A Tale of Two Emos

Recently, a lot of people had to start reckoning with Michael Jackson songs.

If you don’t subscribe to the ‘artistic genius’ theory, and you see artists more as chosen vessels for universal themes, then it makes things slightly easier. You can see in Michael Jackson and his music a struggle between light and dark, hidden in plain sight.

One can conceivably, with a great degree of detachment, discard the songs that emerge from the latter, and still appreciate the themes that emerge from the former. Man in the Mirror and Heal the World, to me, are timeless and worth saving; surely there is a need for artists to reclaim these songs, to make them our songs, not his songs. The majority of his other well-known ditties are still jams, but range from harmless (Rock With You, Black Or White) to slightly uncomfortable (The Way You Make Me Feel; Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough) to full yuk (Bille Jean, Bad).

Although, as someone who doesn’t have any particular emotional attachment to the artist, it is fairly easy to say that. Others, including my dad, have had to make reasonably existential decisions about how they deal with the man and his music.

Surely we don’t think it is going to end here? With the recent arrests of certain famous people, one of which absolutely certainly Committed Suicide, you don’t have to do much digging beyond the mainstream headlines to see a pretty dark picture emerging from the music and entertainment industry: of systematic and covered-up sexual abuse, often involving children. We may be dealing with a system which prohibits people from making it to the top unless they are prepared to ‘sell their soul’ (kinda metaphorically, but also kinda not really) to those who wield power in Hollywood, TV and popular music industries.

Anyway, one can choose to see it in that slightly melodramatic (although very Rock and Roll) context, or one can accept more simply that artists are very complex people who often have dark sides, and these shadows are increasingly less able to be kept at bay. What seems certain is that we are going to have to do some serious reckoning with artists whose works have had profoundly positive impacts on us.

It is in this vein that I offer a tale: a tale of two Emos.

Emo seems to me like the least important thing that I write about. Here I am, trying to expose the dark agendas of the elite Cabal that control world events, yet the only articles I write that seem to get any sort of traction are about my self-indulgent musings on sad music.

I wrote a piece previously about my experiences with John Lennon. Basically: that he is the OG Emo; that he put in place the majority of the archetypes that modern day sad boys can be stereotyped into. That trajectory: the initial swaggering high of the narcissistic ladies man; the moral descent into anger, hate and misogyny; the spiritual reckoning where the ego finally gives way; and the redemption, usually catalysed by finally finding that right girl — don’t tell me that isn’t the playbook for the contemporary Emo.

I was trying to work out who the best contemporary comparison with Lennon might be, and the best I came up with was Jesse Lacey: the lead singer of Brand New, and as good a zeitgeist of the darker archetypes of Emo music as is needed for these purposes. And, not at all coincidentally, who I also wrote about previously.

His career — along with his band, which emerged from the plentiful Emo soil of New Jersey and Long Island — is the stuff of music scene legend, particularly his feud with Adam Lazzara of Long Island scene peers Taking Back Sunday (the dedicated reddit page is worthwhile). This scene has also been convincingly argued from someone with more expertise in feminism than me to represent the peak of Emo’s misogyny.

It is tough to argue with this claim when it comes to a song like Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis. This is how I described it the first time:

“The song itself is, on face value, a truly awful, shameless, contemptible snapshot of narcissistic misogyny. If you think that’s a bit harsh, look at the words for yourself.”

Still fair. It is, to look at the song a bit more meta, his attempt at describing the logical darkest end point of the Emo movement.

In that context, evaluated for what it is, by the academic in me, as an anthropological study of the phenomenon being studied, it is perfect. It starts in a bar, a boy and a girl with drinks, and progresses slowly, creepily, disturbingly. It builds, instrumentally. It ascends musically, whilst descending further, morally and spiritually. And it, erm, climaxes, at home, in the bedroom, with a cathartic yet brazen pseudo-chorus: the musical equivalent perhaps of a snapchat of the girl asleep, sent with a smirking emoji not just to mates but the whole world.

It is not pleasant, in other words.

Lacey was a Beatles fan. At the end of Deja Entendu, after the final acoustic track, as he puts down the guitar and walks out of the recording room, he sings (I think) ‘never to see any other way’ — a reference to one of the OG musical rabbit holes that is the ‘inner groove’ music at the end of A Day in the Life. It is a typical Emo move: simultaneously a crafty bit of pop culture awareness, shameless self aggrandisement, and the turning of seemingly meaningless and benign lyrics into a despairing ode to the futileness of love.

