>> PAYTON: Okay.

I think we're good.

Phew!

All right.

Today on the show, we are talking all -- ♪ Come on!

♪ >> PAYTON: Hello, and welcome to "Flyover Culture."

The show that promises you can come to the basement show, if you help with load out afterwards.

I'm Payton Whaley.

TikTok is great for two things.

The first is confusing legislators.

>> Does TikTok access the home WiFi network?

>> PAYTON: And the other is prime, grade A meme material.

If you're like me, your page has been spending the past couple of months giving you a crash course in Midwest emo.

>> Uh, Plankton?

>> Eugene?

♪ >> Hey!

>> PAYTON: These are great on their own, but I needed more.

What actually is Midwest emo?

The sounds, the history and, yeah, the memes.

Now, while this won't be an extensive account, I am hoping to walk away from this just a little less stupid, and I'm doing that the only way I know how, by pressuring people smarter than me to share their expertise.

>> I was a part of my college radio station.

We had a very diverse music scene there, but a big chunk of it -- not only with the radio station but in nearby basement shows that would be happening was that kind of music that was inspired by Midwest emo.

The people just, like, coming together and smooshing together and just, like, singing along with everything and moshing, like.

It really felt like this communal experience.

And that's kind of been the thing I've associated with the genre.

>> PAYTON: Nick is the creator behind Mic the Snare, a YouTube channel all about music history and analysis, whether it's a deep discog dive into Nirvana or decade-defining music, he's got you.

More recently, he's been getting into genres that are new to him, like K-pop and metal.

So I thought he could help me out.

First order of business, what sounds like Midwest emo?

>> Loud, to just kind of put it as simple as possible.

That loud sound with a real emphasis on melody and on hooks and on things that people can sing along with.

And then along with that as well on the lyrical side, it's just this raw emotional vulnerability about relationships or just being at a -- I guess kind of an impasse in life or being stuck.

>> PAYTON: As music critic Leor Galil wrote for the "Chicago Reader": >> Those bits were, like, all of, like, everybody is playing their hearts out and the guy screaming.

So maybe that's a better way of putting it, like the dynamic contrast between the instrumentation and then vulnerability with it as well.

>> PAYTON: In the '90s, Midwest emo had the added bonus of -- sorry to shatter your world -- but having its roots in the Midwest.

Today, plenty of bands carry on a similar sound, but come from all over the world.

When we talk about Midwest emo, we're mostly talking about the second wave of emo music.

Emo's roots go back to 1980s.

Emocore splintering from the Washington, DC, hard core punk scene.

So I asked Kyle Fulford, an associate professor and Ph.D. student at Indiana University Bloomington, who studies progressive rock and punk to give me a little history lesson.

>> I guess the first Emocore band, as it was labeled and not necessarily embraced, was Rites of Spring.

To my knowledge, one of the first groups that sort of blended the melodic or -- not the melodic, but the musical style of punk rock and hard core music with highly personal and emotive lyricism.

>> PAYTON: But it still kept what Kyle calls a democratization of rock music.

>> Democratizing in the sense that anyone can do it.

Any kid with a guitar and something to say.

You write what you know, right?

That's something that punk and emo have in common, for sure.

DIY is a method that is common across punk, pop punk, emo and hard core, in that it's a very self-promotional sort of endeavor, right?

So you record your own album on a cassette, on a four-track.

You fly her up to promote your shows.

It's very much the DIY method spreads or works because of word of mouth, and that's how -- why those communities are so tightly bound, I think.

>> PAYTON: Some first-wave bands to check out: By the '90s, we hit our target with the second wave.

Emo spread out towards the Midwest, and the rough edges were sanded down a bit more.

Stylistically, Midwest emo also borrowed elements from math rock, prog rock-style guitar, mixed meter, bigger emphasis on instrumentals, and that's how we get to what is arguably the quintessential emo band, Urbana, Illinois' own American Football.

>> American Football musically, just from a music theory standpoint, is highly adjacent to math rock from my perspective.

You have use of odd meter in some cases polyrhythmic material.

I would argue a high level of virtuosity as well.

