15 Greatest Emo Albums Of All Time

Emo music, like its oft-derided fans, is frequently misunderstood. To the layman, it is something to be scoffed at, all eyeliner and self-harm, skinny jeans, bad poetry, lip rings and teenage tantrums.

All that stuff is important, of course, but there’s plenty more to the genre than that. From its roots as an offshoot of hardcore to its early 2000s heyday and inevitable backlash, then a retreat back to the cult underground, emo has been through enough trials and tribulations, moments of triumph and tragedy to inspire, well, a great emo song.

With more than three decades of history, emo has changed and evolved, built cultures and sub-cultures (and probably sub-sub-cultures), and flirted with the mainstream. It has also produced some extraordinary music.

Emo inherently lends itself to the album format, a chance to explore feelings at length, to wallow and grieve. The best of them conjure a mood which can transport us to days of adolescent anguish, or help us through contemporaneous woes. For all that the genre’s sincerity can be a little silly, a little embarrassing, at its best, it’s transcendent.

One of the most theatrical and outre groups the genre ever produced, Panic! At The Disco had no intention of being ignored when they burst onto the scene in 2005. The album was - and probably still is - divisive, with some emo veterans decrying the state of things that would allow a band so performative to thrive.

That’s all grist to the mill for Panic!, though, whose outsider status was played up to the max with a deliciously contrary album that flaunts just about every convention of the genre. With unconventional song structure, heavy use of electronic instrumentation, and even subtle autotune, this flew far too close to outright pop for the purists. The songs can’t be denied, however, with the camp spookiness of “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” surely one of the greatest hits the scene has ever produced, and “Camisado” a heady blend of old school angst and electronic blare.

The fey playfulness was off putting to some, but Panic!’s debut has earned its status as a classic album. They would later prove that their hearts lay with pop, but their emo credentials are hard to argue.