EMO Criticism

In the years since emo music's rise in popularity, both emo music and emo subculture have attracted sometimes severe criticism. The term emo itself is sometimes used pejoratively, to suggest that the target is "overly emotional."Emo in general has been characterised as a fad which will be discarded and forgotten in the near future. Emo music has also been compared to the teen pop of 1990s boy bands. Critics cast the music as lacking any artistic merit, the fashion as "embarrassing" and members of the subculture as imagining or pretending that they lead harsh, painful lives when they actually live in comfortable, upper- to middle class homes. Members of the emo subculture are portrayed by critics as melodramatic, self-pitying teenagers who pour their efforts into writing bad poetry and spending a great amount of time on MySpace. The current emo subculture has been called a "sad caricature" of what it once was. Critics have gone so far as to contend that the emo subculture or emo music are likely to cause youth to commit suicide. The backlash against emo music and subculture has become so prevalent that it may itself have become a cliché: one commentator notes that "hating emo kids these days is as hackneyed as emo itself." However, many emo bands and their respective fans have embraced the title, identifying themselves as emo, rather than considering it a derogatory term.