Making Music Sincere Again

At college, I’ve often felt the pressure to be a more cultured person. Especially as an arts editor at The Michigan Daily, it sometimes feels like everyone knows more about art than you—I feel like I have so many blind spots when it comes to movies (The Godfather, Forrest Gump), TV (Gilmore Girls, The Sopranos), and, especially, music.

To a degree, I’ve made strides to correct my blind spots, and it’s sometimes not that hard to do. I realized recently that I really didn’t know much of Kanye West’s music, and, like him or hate him, he dominates culture so much that I feel like I need to know him. So I’ve been listening to his music a lot, even if it’s in the background while I’m doing other stuff, and now that’s one blind spot that I’ve begun to correct.

But after listening to new music for hours, after going through playlist after playlist in pursuit of greater music knowledge, sometimes I need to just relax and play the music that I’m comfortable with. And that often means bands I discovered in high school or even middle school: Fall Out Boy, Simple Plan, The Story So Far, Yellowcard, All Time Low, A Day to Remember.

My Chemical Romance is one of those bands that usually gets dismissed as something you listened to when you were in your middle school goth phase. Pretty much any band classified as ‘emo’ fits that label. But you know what? I listened to the entirety of The Black Parade a couple days ago, and that shit is so good! Gerard Way’s voice is funny to imitate, but it’s so good, and the production is so good, and every hook is so infectious, and the lyrics themselves aren’t bad. The album got really good reviews when it was first released, being praised as “one of the most cohesive, engaging rock records of 2006,” “one of the best rock albums of the last decade,” and “a piece of work that will challenge every preconception you ever had about the people who made it.”

So why do people tend to laugh a little when that band is mentioned? Why do I feel a little reluctant to wear a My Chemical Romance t-shirt to a party that isn’t themed?

We all think of our tastes in music as evolving. We tend to think that whatever music we’re listening to now is the best music we have ever listened to, that whatever we listened to as kids was automatically worse because we objectively didn’t have as much musical knowledge. And so when we are reminded of those songs we used to like, we don’t get to enjoy them sincerely; we enjoy them ironically. We can dance to them and sing along, but we have to laugh a little and remind everyone around us that we know this isn’t good music; it’s just nostalgia working its magic. Apparently none of the music from our childhoods can be enjoyed on its own terms anymore.

Okay, let’s be fair: some music we used to listen to was genuinely shitty. I have no interest in returning to “Don’t Trust Me” by 3OH!3 or “Shake It” by Metro Station, though even those songs would still probably trigger a frisson of nostalgia at a party. There are some songs out there whose infectious hooks feel genuinely empty; I don’t really admire 3OH!3 for creating one catchy hit. There are some songs that are catchy despite not being especially well-crafted.

But most of the songs we loved when we were younger were great for a reason, and listening to The Black Parade, I don’t feel any embarrassment. There’s nothing ironic about how fucking good Gerard Way sounds when he sings, “My eyes are shining brrriiight” on “Famous Last Words.” There’s nothing ironic about the irresistible urge I have to tap my feet whenever the chorus of “Dead!” kicks in, nothing ironic about the heartfelt mourning of “Cancer” or the iconic piano opening of “Welcome to the Black Parade.” Great art resists irony.

In a way, I’ve already written this same article. In a post about the Disney Channel show Phil of the Future, I described the way people laugh at mentions of shows from their youth, as if those shows were enjoyable then but hold no value now. I argued that it’s worth it to check out the stuff that you used to enjoy, because there’s a good chance it’ll still hold some value. That’s partly what I’m trying to say again, but with regards to music—just because you liked something years ago doesn’t mean it’s automatically shitty.

But I’m also saying irony is a dangerous thing for art. It’s easy to dismiss your younger self, but think back to the time you first discovered those bands. Yeah, maybe “I’m just a kid and life is a nightmare” sounds laughably angsty to us now. But it held a certain appeal for a very specific generation, and it probably helped a lot of confused adolescents realize they weren’t alone.

And hey, maybe it could still help you as an adult. As adults, we’re so quick to layer everything in irony, but maybe what we could all use is a little more sincerity. And after all, if there was one thing Simple Plan and My Chemical Romance were, it was sincere.