This is a list of notable musical artists associated with the music genre and/or subculture of emo.
Emo is a style of rock music characterized by melodic musicianship and expressive, often confessional lyrics. It originated in the mid-1980s hardcore punk movement of Washington, D.C., where it was known as "emotional hardcore" or "emocore" and pioneered by bands such as Rites of Spring and Embrace. As the style was echoed by contemporary American punk rock bands, its sound and meaning shifted and changed, blending with pop punk and indie rock and encapsulated in the early 1990s by groups such as Jawbreaker and Sunny Day Real Estate. By the mid-1990s numerous emo acts had emerged from the Midwestern and Central United States, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the style.
Emo broke into mainstream culture in the early 2000s with the sales success of Jimmy Eat World and Dashboard Confessional, with the genre's popularity continuing in the 2000s with bands such as My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.
List
A The Academy Is... Acceptance Ace Troubleshooter Acres AFI Aiden Alesana Alexisonfire Alkaline Trio The All-American Rejects All Time Low The Almost Amber PacificRaise a Frosty One to Amber Pacific . Seattle Times, June 15, 2007. Accessed June 25, 2007. American Football Anasarca Anberlin And Then There Were None ...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead The Anniversary Anxious The Appleseed Cast Armor for Sleep As Cities Burn At the Drive-In August is Falling Avion Roe
B Bayside The Beautiful Mistake BeefeaterGreenwald, p. 14. "Ian Mackaye was such a huge Rites of Spring fan that he not only recorded what was to be the band's only album in 1985 and served as a roadie for them while on tour, but his own new band, Embrace, explored similar themes of self-searching and emotional release. Other peers followed suit, including Grey Matter, the archly political and arty Beefeater, and Fire Party, whom Jenny [Toomey] termed 'the world's first female-fronted emo band. Before Their Eyes Beloved Benton Falls Birdskulls Black Veil BridesKnives and Pens Music Video|url=https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gFDCHdKbKBY Bloody Knees Bob Tilton Boys Like Girls Boys Night Out BraidGreenwald, p. 46. "What Braid did better than any other band of its era was truly live the egalitarian spirit of emo. If emo is, on one level, the ability to move from sympathy for song subjects to outright empathy, then Braid blurred the line even further, engendering empathy for itself."Nanna, Bob (in Zemler). "When we first started it was [that] we kind of said, 'Yeah, we're an emo band' because the bands we liked we thought were emo bands - like Jawbox or Fugazi. Then it kind of took on this negative context and it got used against us. Nowadays it's just a catch-all term and it doesn't really mean anything to me anymore." Brand New The Brave Little Abacus Bring Me the Horizon Broccoli
C The Cab Capital Lights Cap'n Jazz Chamberlain Chasing Victory Christie Front Drive City of Caterpillar The Classic Crime Cobra Starship Coheed and Cambria Crooks Cute Is What We Aim For
D Dads Dag Nasty Dashboard Confessional A Day to Remember Dead Poetic Dear Ephesus Death Cab for Cutie Delaire the Liar The Dismemberment PlanBogdanov, Woodstra, and Erlewineare, p. 320. "Washington, D.C.-based emo quartet the Dismemberment Plan...", "the Plan [...] are a fairly thrash-crazed example of what the term 'emo' used to mean. There aren't any apologetic weepouts, just calmer moments amidst pretty explosive performances." Dizmas Drive Like Jehu
E Edison Glass Eisley Elliott Emanuel Embrace Emery Empire! Empire! (I Was a Lonely Estate) Escape the Fate Ever Stays Red Every Avenue Everyone Asked About You Eyes Set to Kill
F Fall Out Boy Falling in Reverse Falling Up Family Force 5 Farewell, My Love Finch Fire Party Fireflight Flyleaf The Fold Forever Changed Forever the Sickest Kids Foxing Fragile Rock The Fray From Autumn to Ashes From First to LastAllMusic Funeral for a Friend Further Seems Forever
G Garden Variety Get Scared The Get Up Kids Glassjaw Goodtime BoysStephen Farkas: The Punk Site: Goodtime Boys Announce 7″ and Full Length in 2014 + UK/Euro Tour Gray Matter Gwen Stacy
H Haste the Day Hawk Nelson Hawthorne Heights He Is Legend Hellogoodbye Hey Mercedes Hey Monday The Higher Hindsights Hoover Hot Rod Circuit The Hotelier House of Heroes