So, I mean, the stuff is not easy to play, because if you listen to the very first notes of LP1 by American Football, it's like this jazzy drum fill.

It's unusual for a -- you know, just a rock band to play something that's not in 4/4, you know.

So that sets the tone, like, immediately, but then also the other obvious sort of characteristic of Midwest emo is not just the vocal delivery but -- and the performance, but the lyrical content, like, what are the songs about, loss, pain, rejection.

Those themes come up time and time again, and are omnipresent on that American Football record.

>> PAYTON: American Football was by no means the only or best or anything like that second wave band.

But they will come back up in a minute.

So hold tight.

You also have bands like: Not all from the Midwest, mind you, but embracing that sound.

>> Wearing your heart on your sleeve, and that seems to be endearing to the community.

It seems to be a marker of authenticity, that it's not a perfect vocal performance, and that's kind of the point.

At the same time, you know, you have the instrumentation and some of the arrangement is remarkably complex, I would say.

>> PAYTON: To quickly touch on the early aughts third wave, this is where emo goes mainstream.

After the commercial success of punk and pop punk bands in the late '90s, you had some of those sounds bleeding into a more polished batch of emo artists, like Chemical Romance, Paramore, Fallout Boy, the hot topic crowd before it turned into a funko pop emporium.

>> It was marketable.

And so I don't think it's accidental that, you know, pop -- more elements of pop punk were being appropriated into a genre called emo.

>> PAYTON: And lastly, we have wave four, the Midwest emo revival.

In the early 2010s, you had a big resurgence of that big Midwest emo sound, if a bit more polished and much more self-aware.

It makes sense that newer bands would return to that DIY sensibility.

The third wavers were, well, going down a path they couldn't follow.

To quote Galil again: Here you will find bands like: Honestly, while listening to as much as I could for this video, this was the stuff I latched on to the most.

You still have the lyrics and the distinct singing and the twinkly guitars, but I found there to be a bit more variety and tone.

Honestly, I recommend it as a good starting point for the genre.

There's also some discussion over whether we're in the fifth wave of emo, post-emo, but exactly what characterizes it has yet to be nailed down.

So instead, we're going to talk about what you came here for, the memes.

>>> What if I want to have sex before I get married?

♪ >> Well, I guess you just have to be prepared to die.

>> PAYTON: It's very tempting to just play you a bunch of Midwest emo TikToks that warm my cold heart, but frankly we don't have a licensing budget for it.

♪ >> I wish my father was more present in my life.

>> We have a couple of main categories, the intro memes, which involve sampling any and all audio.

>> There was a hitch last night.

>> No, there's no hitch.

♪ >> Are you kidding me?

>> And just the general dunking on the Midwest emo ethos.

>> This next one is called Scott Koger versus Superman versus Batman versus McGregor, and it's all about taking an online neurodivergency test to reaffirm that autism diagnosis you got at 13.

Sing along if you know it.

♪ >> PAYTON: And there's one iconic rift that's been synonymous with the memes, American Football's "Never Meant," which I can't really play for you right now.

>> You know, we can make all the memes that we want about that song.

It's a damn good song, and that intro is so, so good!

♪ >> It's the fact that it's memorable, because if it wasn't, then you wouldn't be making memes or listening to it in any way.

It's got to hit you somewhere in here at some point.

>> PAYTON: But what's so funny about Midwest emo?

>> When I find something that is, like, really emotionally charged and really hits me in a strong way, I either lean into that and, you know, I espouse its values and I fall in love with it even more, or sometimes I find myself joking about it, in a sense, because it's kind of, like, a release from that strong emotion, you know?

>> Emo is a term that is both derided and coveted within the community, and it seems to be -- it -- almost like an inside joke.

If you are not at those basement shows, if you are not a participant in the musicking in some way, then you don't get it, and you'll never get it.

>> It's kind of a sign that you get it.

You are in on, not the joke necessarily, but, like, you are a part of that community.

>> PAYTON: And now for the big reductive question.

Are the memes bad for Midwest emo as a genre?

Eh, probably not.

>> Visibility is visibility at the end of the day.

