Emo is having a renaissance, and I’m here for it. With themed dance nights, reunion tours, and teens calling me an elder in my early 30s, I think there’s no better time for a resurgence of the emo zeitgeist, so it might as well happen in 2023.

It would be over the top to say that I’m thriving, right? Well, teenage me is thriving somewhere inside! Seeing the y2k style return, I knew it was only a matter of time before emo lifestyle and aesthetic would rise again. As a former emo kid, here are some of my thoughts. BRB, breaking out the hairspray and making sure I’m still on everyone’s top 8. In the meantime, expect to see quite a few photos of me as an emo teenager!

Do you offer an Elder Emo discount? 

I never thought in all 31 years of life that I would be called an “elder” before I was 65, but here we are. Didn’t you hear? Surprise– I’m an elder emo now. This is the new name for the millennial-aged former emo kids, which is weird since I had no idea you couldn’t just be emo for life, but now there’s a differentiation. You’re either lived through the era thus making you an elder, or you’re a modern alternative kid who wishes they were there, and there isn’t an in-between.

It’s nice to see an era come back, but it’s funny how different it is now compared to then. I see so many kids on Tiktok saying they were born in the wrong generation, but Gen Z is generally much kinder to one another. Homophobia, sexism, classism, and racism were rampant in 2007, and it wasn’t for the faint of heart! There was no etiquette for being kind or considerate to your peers… it was straight-up just slurs back then, and I should know as a woman of color who was in that scene.

Many of the negative traits of the emo era like sexism, slut shaming, predatory men dating teen girls, racism, and homophobia were products of the early 2000s as a time. Anything from that time can be put next to a microscope–not even under it–and it would instantly be considered toxic upon examination. Thankfully these days we’ve called a lot of that negative stuff out and now we can sort of move on, and wear rose-colored glasses when talking about the emo era, and that growth and accountability make it delightful to be an elder emo, honestly.

Reunions on reunions on reunions!

If you were emo as a teen and had parents who loved to say no, now’s your time to shine! Didn’t you know? It’s reunion time, baby!

This is the emo renaissance, especially when it comes to live music. Over the last few weird years, we’ve had a sprinkling of arena and baseball diamond tours, like Hella Mega Tour (Weezer, Fall Out Boy, and Green Day), and the long-awaited My Chemical Romance reunion tour. Let’s not forget as well, about the massive success of the When We Were Young Fest in Las Vegas. This year we’re getting even more of that sweet emo medicine, with bands like Fall Out Boy, Blink-182 and Paramore headlining their own tours this summer.

I’ve been slowly catching up on my own list of must-see bands over the years. I’ve seen Brendon Urie (because without Ryan Ross, it’s not Panic! At the Disco), My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Green Day, and most recently Blink 182 a couple of weeks ago in St Paul. I have tickets to see Fall Out Boy, Alkaline Trio, and Chicago-local emo legends, The Academy Is… at Wrigley Field in June, and after that, I’ll just need to see one Ryan Ross live set to collect all my emo infinity stones!

Basically, we need to relish these moments! Go see some of your favorite emo, pop punk, and indie rock bands doing reunion tours! It’s great. Relive those glory days, you deserve it!

The merch girl to digital marketing pipeline

Around 18 to 20, I somehow became a merch girl for a couple of local bands. I would just sit at their tables at the concerts selling bracelets and shirts. These little gigs in the music scene streamlined my future interests professionally, such as working in retail, social media management, and helping plan local events, and weirdly enough working in marketing for a film festival where I met some emo godfathers of the genre from Cursive and Motion City Soundtrack by simply being the girl who says things like, “can I get your photo for our festival Instagram?”

I eventually went to college for copywriting, advertising, and marketing, and I would have never taken that route without that history of being the head of a couple of street teams as a young adult. It’s just crazy how my little emo jobs led to my later interests and career opportunities. It’s cool to see how everyone that was coding HTML on myspace and selling t-shirts at local shows is now working in marketing, web design, graphic design, or some other creative field. Like okay yeah duh, that tracks… but it’s just funny to trace back the adults working these fields to the emo teens from over a decade ago!

Crying in the club at Emo Nite LA

About 5 years ago, I began attending an emo/scene/pop punk event called Emo Nite LA. Based in Los Angeles, they do tours around the US, often stopping in the music-centric city of Minneapolis. I first attended it at The Triple Rock (RIP to the little punk venue where I met my love, Eric), and since that venue closed, they’ve relocated to the Fine Line and First Avenue when stopping in the Twin Cities.

I remember as a teen everyone was obsessed with the ‘80s, myself included. My mom was a teen in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and she was like, “I don’t get the hype. These people weren’t alive in the 80s.”

My mom had me at a young age, so I’m the age she was when 80’s culture was going through a popular throwback era. For all of my teens and early twenties, the dance night themes were '80s-centric. Now it’s shifted to my era of music, and that’s when it hit me–people are romanticizing my teen era as the new throwback. I’m now the mom character from Bowling For Soup’s song 1985!

I’m not mad about my youth being the new “old school” but I am a little sad that it’s just not the same. I attend these emo dance nights with some girlies from my former emo era, we know all the words to every song, and every fresh 21-year-old sits on their phone until Misery Business plays. We’re dressed for a night on the town, and other people my age are dressed in a cosplay akin to a jaded teen in a Lifetime Original Movie. Do I hate it? No, not necessarily! It just feels slightly off, and almost caricature-esque.

The same thing can be said about the music– It’s a lot of common songs everybody knows, but they play 4-5 deep cuts for the olds like me. My friend and I are always like, “Where’s the Alcohol by the Millionaires, or I Wanna Love You by The Maine?” and the answer is: nowhere to be found!

We wait patiently throughout the night for a real throwback, and instead, the night ends with The Black Parade for the umpteenth time. I love that song obviously, but it feels Sisyphean in a way. I think I’ll always be yearning for the way it really felt back then, and the dance night can only fill that cup up half way. The other half is just lost to history, and we aren’t getting it back! Sorry, Emo Nite, thanks for trying, anyway!

Some extra photos and a little emo playlist:

Thanks everyone for reading this emo blog post! I think it’s a great time to be an elder emo, and it’s a great time to be a teenager getting into emo music! I feel like I was born at exactly the right time since I got to experience it in real-time. I think anyone born after 1995 wasn’t exactly there, y’know? Being 31 now, it’s crazy to think it’s been like 16 years since that “third wave emo” era was at its prime, and I was 15 at that time. Now here I am in my thirties writing about how its coming back! So yeah, I guess I wrote this blog post just to formally say:

It’s not a phase, Mom!

Also special thanks to ERIC for coming up with the blog title here… Finding Emo?! This guy thinks of everything!

Feel free to comment your own best myspace songs below! I made a playlist of my own Myspace songs, so it’s not a full list of all emo songs or anything, it’s just my Myspace profile songs! Follow me on my socials:

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