Underground popularity In Mid 1990s

In the mid-1990s the American punk and indie rock movements, which had been largely underground since the early 1980s, became part of mainstream culture. After Nirvana's success, major record labels capitalized on the popularity of alternative rock and other underground music by signing numerous independent bands and spending large amounts of capital promoting them.[27] In 1994, the same year that Jawbreaker's 24 Hour Revenge Therapy and Sunny Day Real Estate's Diary were released, pop punk acts Green Day and The Offspring had mutiplatinum successes with their respective albums Dookie and Smash. In the wake of the underground going mainstream, over the next several years emo as a genre retreated, reformed, and morphed into a national subculture, then eventually something more.[27] Drawing inspiration from bands like Jawbreaker, Drive Like Jehu, and Fugazi, the new sound of emo was a mixture of hardcore's passion and indie rock's intelligence, bearing the anthemic power of punk rock and its do-it-yourself work ethic but with smoother songs, sloppier melodies, and yearning vocals.[28] Many of the new emo bands originated from the Midwestern and Central United States, such as Braid from Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, Christie Front Drive from Denver, Colorado, Mineral from Austin, Texas, Jimmy Eat World from Mesa, Arizona, The Get Up Kids from Kansas City, Missouri, and The Promise Ring from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[29] According to Andy Greenwald, "This was the period when emo earned many, if not all, of the stereotypes that have lasted to this day: boy-driven, glasses-wearing, overly sensitive, overly brainy, chiming-guitar-driven college music."[30]

On the east coast, New York City-based Texas Is the Reason bridged the gap between indie rock and emo in their brief three-year lifespan by melding the melodies of Sunny Day Real Estate to churning punk musicianship and singing directly to the listener.[31] In New Jersey, Lifetime gained a reputation as a melodic hardcore act, playing shows in fans' basements.[32] Their 1995 album Hello Bastards on rising independent label Jade Tree Records fused hardcore with emo's tunefulness, turning its back on cynicism and irony in favor of love songs.[32] The album sold tens of thousands of copies[33] and the band inspired a number of later New Jersey and Long Island emo acts such as Brand New, Glassjaw, Midtown,[34] The Movielife, My Chemical Romance,[34] Saves the Day,[34][35] Senses Fail,[34] Taking Back Sunday,[33][34] and Thursday.[34][36]

The Promise Ring were one of the premier bands of the new emo style. Their music took a slower, smoother, pop punk approach to hardcore riffs, blending them with singer Davey von Bohlen's goofy, picturesque lyrics delivered with a froggy croon and pronounced lisp, and they played shows in basements and VFW halls[37] Jade Tree released their debut 30° Everywhere in 1996 and it sold tens of thousands of copies, a blockbuster by independent standards.[38] Greenwald describes the effect of the album as "like being hit in the head with cotton candy."[39] Other bands such as Karate, The Van Pelt, Joan of Arc, and The Shyness Clinic incorporated elements of post-rock and noise rock into the emo sound.[40] The common lyrical thread between these bands was "applying big questions to small scenarios."[40]

A cornerstone of mid-1990s emo was Weezer's 1996 album Pinkerton.[42] Following the success of their mutiplatinum debut, Pinkerton turned from their power pop sound to a much darker, more abrasive character.[43][44] Frontman Rivers Cuomo's songs were obsessed with messy, manipulative sex and his own insecurities of dealing with celebrity.[44] A critical and commercial failure,[44][45] it was ranked by Rolling Stone as the second-worst album of the year.[46] Cuomo retreated from the public eye,[44] later referring to the album as "hideous" and "a hugely painful mistake".[47] However, Pinkerton found enduring appeal with teenagers just discovering alternative rock, who were drawn to its confessional lyrics and themes of rejection and came to believe that it was directed at them.[41] Sales grew steadily as word of the album passed between fans, over online messageboards, and via Napster.[41] "Although no one was paying attention", says Greenwald, "perhaps because no one was paying attention—Pinkerton became the most important emo album of the decade."[41] When Weezer returned in 2000, however, they did so with a decidedly pop sound. Cuomo refused to play songs from Pinkerton, dismissing it as "ugly" and "embarassing".[48] Nevertheless, the album held its appeal and eventually achieved both high sales and critical praise, and is noted for introducing emo to larger and more mainstream audiences.[49]

The emo aesthetic of the mid-1990s was embodied in Mineral, whose albums The Power of Failing (1997) and EndSerenading (1998) encapsulated the emo tropes of somber music accompanied by a shy narrator singing seriously about mundane problems.[50] Greenwald calls their song "If I Could" "the ultimate expression of mid-nineties emo. The song's short synopsis—she is beautiful, I am weak, dumb, and shy; I am alone but am surprisingly poetic when left alone—sums up everything that emo's adherents admired and its detractors detested."[50] Another significant band of the era was Braid, whose 1998 album Frame and Canvas and B-side song "Forever Got Shorter" blurred the lines between band and listener, as the group was a mirror-image of its own audience in passion and sentiment and sang in the voice of their fans.[51]

Though the emo style of the mid-1990s had thousands of young fans, it never broke into the national consciousness.[53] A few bands were offered contracts with major record labels, but most broke up before they could capitalize on the opportunity.[54] Jimmy Eat World signed to Capitol Records in 1995 and built a following among the emo community with their album Static Prevails, but did not break into the mainstream despite their major-label association as their music was mostly lost amongst the popular ska movement of the period.[55] The Promise Ring were the most commercially successful emo band of the time, with sales of their 1997 album Nothing Feels Good topping out in the mid-five figures.[53] Greenwald calls the album "the pinnacle of its generation of emo: a convergence of pop and punk, of resignation and celebration, of the lure of girlfriends and the pull of friends, bandmates, and the road."[56] He refers to mid-1990s emo as "the last subculture made of vinyl and paper instead of plastic and megabytes."[57]