I'm one of those cranky old guys who still thinks, when I hear "emo," that we'll be talking about Rites of Spring, Fugazi, Juno, and Sunny Day Real Estate. Ah, well.

Y'all don't have to get off my lawn, or anything, but I wish you'd water it before you go.

This just in: Emo looks for something to cry about.

@1 - I hear ya. What's funny is the bands you mentioned happened over a 10 year period and,as you probably know, certainly never embraced (PUN INTENDED) the label. The articles examples, sort of stuff the next generation might unabashedly label "emo", was sort of a short lived revival that was very tenuously connected to those acts musically, and (hear me out, this is my working theory) as heavily influenced by the boy band wave of the mid/late 90's as anything else.

@4 Dougsf: your theory is intriguing, but, to clarify, what sort of "boy band wave of the mid/late 90s" are you considering as emo's bastard father/brother? Pop acts like NKOTB or more indie bands?

I think there's a solid argument to make connecting the late-80's, mainly straight-edge, boy/bro band scene (think: impassioned pointing, gang vocal pileups) to the later wave of "emo" bands. Both share the same emphatic self-focus, with "emo" doubling down on the complex feels about non-homosocial-boding type situations.

Second theory to consider: is "emo" a male response to riot grrrl? Seems like there's an interesting critique (&/or retrenchment) of gender roles happening concurrently here --considering early/seminal "emo" bands (Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, etc.) hit peak popularity just after riot grrrl's Sassy moment...

@5 - Actually, a bit of both. NKOTB would be a bit old for the most recent wave, but a band like Taking Back Sunday probably listened to more Back Street Boys and NSYNC than they realize, and I can hear it in their music. Those songs don't even need guitar. I doubt they've ever even heard of Heroin.

As a response to Riot Grrrl, I don't know. The Jawbreaker/Sunny Day generation of bands, and every band has their own story, certainly overlapped the Riot Grrrl movement, shared a lot of fans, played the sames clubs, etc., but I think they were just approaches to more-or-less the same scene. The college font shit that was big at the time, Judge, Chain of Strength, etc. THAT was for the bros, but I'm really not sure how it fits in to the eventual, self-proclaimed emo stuff that finally arrived in the late 90's/early 2000's.

Too many thought! I'll stop my rampblin'.