and quality will tell.
If you’re interested in listening to more music like this, here is a Spotify playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2n17R6doeioseRbKsbQGPI?si=WeOhditqTvWi88W5iMWTrw
