Why Does Emo Sound Like That?

(music plays) that's the chorus of Dirty Little Secret, by the All-American Rejects. it's a prototypical mid-2000s pop-punk emo song, nothing super unusual, but if we skip ahead a bit to the bridge: (bang) something's clearly changed. it's not the tempo, that's still the same, but the groove is slower. specifically, it's half as fast, which is why most musicians call this half-time. half-time, and its evil twin double-time, show up everywhere in lots of different genres, but for some reason they're particularly common in the pop-punk and emo music of the late 90s and 2000s. so… why? what is it about half-time that makes it such a good fit for these styles, and what can we learn from how they use it? what is half-time for? (tick, tick, tick, tock) this video is a collaboration with emocon2026, the first ever academic conference all about pop-punk and emo music. all their talks will be streamed online on April 11th, more on them at the end of the video. to start off, let's talk a little bit about what half-time is. if you've heard of half-time, you've probably had it explained as a kind of tempo modulation. this is where you start playing in one tempo, then change to a different one, usually with some simple ratio between them. it's one of those concepts that sounds tricky when you describe it, but once you hear it in action, it's really not. check it out. (bang) the first half is 66 beats per minute, the second half is 99, for a ratio of 2 to 3. put another way, the eighth note in the new tempo is the exact same length as the eighth note triplet in the old one. so we could say that half-time is the simplest tempo modulation, with a ratio of 2 to 1. the tempo is cut in half, with a new quarter note that's the same as the old half note. but I don't love that explanation. it feels overengineered, like trying to solve your termite problem with a nuclear bomb. it works, but there are some unintended consequences. for starters, tempo modulations are a pretty advanced technique, often mentioned in the same breath as polyrhythms, or asymmetric meter. they're not that common in pop or rock. they mostly show up in experimental music, prog, and some of the more technical subgenres of metal. trying to fit them into something like emo feels stylistically inappropriate. but also, for me, I think a tempo modulation needs to be at least somewhat permanent. you can do it again later, but if you want your audience to feel the change, you have to give them time to get used to the new tempo. but that's not necessarily true for how emo uses halftime. it can be a whole section, but it can also just be a couple bars. (bang) and that works because there's nothing new to learn. y'see, the way I like to think about half-time is as a simple shift in metric focus. every groove you hear is made of pulses happening at lots of different speeds simultaneously. there's fast ones, like 8th notes and 16ths, slow ones like the bar or phrase, and right in the middle sits the beat. all half-time does is change where that middle is. the pulses are the same, you're just focused on a different layer. and the easiest way to get you to do that is, of course, drums. in rock, we mostly take our meter from the backbeat snare. a normal backbeat has two snare hits per bar, on beats 2 and 4, but if you want to highlight a slower layer, you can use a halftime backbeat, with one snare on beat 3, or if you want a faster layer, you can do four snares per bar in a double-time backbeat. there are certainly other factors, but when I say a section is using one of these time feels, I'm mostly talking about how it uses its snare. so, ok. that's half-time. but what does any of this have to do with emo? what is it about the half-time feel that makes it such a good fit for that genre? well, now we're gonna have to talk what emo is. emo is a genre about teenage angst, what Dr. Dan DiPiero might call "Big Feelings Music". this is music about your first love, your first heartbreak, moving off to college, being alone and experiencing real loss for the first time in your life. it reflects a period where things feel like they're constantly changing, a moment of permanent crisis specific to the 21st-century, and the whiplash of unprepared metric shifts capture those changes. they speak to a sort of youthful, late puberty, “I’m becoming my own person in a world that I don’t really understand” mentality. as an outgrowth of hardcore scenes, the basic tempo of emo songs is usually pretty high, so full-time and especially double-time beats capture the feeling that the world is just moving so god damn fast. everything is changing. you’re energetic, you're excited, and your mind is moving a mile a minute. you’re frantic and horny. everything is out of control. and we can hear that in the outro to Dashboard Confessional’s “The Best Deceptions. ” the opening of the song shows the narrator realizing that his partner has been cheating on him. (bang) most of the song lives in that slow, reflective space

