Be My Escape

Katherine talks to Sam L. Barker about the enduring legacy of pop-punk and emo, and crucially, about how it all coalesced online. You can also listen to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.Read Katherine’s article about blink-182’s unique brand of humor here.Subscribe to Sam’s Substack here.

A note from Sam:

Be My Escape is an essay and podcast project where I look over some of the most enduring emo (I use the term culturally and loosely) and pop-punk albums of the 00s. I want to give this selection of albums the same level of attention and analysis which more established and accepted alternative, indie, hip-hop, and electronic albums are granted. What makes them important, their cultural and personal background, and what lateral topics they uncover, be that gender, mental illness, terrorism, or sexuality.

This project can be seen as a response to what might be termed the great “Emo Revival.”

Since the reformation of My Chemical Romance in 2019 the genre has received a welcome critical and popular re-examination. The explosion of pure enthusiasm at the news led to an outpouring of emotions, articles and memes. Critically ignored in the 00s, and mostly forgotten in the 2010s broadsheet newspapers like The New York Times were now writing sympathetic pieces on albums like The Black Parade. Pitchfork, once happy awarding A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out a 1.5 got busy writing a series of revisionist reviews from young writers redressing the delta.

The When We Were Young festival has become a major yearly draw, pitched directly at Millennial nostalgia. Warped Tour’s coming back. Everyone can admit they like Emo now, it’s fine. But this isn’t intended to be a victory lap. Nostalgia can be fun, but it can also be a sugar rush. Some albums are bad, some albums have aged poorly, some deserve to be forgotten. The genre deserves critical analysis, but it can withstand it too. I’m not interested in MySpace photos of you with shitty straightened hair and a bootleg Senses Fail shirt. I want to know about the Fall Out Boy B-side you cried to. The Dashboard Confessional lyrics of your first tattoo. How a musical album about a goth Bonnie and Clyde got you through the worst times of your life, when everything else abandoned you.

You were embarrassed of it, now you’re not. Let’s talk about it.

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And a final note from Katherine:

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit default.blog/subscribe