http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1562329/2...ck_sunday.jhtml
🤣 🤣 🤣 This is hysterical and it is made more funny by the fact that I agree!
🤣 🤣 🤣 This is hysterical and it is made more funny by the fact that I agree!
MTV News wrote:Recently, Maureen Callahan wrote a piece for the New York Post about Crush Management, the NYC cadre that shepherds the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, the Academy Is ... and Armor for Sleep (or, as Callahan puts it, "basically any band that a 13-year-old girl with a blog and a Hot Topic habit obsesses over").
Aside from providing readers with some genuinely bananas quotes from songwriter/ rock-and-roll vampire Butch Walker about credibility (especially considering this is on his résumé), the article is excellent primarily because it floats the hypothesis that the artists Crush represents are basically the modern-day equivalent of Warrant or White Lion: good-looking, commercially successful bands that no self-respecting music fan would be caught dead listening to. Hair-metal acts for the MySpace generation.
And if that's true (and it probably is), then that raises the question: Are we currently living in the Trixter/Winger era of the genre? Has emo-punk â a term that, at this point, is so indefinable that it somehow encompasses My Chemical Romance, Panic and Cute Is What We Aim For, three bands that are neither particularly "emotional" nor particularly "punk," unless you count ripping off Queen, dressing up like a marionette or being terrible as such â become so same-y, so formulaic and so watered down that it now borders on self-parody? Is 2007 really just 1989 but, you know, worse?
Well, yes.
Let's compare: Both hair-metal and emo-punk acts exist almost primarily on the aesthetic plane â the obvious connection here is the hair â and count among their chief reasons for success the physical attributes of one bandmember (be it Kip Winger's toothy grin or Pete Wentz's, um, pouty lips). As a result, both appeal primarily â nay, almost exclusively â to young girls, those who, as Callahan puts it, are "not yet ready for real rebellion." Both are critically derided, save one act that is begrudgingly admired by critics (Extreme, MCR). And while both do, in fact, rock, no dyed-in-denim rock fan would ever admit to liking them (i.e. a Metallica fan would've never said, "Skid Row is kind of awesome," inasmuch as no Linkin Park fan would admit that "Boys Like Girls totally brought it last night").
And, of course, there's the songs, which tend to tackle serious issues in seriously bantam-weight ways (Skid Row's "18 and Life," Taking Back Sunday's "A Decade Under the Influence"); the overtly crass accessibility (hair metal, by definition and execution, was tailor-made for radio, whereas emo-punk is neatly customized for MySpace players); and, uh, the fact that both genres died (or are dying) under the sheer weight of "bands" operating underneath their respective umbrellas.
The comparison brings up several rather, uh, troubling questions: Are MCR and FOB this generation's Guns N' Roses and Metallica â i.e. rock acts that are actually pretty awesome yet won't be truly recognized for their brilliance until all other pretenders to the throne die off? Who will be the 2007 version of Firehouse? (Coheed and Cambria?) And will we all, in 20 years' time, clamor for a Taking Back Sunday reunion tour?
And â perhaps more importantly â when emo-punk finally does die off, what will take its place? We all know that hair metal begat Nirvana, primarily because Kurt Cobain was the very antithesis of hair metal's Pablum and posturing (but also because Nirvana were a great band). So what will succeed emo? If history is correct, it'll be a band as far removed as possible from Fall Out Boy, one that plays totally insincere, totally ripping rock, and one fronted by a totally un-hirsute, totally ugly dude.
Which totally describes the Bronx, who are, coincidentally, also managed by Crush. There is no escape.