And if, you know, some song becoming a meme and getting out there is able to rope in new fans of the song, the band, the genre, all of those things, I think that's a good thing.

It's funny, the thing that's coming to my mind right now, we are talking about, like, memes escalating a certain -- like, a genre's popularity or an artist's popularity is not Midwest emo, but it's actually Steve Lacy last year.

The amount of videos of, like, people out there trying to, like, record something, and him just not taking any of it.

And I think this insane uprising of him in that song was seen as a bad thing.

And in the moment, sure -- like, I'm sure the experiences kind of sucked.

But at the same time, I think it's one of those things where give it a few years' time.

>> PAYTON: It's Ariana licking the doughnut.

>> I hate that I remember that.

Oh, my God.

It's like a core memory you just unlocked.

[ Laughter ] It's the almighty discourse void.

In a way, it's good, you know, to be able to have that kind of forum and talk about it, but, like, I've seen enough of these things happen, like, the Ariana doughnut or Steve Lacy's concerts where it's, like, in due time it will fade.

And what will be left is the music, and the people who loved it and enjoyed it.

And I think that's really what's going to stick around the longest.

>> PAYTON: Now because I don't want to end this video on overexplaining a joke until it's dead in the water, I came up with a game.

The game I have prepared for you today is called: I will give you a phrase, and it's up to you to tell me if this is the real title of a Midwest emo song or a post on the subreddit R/Ambien.

Are you ready to play the game, Nick?

>> I am so ready.

>> PAYTON: First one.

This is a softball.

>> Emo title.

>> PAYTON: Yes, that is the World Is a Beautiful Place and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die.

>> There we go.

>> PAYTON: Number two.

>> There's a part of me that really wants to say that's emo.

I'm gonna say R/Ambien.

>> PAYTON: That is Emo.

>> Wow!

>> PAYTON: That is Frat Mouse.

Vegeta as in the Dragon Ball Z character.

Vegeta Slurp.

>> Yeah, yeah.

I'm gonna stick to my guns on this.

I'm gonna say R/Ambien.

>> PAYTON: You would be correct.

[ Laughter ] >> Hmm.

Emo title.

>> PAYTON: That's correct.

That is by The Water Cycle.

>> I'm gonna say emo title for that too.

>> PAYTON: That is incorrect.

That is a post on R/Ambien.

>> Oh, no!

[ Laughter ] >> Oooh!

I want to say that's an emo title.

>> PAYTON: Once again, that is an R/Ambien post.

>> Dang, really?

Okay.

>> PAYTON: I couldn't tell you what's going on here, but they sure are waiting for that walrus.

>> They really are.

Oh, my God.

>> That's one that it's like the gut -- or the first thought is emo title, but I feel like -- I feel like this is a curveball.

I'm gonna say R/Ambien.

>> PAYTON: You are learning!

[ Laughter ] >> PAYTON: The last one for today: >> This might be hopeful of me.

I'm really hoping that's an emo title.

>> PAYTON: It is!

Going out on a high note!

That is by a band called Free Throw.

>> Okay.

Good.

>> PAYTON: You've won the game.

You haven't won anything, but you've won a place in my heart.

Is there anything else you wanted to add about Midwest emo as a genre, or your experience with it?

>> Especially for a younger crowd, Midwest emo has such power to it.

There's such an emotional release behind it, and there's something so effective about it that when hearing it at that age, there's something especially emotive about it.

I'm not saying that, like, if you discover it later on, it's not as powerful.

But basically everyone I've talked to, including myself, really has those defining memories of it, back when they were, you know, in high school or in college.

>> PAYTON: Yeah, it either hits you at that sweet spot, or it takes you back to that sweet spot, you know?

>> Exactly.

>> PAYTON: And as for me, that sweet spot is in my own high school garage band, in the sportsman club playing surrounded by taxidermy, as seen in this photo, I will almost certainly regret sharing.

Thank you so much for joining me on this journey through Midwest emo, and the biggest of thank yous to Nick from Mic the Snare and to Kyle Fulford for sharing their time with me.

And may khaki cargo shorts never die.

♪