This Week's Rabbit Hole: The Emo Resurgence & Nostalgia
Between talking with friends and this new YouTube channel, I've gone down the rabbit hole. So, follow along!
I’ve discovered a new YouTube channel filled with some exciting video essays taking stock of some interesting bits of music history, from the “death” of alternative music to the examination of the concept of “nepo babies” and “industry plants.”
It’s fun when topics of conversations I have with friends somehow show up in more articulated formats. So, when I saw video essays, The Punk Rock MBA’s videos began showing up on my YouTube home page, and I had to dive in.
The one that stuck with me most was the Emo resurgence video primarily because, as someone who could be characterized as an “elder emo,” I’ve never considered how very much into the genre gen z people would be. The way the video is framed in a way that doesn’t completely tear down new artists for the sake of holding up the “elder emo” bands is honestly refreshing.
Mckenty also looks at it from a macro perspective, highlighting how fundamentally the music culture has radically changed as the digital age obliterated how the mainstream functioned and proliferated music.
I saw that most when I saw the mix of the crowd at Paramore’s stop in my town. The fact that people my age were decked out in their best emo garb, interspersed with younger people rocking the outfits that immediately transported me back to high school, brings that point home.
I’m three months late to this party, but his point absolutely resonates as his central thesis essentially echoes the conversations I’ve had with friends several times before. However, there are still some bands coming out of that specific subculture. For the most part, the tent poles remain the elder emo bands.
Granted, our conversations stemmed from the glaring patterns we’ve seen in children’s programming and how the most popular characters, movies, and shows are still characters we grew up with, like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Super Mario, and Sponge Bob immediately came to mind. Not to say that there aren’t popular media for Gen Alpha, because there is plenty. But in terms of widespread attention and appreciation to serve as a cultural landmark for this generation, there really isn’t much in terms of original characters apart for this generation to get weepy and nostalgic about how we do when it comes to these characters.
And I think Mckenty says it very well in the video. Still, the unbundling of mainstream media and the increased ability to have a more curated cultural diet has had a more considerable impact on the permanency and the ability of the generation to have their own cultural landmarks. With the growing consolidation happening at the corporate level and media executives leaning towards rehashing older IP and their unfounded fears of picking up more original ideas, Mckenty’s last point makes a lot of sense even when applied on a broader scale.
But does this all mean that these emerging subcultures that take older ideas and run with them may be forming a tighter bond with their contemporaries and possibly creating their own cultural touchstones on a more niche level?
Do I need to read an anthropology or sociology investigation to get my desired answers? Am I just rambling?
Who’s to say.
Thanks for reading! Have you gone down any rabbit holes lately? Do any deep-dive topics and questions come to mind? Let me know in the comments!