Nothing Feels Good: Punk Rock, Teenagers, and Emo

By Andy Greenwald
St. Martin’s Griffin, $15


Finding a musician who cops to being emo is like tracking down Bigfoot, so music journalist Andy Greenwald has his work cut out getting to the genre’s bleeding heart. It’s not as if he can fall back on rock & roll debauchery, either; excitement levels on the Jimmy Eat World tour bus, for example, peak with some spontaneous cookie-eating.

To the unconverted, everything about emo is off-putting: the gauche lyrics, the overheated emotions, the insufferable self-righteousness. Skeptical but intrigued, Greenwald does his best to find out what the fuss is about, puzzling over the legacy of little-known cult heroes Rites of Spring and Sunny Day Real Estate, accompanying high-school seniors to a Dashboard Confessional show and spending far too long in Internet chat rooms.

Apart from a long, fascinating encounter with Dashboard’s Chris Carrabba and a fleeting glimpse of Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, there’s precious little star power here. Some key figures, including Fugazi’s Ian MacKaye, won’t talk, and those who will don’t offer too much insight.

None of that really matters, though, because this thoughtful, inquisitive book is, like the genre itself, really about the fans: those bored, sensitive, Net-savvy teens for whom emo is a vital lifeline. Fundamentally, Greenwald concludes, emo isn’t about knowing this or that obscure D.C. hardcore band, but about easing the pain of thin-skinned adolescence. It’s The Catcher in the Rye with guitars.
—Dorian Lynskey