Emo is generally said to have started with Washington DC bands like Embrace (Ian MacKaye's band after Minor Threat and before Fugazi) and Rites of Spring (Guy Picciotto's band also before Fugazi) around '85. Later these fuckers finally formed the band Fugazi and began producing a whole new kind of shitty music, and the shitty music caught on.
The sound was basically a slower more emotional (hence the name "emo") version of "hardcore". The vocals are usually sung in a whiny sort of way. It should be stated that emo has been shitty music since it was first created and will never make itself into anything more than shitty music. Since the eighties, emo has constantly run as a parallel "scene" to punk rock. I myself am not an avid fan of punk rock in general, as most punk rock is shitty in it's own right. Emo has no positive points however. Come along with me as I deconstruct for you why emo is so worthless.
In an August 1997 review of a Smoking Popes show, Brian Wagner of the Chicago Reader wrote: "Josh has the most limited vocal range of any band I've heard recently. His monotone droning was ineffectively made out to sound like 'songs', and each one was more uncreative and difficult to listen to than the last." The Smoking Popes are just one of the many "emo" bands moving into the forefront of today's popular music. Although many might not consider the Smoking Popes to be actual emo, they rode the trend of punk bands turning to softer, love lament songs. So regardless of their true genre, they are where they are today because they followed the horrendous emo formula. Fortunately, the trend is dying. The Popes' last album, Destination Failure, peaked briefly on some alternative radio stations, but began to peter out as DJ's realized that whining has little replay value. So you might be thinking, "Sure, whiny songs must get old, but if it's so bad, no one would listen to it, right?"
Now I admit, I've painted a rather broad and general portrait of emo as being a stupid bitching fest. How could someone love something so viscerally wrong? Simple really. A lot of modern dialogue-driven movies (ie Kevin Smith) gain popularity because of the "real and easy to relate to" conversations. Well, emo music, similarly, is all about sitting around all day and having a good cry because your girlfriend left you some two odd years ago. There are a lot of people who can relate to that. Of course, this leaves the question, "Why knock the whole music genre? Surely emo is the cream of the crop when it comes to love songs!".
Well, you see, emo is written poorly so it can be milked over and over again by simple people. Most emo fans, you see, are far too pouty and self-loathing to get off the couch and take real guitar lessons or to study musical theory. So write a song that goes something like:
Your heart is cold
You fucking left me behind
Life's getting old
And my hearts getting blind
Well, I just made that up in 15 or 20 seconds as I went. If you think it sounds simple and pathetic, you've never heard emo. You see, bands like Promise Ring, Texas is the Reason, Swing Kids, and Mineral write even worse crap than that dorky ryhme I made up off the top of my head, but they can set a melodramatically heavy guitar to it. Therefore, millions of brokenhearted males sit in their room and sniffle along with the these bands every night and try to relate. Some of these people will start their own emo bands as a way of heightening their pattern of wallowing in self pity. Hey, you don't need to be intelligent to come up with emo material. Emo bands who pick names like Brass Knuckles For Tough Guys and Trees Are For Climbing speak for themselves. But most fans of emo will never leave the rugspace in front of their record player, as whiny brokenhearted guys who lay in bed all day and listen to emo usually don't have the initiative to put bread in a toaster.
So you see, while the fast paced realm of pop-culture has rejected emo in all of it's pathetic simplicity, emo will always have a home. As long as there are punk rockers looking for "a heavy new sound" emo will have a home. As long as there are fat men between the ages of 14 and 25 who are bitter enough to buy a CD and yet not affected enough to make something with their lives, emo will have a home. Yes, as long as people look to some half-ass band for a metaphor instead of sorting out their own fucking problems, emo will always have a home.