I have no doubt he was a John fan. In songs like Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis, the same callousness and shamelessness is present as it was with early Lennon: say, Run For Your Life, or perhaps the notorious infidelity-in-plain-sight of Norwegian Wood. Similarly, they both owe much of their fame to how effectively they flexed and then resolved their misogyny in artistic terms, even if Lacey’s fame progressed nowhere near to the extent that Lennon did.

Lennon seemed to have made impeccable use of the confessional of Rock and Roll to absolve himself of his sins — how else could he believe himself worthy to lecture us to Come Together and Give Peace a Chance, let alone Imagine, after once being such a creep? He put it out there for everyone to see and judge, so why dwell on it any further. Maybe that’s how it worked in the 60s and 70s.

This may sound a bit harsh, but from what I can see: for the greater part of his career, he showed little capacity for meaningful self-reflection. Remorse for his actions never seemed to arise out of a fundamental morality, but upon realization that he had hurt the woman that he loved, and the fear that came with losing her. But he got the girl, and shed any guilt he may once have had. That some spiritual guru shit right there. He even started comparing himself to Jesus by the end, because of course.

Now, this is where the comparison gets interesting. Lacey also used his musical platform as a form of musical confession, as surmised perfectly in the line from Jesus Christ:

“If they don’t put me away, it’ll be a miracle”.

Yet Lacey was burdened with and defined by his religious guilt, which dominated the album the song appears on, the not un-melodramatically titled The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me. It has been judged by several reputable sources as the pinnacle of 2000s Emo, both the height of the genre’s creativity and the more fully formed logical extension of its widely-hinted-at dark impulses.

Look, even knowing what we know now, it still bangs — if this is your thing. Those who have looked closer into the album know that many of its lyrics, including its seven and a half minute centrepiece, draw on the tragic true story of a seven year old killed in a limousine by a drunk driver. Again, not un-melodramatically, Lacey compares his sins to the man responsible throughout. But, then, only he knows just how severe his impact on those in his life was turning out to be.

Brand New have since released two albums since — good but not great — over the space of 12 years: not exactly Beatles-level productivity, so clearly we are losing the already stretched analogy here. They have maintained a loyal, devoted fan base. That loyalty and devotion has recently been tested. Around the release of their latest, and officially last album, in the midst of the #metoo movement, Lacey was accused of engaging in sexual activity with minors, back in their early touring days. It is pretty awful stuff. It is abuse on many levels.

In response, he released a lengthy Facebook statement — appropriately grovelling and remorseful — seemingly acknowledging the truth of the accusation by admission rather than directly, and more generally apologising for his past. He copped a lot of flack for it in the comments, including from one of the girls, now woman, herself. Many compared it to Kevin Spacey’s response, ignoring the substance and seriousness of the accusation, and averting attention from it through a personal disclosure. Careful with that comments section, you might get stuck there for hours.

Many fans vowed never to listen to his music again. Perhaps they hadn’t been listening closely enough in the first place: his musical life, specifically the album he is most famous and critically acclaimed for, was a real-time exercise in documenting, confessing about and coming to terms with his worst behaviour towards the opposite sex. How were you listening and resonating with this if you don’t have your own demons to be fighting off?

So, the high, the descent and the reckoning are all there. What about the redemption? I hope he has found it in his personal life, and he certainly seems somewhat at peace with himself on their final album.

Why am I being so generous towards him? Well, many an early 2000s Emo may owe him a service. In channeling in such an unparalleled way this contemporary Emo archetype — one not tied to the anything-goes vibe of Lennon’s era but to the fierce identity and culture wars of our own — perhaps it provided enough of an emotional release so that other sad bois (and hey, gurls as well) never had to act on these feelings.

I do still resonate with this music, even knowing what I know. Not always, but more than I would like to. But that is ok. It is all part of accepting myself fully and wholly, part of undertaking the shadow work I like everyone else need in order to grow spiritually.

Because despite the darkness, there is a profound spirituality that lies at the heart of Brand New’s music. Did Lacey perhaps, consciously or unconsciously, take upon himself the most famous of archetypes he hinted at with that song title, and that Lennon before him had also embraced — the Emo Christ, finally resurrected? Or perhaps, rather than the messiah, he was just another naughty boy; I’ve never met the bloke, after all.

Lennon is no doubt relieved in whatever spiritual abode he earned the right to progress to, thanking the good Lord — or himself — that he never had to deal with cancel culture. Unlike Lacey, who like so many others in the genre he made famous and then debased — even like Jesus before him, definitely for his own sins, but perhaps for some of ours as well — was sacrificed on the crucifix of Emo.