A Boy’s Last Dream & A Man’s First Loss: On Making the Leap from Emo to Country
Why are emo kids trading in their Vans and snapbacks for cowboy boots and trucker hats?
Neither Johnny Cash nor Nine Inch Nails are canonically emo, but together, they made probably the most emo song of all time. I’m not going to expound on how great Johnny Cash’s cover of “Hurt” is. That’s been done plenty of times. Most people probably wouldn’t even call it an emo song. It’s a legacy outlaw country artist covering a ballad by an industrial metal band that had a crossover appeal with a more mainstream hard rock audience.
As someone who came of age during the mainstream emo explosion of the mid-aughts, I can’t emphasize enough that even though there are distinctive bands that play into the genre especially in its early years and hey-day (Rites of Spring, Sunny Day Real Estate, Taking Back Sunday, Fall Out Boy), most of all emo is a vibe.
Most of the big bands that have now become the signifiers of emo had disregarded the label during their meteoric rises. In retrospect, a bunch of bands that were definitely not emo get the label. Songs by artists like Linkin Park (who were a nu metal band) or The Killers (who were an indie rock band) have since found their ways onto playlists that will get played to death at your local emo night. When I was in middle school, most people didn’t say things were emo, meaning that they were in the tradition of emotional hardcore. They meant that they were sad.
This is all to say that above all else, emo is a vibe.
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Since early high school, I’ve embraced the term emo. That was around the time that I fell back in love with bands like Panic! At The Disco, Fall Out Boy, and My Chemical Romance, and I began to truly forge my own musical identity. In college, I had what was probably the best time to be an emo fan who wanted something with slightly more realness. Bands like The Wonder Years, Modern Baseball, You Blew It!, The Hotelier, The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, and The Front Bottoms were all hitting their stride and becoming some of the biggest bands in the scene.
Even as I’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to keep up with what’s happening in emo and the adjacent realms, but something interesting happened this year. For the most part, my year-end album lists have been topped by emo (or emo-adjacent) acts (one exception was the time that Bon Iver’s I,I topped in 2019—I haven’t listened to that album very much since then). Something funny happened last year, I let myself just fall in love with country music. My 2023 AOTY list included Zach Bryan’s self-titled record, Morgan Wade’s Psychopath, and Jason Isbell’s Weathervanes topped the list.
I never actively disliked country music. In fact, when I was younger, I would tell people that I loved it, but by that I meant that I liked a handful of Johnny Cash songs. At a certain age, I definitely spoke about how stupid I thought that a lot of mainstream country is. I still feel that way strongly, but I’m less aggressive. There are people who make bad music in every genre. The way that I look at an artist like Morgan Wallen, Luke Bryan, or Blake Shelton is the same way that I’d look at hair metal. I get why people have fun listening to it, but for the most part, it’s pretty vapid, and you’re not getting much substance. Still, people are going to pack out venues to see Def Leppard.
As years went on, I’d grown more into a handful of country artists. Jason Isbell became a favorite after seeing him at the Beacon Theater in 2017 (I went because the Mountain Goats opened). Sturgill Simpson’s A Sailor’s Guide to Earth was a definite highlight in terms of someone playing with the form. Over the years, some country songs would find their way into my life, but I never really fully embraced myself as a country music fan.
For years, I gave myself the general label of a music fan, which is true. I try to think of myself as well-rounded. I regularly explore outside of the genres that I love the most and find pieces that I enjoy. On my year-end list last year, the genre that was probably the most represented was hardcore, but I’ve been telling people about my love for country now.
While much of mainstream country has been flooded with corny ballads or vapid odes to nights drinking beer and looking at tractors (See: Bo Burnham’s “Country Song”), there are a handful of artists that tap into a real emotional core, like the ones I’ve named above. Seeing as emo was derived from hardcore bands singing about their feelings, it’s not really surprising that a large number of emo kids find their way into country audiences.
Of course, not every emo band really was saying something of substance, just as there are tons of artists who fall into a country career to make money. In fact, there have been instances of pop-punk artists making the leap to country. Plenty of bands have had their moments as “emo” bands, but really they were pop artists wearing scene clothes. The same can very easily be said for country music.
It seems that there are a lot of country singers who would normally operate in the pop music landscape, but they saw a lane with country. Still, I’m not here to cut down the artists that I feel are generic.
I think a large part of why I’ve made that jump is because country music, especially the brand that artists like Isbell, Bryan, Tyler Childers, and others make has a lot of room for subtlety than most of the artists in the pop-punk sphere. Like the teenage fans who often fall in love with the music, emo often operates on a scale of dramatically grand emotions. The highs are very high, and the lows sink even lower. As fun as it can be to listen to artists like Mayday Parade or Real Friends, my emotions don’t operate with that level of extremity anymore.
While there’s always a degree of heightened emotions in music, the country-tinged singer-songwriters allow for a different level of nuance that most scene bands do not. A song like “Cast Iron Skillet” can show similar feelings that a lot of those great punk bands have, but in a much gentler and questioning tone that leaves as much open to interpretation, where other artists would deal in absolutes.
Even though I’m finding a lot more nuance as I slowly explore artists like Charles Wesley Godwin, Turnpike Troubadours, and Childers, the country artists can occasionally scratch the emotional itch in a satisfying way. There’s no better song to just take an emotional punch to the chest than “Elephant” by Jason Isbell. More recently Bryan’s “Jake’s Piano — Long Island” has captured that same sort of sense of longing for the pass and the ennui of losing touch with people from your past. Still looking back on the good times, while mourning the loss of being in touch with each other.
Ultimately, most of the artists that I like in both punk and country can flirt with genres in a pretty fluid way. That’s part of why so many of the country artists get lumped under the “americana” umbrella. It’s not really southern rock, mainstream country, or folk, but it has elements of all of those. Most of the punk artists that have continued to have my love flirt with genres outside of the typical punk format, but they also keep true to the moment that they’re currently living in.
As a pre-teen and teenager, I spent a lot of my time listening to classic rock and metal. Naturally, I would get excited when those bands would put out new albums. There would be a lot of artists who would put out albums that I loved that I still have a soft spot for (like Judas Priest’s Nostradamus). I remember reading tons of reviews and teasers for different records that teased that this was a back-to-basics, return-to-form for some long-past-due hard rock outfit that really had no business releasing new albums. Listening now, I’ve understood that these were bands past their prime, trying to re-create the same sound that made them famous in order to get their fans to buy back in for a little bit. Now, I’m starting to see a lot of different pop-punk bands that were popular when I came of age doing the same thing.
I’ve grown more-and-more disillusioned by the commodification of aughts pop-punk. Have I had fun at emo night? Yes. Did I gasp the first time I saw a When We Were Young lineup? Of course. Was I happy when Fall Out Boy put out a more rock-oriented album this year? For sure. I’m not perfect, but as I’ve seen more and more artists lean into the nostalgia bait cycle, I’ve been bothered by it, because it doesn’t feel like so many of the artists cashing in are really interested in helping the scene progress, or nurturing young bands.
Of course, there’s an aspect of nostalgia for artists like Isbell and Bryan. I’ve spent time at Isbell shows where I’ve felt like the youngest person at the gig. I think that occasionally there are people who hear heartfelt country songs, and they immediately think that it’s an homage to the country artists of yesterday, like Cash.
Even though some members of the fanbase may think that, most of these artists don’t seem like they’re in a place to get comfy any time soon. A lot of the current crop of country resurgence have felt like they have a lot to say, and they don’t want to stagnant in their sound. I’m much more excited for the next Zach Bryan release rather than some of the emo bands that put out country albums in my younger years.