(no subject)

[ivyfic]

I just got Johnny Cash's album The Man Comes Around. "Hurt" is really the most emo song ever written. (Yes, I know it's Trent Reznor.) From now on, if someone asks me what emo is, I will play this song. I love it so.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, when has anything he's done not been super emo? My brother described Pretty Hate Machine as "my eighth grade girlfriend just dumped me." (I kid because I love.)

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Ha! Okay, so that's true, but it was also the '80s and his competition was The Cure and The Smiths.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I love that album cause it sounds like a moment where it is still within the tropes of eighties pop music (the backing beats could be straight from anything on the radio--the beginning of one song always makes me think of "King of Wishful Thinking"), but it is also clearly transforming into something new.

I love transitional albums like that, like Genesis's eponymous album, or Supertramp's Crisis? What Crisis?

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Oh, and to answer your question, I wouldn't consider either The Fragile or Broken to be emo (and they're my favorites).

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

The Fragile not emo? I do not think we are listening to the same song (or album)...

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

I don't think so, but I admit bias. I think emo requires a certain level of self-absorption, the my-pain-is-the-most-important-thing, whereas the song "The Fragile" is more outward. The rest of the album is a good mix of angry and introspection, though. I don't think self-reflection as a whole should be lumped into the emo category. I mean, that's basically music.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

I see that song as self-absorbed wish-fulfillment, though. He's playing out a savior fantasy--that he's the only one who sees her in pain, that he can save her. Which to me still is emo.

[moonlightalice.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. I just don't see it as any more emo than any other song out there that isn't the product of a drum machine.