Feature: Emo Is Dead?
Every few years, someone declares emo dead. And every time, the music quietly proves them wrong.
For me, that conversation starts with Emotion Is Dead by The Juliana Theory. I love this album. This album is emo music at its perfection. It holds up to today’s music just as well 25 years later. It has amazing melodies and breakdowns. Two of my favorite breakdowns in all of emo music come from this album, “To the Tune of 5,000 Screaming Children” and “Is Patience Still Waiting?”
But even that statement gets challenged.
Mark Medlin offers a different perspective:
“It’s one of my favorite albums ever, but I don’t really consider it emo. There’s emo on it, but there’s alt, jangly pop, the break in ‘Is Patience’ could have been on Siamese Dream, dare I say influences of Third Eye Blind and Savage Garden… just a big mish mash of 90s rock and pop sounds.”
And that is where this conversation really begins.
What I have learned through my own experience, and through researching, writing, and talking with others on this topic, is that emo is not easily defined and often means something slightly different to each person. Emo touches multiple genres, which is part of what makes it both powerful and difficult to pin down. Because of that, bands like Stavesacre, Underoath, or As Cities Burn were not the first bands that came to my mind when I initially thought of emo.
The Core and the Expansion
If you strip it back, there are a few absolutes in the second-wave conversation: Jimmy Eat World, Sunny Day Real Estate, and The Get Up Kids. From there, everything branches out.
Bands like Further Seems Forever, Emery, Mae, and Copeland carried emotional songwriting into broader spaces.
Others pushed into heavier territory. Beloved, Embodyment, Terminal, Dead Poetic, and Underoath helped shape what emo and post-hardcore would become.
Then there are bands that stretch the definition entirely. Pedro the Lion, mewithoutYou, and Listener prove emo is more about emotional expression than a specific sound. Listener, led by Dan Smith of Deepspace 5, helped pioneer a lane often referred to as “speak music,” something completely unique for its time.
Even within the same era, there was diversity. Noise Ratchet released Till We Have Faces, an amazing emo album with rock, pop, and punk influences. Cool Hand Luke delivered emotionally charged early releases that stand among the best of that era. I saw them around 1999, and they played with their backs to the audience.
Twothirtyeight released Regulate the Chemicals, a solid indie emo rock album with no fillers. I saw them around 2000 and they put on an amazing show.
The Scene That Carried It
There were also bands that lived in and around this space and helped carry the movement forward: Subseven, Anberlin, The Almost, Sullivan, Search the City, Small Towns Burn a Little Slower, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, Dizmas, Nevertheless, Spoken, Thrice, and Brand New.
Some fit directly into emo. Others are adjacent. But all of them show how wide the umbrella really is.
A Personal Connection to the Scene
Daniel Rock shared a memory that perfectly captures what this music meant to so many people.
He walked into an indie record store in Plattsburgh, New York and picked up Emotion Is Dead by The Juliana Theory, The Moon Is Down by Further Seems Forever, and Bleed American by Jimmy Eat World. That moment shaped everything, leading to years of following these bands and traveling across states and into Canada to see them live.
The Hardcore to Emo Pipeline
For Jason Arellano, emo was not the starting point. It was the next step.
“I’m a huge fan of music. I discovered music in junior high because of Pirate Radio, an old heavy metal station in Los Angeles. My first concert was at Magic Mountain, a Pirate Radio show with Dramarama. My first favorite bands were Metallica, AC/DC, Megadeth.
Then I’m a product of 90s youth group. My youth pastor showed us the Hell’s Bells video series, literally scared the hell out of us, and convinced us to get rid of all our secular music, which I did. But the only decent ‘Christian music’ I could find was The Crucified, Focused, and Unashamed. So I went back to secular music around ’93. At that time I really liked 90s alternative like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and The Smashing Pumpkins. I was still into hardcore as well, bands like Strife and Snapcase.