but for the outro, as he prepares to confront her, he moves into double-time: (bang) strumming twice as fast to capture, at a visceral level, the anger and adrenaline he feels in that moment. half-time, on the other hand, often represents a sort of woe-is-me depression. it feels like the whole world is coming down, like nothing will ever be right again. it's the unknowable fear of learning that the world is so much bigger than you and that nothing feels good. and we can hear that in the final chorus of Motion City Soundtrack’s “LG FUAD,” short for “Let’s Get Fed Up and Die. ” throughout the song, drummer Tony Thaxton repeatedly hints at half-time: (bang) but never fully commits. in fact, he avoids the backbeat entirely, relying instead on four-on-the-floor kicks to establish a pulse. the second chorus brings in a pounding snare to accentuate that full-time groove: (bang) but it's not until the end of the last verse that he finally settles into a clear backbeat: (bang) pulling us into half-time as the narrator's story reaches its tragic conclusion. the depression has become too much, and he begins to drink himself to death as the world, and the music, slow down around him. that same drum beat carries through the final chorus: (bang) and even though the melody is the same as before, the change in meter conveys a very different emotional quality. the full-time chorus sounded frantic, anxious, upset, but the half-time chorus is drenched in melancholy and loss. and we can see a similar dynamic used for a very different purpose in another Dashboard song, Hands Down. this starts off fast, with the narrator anxiously awaiting his first kiss. (bang) there's a youthful sort of nervousness that permeates the sonic landscape as the adrenaline of that romantic tension builds, finally releasing itself in the chorus: (bang) as he lets his guard down and embraces the excitement he's feeling. but then, in the bridge, that perspective shifts. instead of living in the moment, he's looking back, reminiscing on that pivotal day from somewhere in the future. (bang) and as those raging teenage hormones give way to a more mature, reflective emotional state, the music once again switches to half-time. listening to a lot of these emo songs, you start to notice a couple specific tropes that pop up over and over in the ways they use half-time. I'm gonna focus on four. the first trope has to do with position. you may have noticed that these changes tend to happen on the boundaries between sections. not always, but it's such a huge vibe shift anyway that it usually makes the most sense when the rest of the music is also going somewhere new. and that's especially true for transitional sections, like outros, bridges, and breakdowns. these are dramatic departures from the previous material, often involving a new perspective on the story, and a change in metric focus gives it more narrative weight. a lot of emo songs switch to half-time in the bridge. and when they do, they're probably using what I'll call hard half-time, where everyone slows down together. we already heard this in Dirty Little Secret, but it's also all over the place in Sum 41's Fat Lip. this uses another common structure, with verses in half-time: (bang) and choruses in a fast tempo full-time. (bang) that separates the narrative: the verses reminisce about being young and irresponsible, while the choruses project that past experience into a more principled current rebellion. the kid who was a bratty little punk grows up to be an adult who's still very much a punk, just a bit bigger. but the real payoff comes in the bridge, which uses half-time for a slightly different purpose. after the second chorus, we exit to a short, heavy breakdown: (bang) before most of the instruments drop out. (bang) this, suddenly, feels sincere. vulnerable. he's owning up to the ways in which his immaturity hurts the people around him… except of course he's not, because while the lyrics start off apologetic, they end like this. (bang) he's still a little sh*t, and the music follows his lead by returning to a heavier arrangement for the following breakdown. still half-time, but it's back to the original childish meaning. but if you want a softer half-time, you can listen for the second trope: reuse of previous material. emo bands love taking a melody from a full-time section and singing it again over a half-time groove. this recontextualizes it, transforming the emotions

of the story by changing the musical ground on which it stands. we saw this in LG FUAD, and it also happens in Fall Out Boy's Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner, where every chorus alternates between one presentation in full-time: (bang) and one that's arranged mostly the same but the drums are in half-time. (bang) and you can also hear it in Good Charlotte's The Anthem, where the first two choruses are full: (bang) but the last one goes to half: (bang) for a more powerful, anthemic ending. the third trope is kinda related: overlapping vocal melodies. the slower meter makes room for a sort of polyphonic approach, layering multiple voices on top of each other in an overwhelming melodic barrage. in these cases, the extra layers help cover up the switch, like in Windbreaker, by Charmer. the verses are in double-time: (bang) and the choruses are in half: (bang) for a huge metric swing. but near the end, they work their way into a breakdown, a musically new section that layers both those melodies together: (bang) in a beautiful, chaotic mess. and this technique can get really nuanced: in Cute Without The E, Taking Back Sunday starts off with a full-time chorus: (bang) but at the end of the second one, right before the bridge, the drums flip to half-time while a new voice comes in: (bang) that keeps the energy so high that the slower drums go by almost unnoticed, creating a really smooth transition into the more obviously half-time bridge. and the last trope has to do with lyrics. the shift to half-time is often accompanied by a shift to the past tense. and that makes sense: as we saw in Hands Down, half-time pulls you out of the visceral emotions of the moment, so it's a great way to put your listeners in a more retrospective mood. in Walking Disaster, Sum 