I'd have to agree with

I'd have to agree with Fiend on the Limp Bizkit analogy. Another VERY excellent example is all the FUCKING rednecked Creed wannabe bands. Where you purposely sing with that terribly raspy and low voice that sounds like you're a redneck (and 99.99% of the time you are).

With what our newest member of the Spork community, watermellen (Christine), stated, I think you're being far too nice. JEW and Dashboard certainly are fine examples of sell outs, especially when you take our local Confessional concert in which I know about three times more yuppies that went than even true music listeners ... and that's about four times as many yuppies when compared to true music listeners that are also EMO.

But, what any of us, pro or con for the argument can acknowledge is that certainly emo has been around forever, that's a valid argument. And also, it's very valid to say there are emo bands still true to the movement. However, you can not say that because at one point Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional were once true to it that they're still true to it now. And I'm sure a lot of those bands have turned sell out. I mean, eventually everyone's a sellout.

However, one other valid argument is that no genre has a set template, and I'm sure nobody in the emo genre sits down and says "let's write an emo record." No, of course not. BUT! while I admit this is true, it's amazing how easy it is to pick out an emo song! They all have some characteristic, and I'd love to say that it's their whiney bitching voices. Maybe it's something else, but regardless, the first time I heard Jimmy Eat World's album (I'd heard that one single Bleed America a thousand times but never the album) I immediately turned to a girl named Ashley listening with me, and asked if they were emo. It was only my second taste of the emo genre, at the time, grant had recently burned me Dashboard, which was my first taste. And yet I was able to pick it out. Since then, listening to bands like Something Corporate, or Brand New ... all of them, you can just tell. In my opinion, it's the whiney bitching voices. Or maybe the depressing lyrics, I dunno.

And lastly, I'm going to end, that the original point of my disccussion was never to bash emo, and definitley never to even argue that it's bad music. The argument was solely to point out the blatent contradiction that emo stands for. And while at, mention that I particularly can't stand to listen to it SOLELY because I start feeling sad doing so. Too sad. I think Dashboard has very catchy shit, it's just I get depressed listening to it! So I just don't listen.

Spork.