Phoebe! At The Disco: How emo music acted as my crutch during middle school

Halfway through seventh-grade, and I’m sitting on the floor of my bedroom lacing up my brand-new, black high-top Converse shoes, wondering what my friends will think of my freshly-dyed, bright-red hair. 

It’s a scene I retrospectively roll my eyes at, just as I do thinking about the rest of that day — how I listened to my “emo favorites” playlist on full volume through the tangled wires of my headphones on the bus ride to school and shied off the weird looks I garnered from wearing a beanie in gym class. My friends give me a lot of crap for how cringey I used to be with my flower crowns and band T-Shirts. But even though I’ve grown out of the emo phase, I refuse to compromise on one thing: emo music, which gave me a sense of security I was sorely lacking in middle school, still deserves a place in my playlists. 

Starting seventh grade, I was around 5’3 and felt like a total nobody, so whisper-screaming songs about the “bloody heartbreak of love” and hammering air guitar in my bedroom made me feel kind of cool. I knew I wasn’t cool in the eyes of my friends or family or kids at school, but the music I listened to made me feel like a different person  — not the quiet, short, insecure girl I was. 

Now, I’ll clarify for the sake of my own reputation that I’m not talking about “screamo” — screams of bloody murder over ear-decimating background guitar. No, I worshipped what emo-Tumblr called “The Holy Trinity:” Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. 

Combine Panic! At the Disco’s ridiculous song titles and never-ending theatrics, Fall Out Boy’s quasi-rock sound and mega-hottie bassist Pete Wentz with My Chemical Romance’s depressing lyrics, and you’re looking at the stars of Phoebe’s Spotify playlists. 

My fascination with emo culture originated around the time I began middle school. When you’re heading into a new school with a bunch of new people, it seems like the perfect time to do a decent amount of self-rebranding. At that point in my life, the clothes I wore, my interests and music taste were all based off my parents’ preferences. So when it came time for me to find some sort of individual identity, I can’t help but wonder if I just went for shock value. When you’ve been raised on mundane Coldplay and innocent pigtails, it’s hard to ignore the allure of leather jackets and mosh pits. 

Despite the near-deafening volume of drums, guitar and yelling in most emo songs, the lyrics were the loudest to me. I typically wrote my thoughts and feelings into poems and short stories, but emo music was the first time I heard songs that reflected how I felt inside.  It served as a processing outlet for the strange feelings I was developing — feelings I couldn’t voice.   

When I first heard All Time Low’s “Missing You” and listened as lead singer Alex Gaskarth sang, “Now don’t lose your fight, kid, it only takes a little push to pull on through, with so much left to do, you’ll be missing out, and we’ll be missing you,” I felt a sense of comfort that had become foreign. Emo music was a shout back from the void, telling me I wasn’t worthless or invaluable like I had started to tell myself over and over.

I first experienced depression and anxiety around 6th grade, but since I’d never been taught what they were, I didn’t have a word for it — until I found emo music. I didn’t feel like I could talk about these things with my parents, so the artists who sang about loneliness and sadness were the first adults I’d been introduced to who knew what I was going through.

To know that there were others — especially adults — who went through the same things I was and had not only made it out of those dark places, but were now thriving, meant the world to me. It was a sign that I, too, was capable of pushing through the depressive state I found myself trapped in. I may have struggled with a lack of belonging, but my music reminded me that somewhere, someone was looking out for me.

And through further exploration on the internet, I found a community of kids who, like me, used emo music as a coping mechanism. I didn’t know anyone else at school who dressed like I did or liked the things I liked, but making connections online with kids like me made me feel a lot less different. At school, I was an outlier. But online, I found people who I identified with — in both interests and insecurities. 

Seventh grade was a rough time. I had only one or two close friends and was struggling with the academic adjustment. Throughout the entire year, I walked down the hallways of Indian Hills Middle School with my eyes firmly locked on the heels of whoever was walking in front of me. I made conscious efforts to never smile with teeth or raise my hand in a class full of kids I didn’t know. I had such a deathly fear of calling attention to myself that I developed a way of stifling all of my sneezes — burying my nose in the palm of my hand — and I still do it to this day. 

It’s been four years since 7th grade. I’m far more confident than I was in middle school, and though it’s taken some trial and error — the emo phase was mild compared to my brief stint as a theater kid — I’ve finally found my footing. But just as the sneeze-stifling has wedged its way into who I am, so has the love for emo music.

I’m working on letting my sneezes out, but you won’t see me skipping over Blink-182 when their songs come on over my car’s bluetooth. And you definitely won’t see me throw out the black Converse. One of the soles may be near completely detached from the shoe, but it’s still holding on — just like I’ll hold on to comfort music brought me.