Then in ’94 I discovered punk rock through Dookie by Green Day. I went to Warehouse Music to listen to demos, where I discovered the first Punk-O-Rama compilation. When ‘Don’t Call Me White’ by NOFX came on, I was hooked. From there I just dove into the punk and hardcore scene and was going to shows every weekend.
During this time the Tooth & Nail scene was blowing up in Southern California. In ’96 to ’99 I was really into the Christian hardcore scene. My friends in Bible College were in a band called Point of Recognition, and I would often work their merch table. That’s when I was introduced to emo. All the hardcore guys eventually go into emo during that time.
One of my friends said, ‘Emo is for the hardcore kid who grows up.’
It was the lead singer and bassist of Point of Recognition that burned me The Get Up Kids Something to Write Home About, Sunny Day Real Estate Diary, Jimmy Eat World Static Prevails, and Mineral The Power of Failing. I was blown away and just loved all of this.
I then discovered Roadside Monument and The Juliana Theory. Other bands that I’m a huge fan of are Pedro the Lion, Further Seems Forever, Thursday, Cursive, Jets to Brazil, The Promise Ring, and Emery.
Punk is my favorite, but I love emo. I’m not a big fan of most third-wave emo. Emotion Is Dead is an amazing album. The Juliana Theory is one of the best bands to never get huge for some odd reason. I think Understand This Is a Dream is a better ‘emo’ album, but Emotion Is Dead is still great.
The whole first-wave versus third-wave emo debate is huge. I used to say third-wave emo isn’t emo, but I don’t anymore. I’m a big fan of third-wave ska, so I felt like a hypocrite. With that being said, I think most third-wave emo bands have no idea who the first-wave bands are.
Sunny Day Real Estate is, in my opinion, the best emo band ever.
I also love anniversary shows. Emery has done two that I’ve been to, and I even did the VIP experience. It was awesome.
I think these bands resonate because the late 90s to mid-2000s was such an amazing time for music. It felt like every week incredible albums were coming out, and you could go to places like Best Buy or Target and buy them.”
Voices From the Scene
Joel “Jay” Goodwin offers a deeper perspective as both a musician and someone who has watched the genre evolve.
“Emo stops being a genre when so many other genres become saturated with emo influences. Emo in and of itself has been hard to define musically in the first place, so it became most associated with rock, punk, and even alternative metal.
There are many genres that arguably have emotional songs that are some of the most popular. Metallica’s ‘Nothing Else Matters’ and ‘Mama Said’ could almost be emo, yet they aren’t considered emo for various reasons. Meanwhile, in a usually non-associated genre like hip hop, the discographies of P.M. Dawn and Tyler The Creator are considered to be in the ‘emo’ category by many.
For a Christian equivalent, you could reference Stryper’s ‘Honestly’ and almost any song by Pigeon John.
I was never a fan of the album, but I definitely think both things are true at once. It’s a standout album in the emo genre, and part of that has to do with musical and lyrical brilliance, and part of it is the nostalgia associated with it. It speaks to a certain demographic that was into that trend, but it was also recognized as great by people outside of it. It was one of the defining albums when emo was being classified as a genre.
They probably get a lot of credit, but it depends on the bands that were influenced by them. Emo in the late 90s and early to mid-2000s pulled so many influences together that you have to give ‘Narrow Scope’-era Embodyment, Underoath, and Zao just as much credit as Sunny Day Real Estate, Emery, and Dear Ephesus for shaping the sound and subject matter of emo and post-hardcore, especially at its peak.
The power of emo music is best experienced through recorded albums. You have to know the music to experience the fullness of it live. Listening to the recordings is what allows people to resonate with the message, and that connection is what carries into the live experience.
I think whether it resonates more deeply is subjective. Music itself is nostalgic for so many people. Some people connect deeply with that era, while others prefer modern releases or different genres entirely.”
Final Thoughts
Emo is not easily defined. It never has been.
It is shaped by experience, by where you came from musically, and by what connected with you personally. For some, it starts in hardcore. For others, indie or alternative. For others, it is tied to one album, one moment, or one memory that changed everything.
That is why emo is still here.
Emo is not dead.
It never was.
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