I I Am Ghost I'm Glad It's You IdaGreenwald, p. 40. "Bands that were lumped together in the emo camp back then [in the mid-1990s] varied wildly, much more so than today. The dominant sound was the melodic punk of the Promise Ring and Texas Is the Reason, but peers and tourmates like Karate, The Van Pelt, and especially Chicago's Joan of Arc played with elements of post-rock, including odd instrumentation and ample amounts of droning, wordless minor-key dirges. The Shyness clinic adored the Scottish noisemakers Mogwai, and emo mix tapes often included the Ivy League folk of New York city's Ida. At the Boston basement shows it wasn't uncommon to see the fresh-faced boys of Braid sharing the bill with the heavy rawk bombast of the Rye Coalition." Indian Summer Ivoryline
J Jane Air JawbreakerGreenwald, p. 19. "Sunny Day Real Estate was emo's head and Jawbreaker its busted gut—they two overlapped in the heart, then broke up before they made it big. Each had a lasting impact on the world of independent music. The band shared little else but fans, and yet somehow the combination of the two lays down a fairly effective blueprint for everything that was labeled emo for the next decade."Greenwald, p. 20. "Spanning two coasts, three genres, countless throat polyps, and an entire generation of heartsick boys, Jawbreaker is the Rosetta Stone of contemporary emo." Jets to Brazil Jetty Bones Jimmy Eat WorldRolling Stone - Jimmy Eat World Biography* Joan of Arc The Juliana Theory The Junior Varsity
K Karate Kids in the Way Knapsack Koyo Kutless
L Letter Kills LoveHateHero Life in Your Way LifetimeGreenwald, pp. 121-122. Lostprophets (November 29, 2013) (August 1, 2006) (December 1, 2013) (February 16, 2010) (December 20, 2012)
M Mae The Maine Matchbook Romance Mayday Parade Metro Station Krystal Meyers MineralGreenwald, pp. 40-41. "No band embodied [the mid-1990s emo] aesthetic more than Texas's Mineral, a quartet of deathly serious young men...In many ways, "If I Could" is the ultimate expression of mid-nineties emo. The song's short synopsis—she is beautiful, I am weak, dumb, and shy; I am alone but am surprisingly poetic when left alone—sums up everything that emo's adherents admired and its detractors detested." Modern Baseball Modern Error Mom Jeans Moneen Moose Blood Moss Icon More Than Life The MovielifeGreenwald, p. 146. Absolutely, says [Ben] Holtzman. 'It's the depoliticization. I don't think there's anything not safe about [rising Long Island emo act] The Movielife. My Chemical RomanceMy Chemical Romance: They're Okay (Promise)
N Native Nod Native Nod - Rhapsody Music Native Nod reviews, music, news - sputnikmusic New Found GloryGreenwald, pp. 127-128. I'm sick of smiling / and so is my jaw / can't you see my front is crumbling down?' asked the first song on Sticks and Stones, the New Found Glory album that stunned the world when debuted at number four in the summer of 2002. It's an interesting contradiction—the celebration of misery, the simultaneous privileging and subsuming of the self—but one that's pure emo, no matter what the band or its label says." Noise Ratchet Northstar Nude Number One Gun
O Ogbert the Nerd One Ok Rock Once Nothing Origami Angel Our Last Night
P Panic! at the Disco[ allmusic (((Panic at the Disco – Biography)))] Paramore Parting Gift Pg. 99 Philmont Pierce the Veil Pillar Plain White T's Pool Kids Pop Unknown The Promise RingGreenwald, p. 44. "[Nothing Feels Good] is the pinnacle of its generation of emo: a convergence of pop and punk, of resignation and celebration, of the lure of girlfriends and the pull of friends, bandmates, and the road." Punchline
R Rainer Maria The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Rites of SpringGreenwald, p. 14. "If Minor Threat was hardcore, then Rites of Spring, with its altered focus, was emotional hardcore or emocore."[ allmusic (((Rites of Spring > Biography)))] Roses Are Red Rye Coalition
S Saetia Samiam Saosin Saves the Day Say Anything Secondhand Serenade Secret and Whisper Senses Fail Sherwood Showbread Silverstein Simple Plan Small Brown Bike Sleeping with Sirens Something Corporate Spanish Love Songs The Spill Canvas Split Lip Squirrel Bait Static Dress The Starting Line[ The Starting Line - Biography] Stavesacre Story of the Year Sunny Day Real EstateSunny Day Real Estate - Rolling Stone
T Taking Back SundayHot Emo: Taking Back Sunday Ten Second Epic[ Ten Second Epic - Biography] Texas Is the ReasonGreenwald, pp. 38-39. "For many, the New York City-based quartet Texas Is the Reason was the perfect bridge from indie-rock to emo." There for Tomorrow Thirty Seconds to Mars This Beautiful Republic This Providence Twenty One Pilots Thrice Thursday Tokio Hotel[ Tokio Hotel - Biography] Typecast
U Underoath The Used
V The Van Pelt Vs Self
W Wallflower Watashi Wa The Wedding Weezer The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die
Y You, Me, and Everyone We Know
See also List of screamo bands List of emo pop bands List of emo rap artists List of post-hardcore bands
References Bibliography
Notes