Electronica is the New Emo

Picture this, dear reader. The year is 2003. Brand New, Good Charlotte, and Something Corporate rule the pop-punk-emo airwaves (coincidentally, Fall Out Boy is being signed to Island Records, but no one cares about them, much like now). Misguided teenagers spend their allowances on eyeliner and buttons from Hot Topic. They are misunderstood, awkward, sad. In the eternal words of Oasis, there are many things that they would like to say to you, but they don't know how. Take a deep breath dear reader, and remember how it felt to listen to the Get-Up Kids in your parents' basement, checking your Hotmail account looking up what you thought were masterpieces that only required four powerchords on Tabcrawler.

But, dead reader, the year is now 2009. The sun has finally risen, the puddles have dried, a new age now begins. Six long years later, many of these morose teenagers are now directionless twenty-somethings. Hotmail has been traded for Gmail, anything from Hot Topic has been shoved in the depths of closets and drawers, and the old emo albums remain unchecked in their iTunes library. The former emos aren't happy, but they deal with the emptiness of their existence differently now. Enter the age of emotionless, dance-friendly electronica.

I know, how on earth did that happen? What could possibly make electronica the new emo? Electronica is the anti-emo, and if emo kids know anything, it's about betraying your roots. I know it was a long time ago, but remember that emo attempted to be REAL, EMOTIONAL, ROCK MUSIC!!! \m/!!! that you could FEEL from your beanie with a baseball brim to your monochrome Chuck Taylors. Electronica? It's repetitive, beep-y, and somehow strangely hypnotic. Why is this the new refuge for the former emo devotee?

After years of wallowing in self-pity with nothing to show for it, a barista or bartending job and tattoos that are going out of style, yesterday's emo kid has moved out of the house into a crappy, drafty apartment, is drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon every night, and taken their rightful place among the masses of other formerly separate subcultures now grouped together as hipsters. And after years of self-induced depression, the exercise you can get rocking out to Justice, Daft Punk, and many other notables is the best antidote. Yes, dear reader, electronica outscores emo on the danceability scale 9 times out of 10.

Although the lyrics of electronica are mostly nonsense, emo kids have finally realized that there are only so many ways to sing/whine/scream about love lost/unrequited/regretted. Like everything else in their lives, they want their music to numb rather than incite. Electronica is a musical drug to counter emo's heartbreaking sobriety.

Who knows, in another six years, we may see a shift towards lite rock or heavy metal. Because if anyone knows crap music, it's an emo kid.