Mark Hoppus, Chris Carrabba on How Emo Night Vindicated the Scene
My Chemical Romance’s Mikey Way, who makes his Emo Night debut in a joint DJ set with All Time Low’s Jack Barakat, thinks the night will be like a “class reunion.” “The last tour [My Chemical Romance] did, us and Blink co-headlined,” he muses. “When I was coming up in the scene, I worked at Eyeball Records, and Chris Carrabba used to crash at the owner of Eyeball’s house sometimes. We put on one of his first Jersey shows. It’s like It’s a Wonderful Life of emo.”
Carrabba also notes his particular excitement in seeing Hoppus DJ the event. “Blink had a big influence on the emo scene. I’m so glad he’ll be there because I know that they’re considered pop-punk and legends, but they were the step in the middle between Sunny Day Real Estate and all of us. They did the Descendents thing. They sang with great melody over great music. They sang about their lives in the moment instead of about politics or something greater.”
The diversity in the lineup shows how fluid the definition of the term has become. Once the scene expanded, the word did as well, making it harder for bands like My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confession to feel comfortable with the label. “We used to detest the word,” Way remembers with a laugh. “We were pretty against it for a while because we thought it was a dishonest term record labels were using at the time to get them to buy things they were selling. If the band had the right hair or the right look, they would call them emo. If they were on a specific label, they would call them emo. That’s why we had kind of a negative take on it for a while. It’s aging nicely.”
“It’s like It’s a Wonderful Life of emo.” —Mikey Way
Carrabba felt similarly uncomfortable with the label. “I’m proud to be called an emo band, but I can be honest and say that I wasn’t for a little while,” he says. “I wasn’t embarrassed; I was just indifferent. I thought, ‘This no longer applies to whatever it is that we sound like.'”
The looseness of the definition also made the term confusing for those involved in the mid-2000s pop-punk scene that All Time Low came up in — and even more so for outsiders. “People who don’t listen to our kind of music probably consider our band emo because of the way we dress and whatnot,” Barakat offers, though he does not identify All Time Low as emo. “I do think that what makes music genres [exist] is the people who listen to the songs or a band. I do think that a lot of emo and pop-punk bands have had the same fanbase, which is what blurred the lines.”
As the definition of “emo” remains up for debate, there is no doubt that the classic idea of the genre has made a comeback following reunions of marquee acts like Dashboard and Sunny Day Real Estate in the past several years. Much as the scene did during its height, Emo Night has brought together hordes of like-minded people across the country to scream along to songs by the bands they grew up with. “The way that the founders bonded over music is the way these bands did as well,” Carrabba says. “I’m going as a fan as well.”