41 uses this technique in reverse, starting with a half-time intro: (bang) that looks back on all the reasons the narrator ran away from home, before the full-time verse: (bang) tells us how he's feeling now that he has. and the chorus brings those two perspectives together, constantly switching between half and full: (bang) as the lyrics dance around the divide between past events and current emotions. and we can see all four of these tropes come together in Blink-182's Feeling This. Blink-182, like many pop-punk bands, has two lead singers and songwriters: Tom Delonge and Mark Hoppus. when they were writing “Feeling This,” Delonge and Hoppus each went into different rooms to work alone. they didn't talk about what they were planning to write, but when they came back together, they realized they'd both written songs about sex, but from two different vantage points. where Delonge had written about visceral pleasure and desire, Hoppus focused on deeper feelings of longing and regret. and from the very start of the song, we can see the tension between these two approaches. The opening riff starts with a fast, distorted guitar line over which the two singers do a call and response about how ready they are. (bang) the lyrics are in the present tense and the full-time drum beat captures the intensity of that primal sensation. but once the chorus arrives, everything changes. we get a clear, hard half-time, and the lyrics shift from the present tense to past. (bang) the chorus is timbrally empty, with a mostly unaccompanied drum beat. That sparse texture convey a more reflective, emotive atmosphere. the youthful sexual energy in the verses inform a reality where things didn't work out quite the way the narrator planned. the interplay between these two sections continues through the second verse and chorus, and then we get a bridge: (bang) which is also in half-time, showcasing a psyche that's split between wanting to have sex and knowing that doing so can lead to pain and suffering. the lyrics here are once again in the past tense, longing for an old partner that he knows isn't coming back, leading up to the final line of the bridge: ("but then all that it means is I'll always be dreaming of you") where the younger, less mature side of his character decides that he's refusing to fully let go. up to this point, we've seen a pretty clear split between his two aspects, but in this moment, they finally come together to drive the third chorus. unlike the first two, this one stays in full-time.

it also abandons the sparse texture of the prior choruses, inserting distorted power chords and layered vocal harmonies, taking the emotional reflection of the original chorus and infusing it with the sexual energy of the verses. It sounds like a rekindled passion, where the narrator disregards the pain that stayed with him as he's reunited with his old lover in his dreams. as the energy builds, he's joined by a new countermelody: (bang) and then another one: (bang) with each repeat the song pushes more and more, building more energy, until during the final repeat, all of the instruments fade out, leaving just an acapella outro. (bang) because the melody tends towards longer notes, we begin to entrain back into half-time, back to a state of being lost and disillusioned. back to remembering all the pain he felt from the actual relationship. it's a musical refractory period. that big release has shifted him back to a less affected, more emotionally aware frame of mind, remembering all the reasons that relationship fell short. it's a really cool ending. and while we've been focusing on 2000s-era emo, these half-time techniques never went away. in fact, they seem to be coming back. like, Olivia Rodrigo's Good 4 U touches on a lot of the same themes as classic emo, and sure enough, she does the same thing. the verses, which describe her frustration with her ex, are in half-time: (bang) but the choruses, where she puts sarcastic voice to her anger, switch to full-time. (bang) and that makes sense: Good 4 U is a clear homage of 2000s pop-punk, especially Paramore. but Rodrigo also uses a similar approach in another song that's much more straightforwardly pop: Driver's License. once again, the verses and choruses are all full-time: (bang), but in the emotional climax of the bridge, when she admits that, despite everything, she still loves her ex, we move into the more vulnerable, emotive space of half-time. (bang) and that's just one example of the ways that pop-punk and emo have shaped our modern music and culture. this whole video was a collaboration with my good friend Varun Chandrasekhar, who's been researching the music theory of emo for years. his expertise was incredibly helpful in putting this together, and most of the analyses presented were his, so huge thanks to him. if you want to hear more emo music theory, and if you've watched this far I assume you do, you'll be excited to learn that Varun helped organize probably the first ever academic conference dedicated entirely to emo studies: emocon2026. all the talks are gonna be streamed for free online on Saturday, April 11th, including keynotes from author Dan Ozzi and Steve Lamos, the drummer from the foundational emo band American Football. if you want to know more, you can go to emocon2026. com or follow emocon2026 on instagram. links to all of that, as always, in the description. and hey, thanks for watching. thanks to our featured patrons, Susan Jones, Jill Sundgaard, Howard Levine, Warren Huart, Damien Fuller-Sutherland, Neil Moore, and Geoff! check out Patreon for a fuller outro, and as always, keep on rockin'.