On every list declaring the most defining emo albums sits the band at the center of this week’s episode. With songs that both pushed a generation towards the emo side of life and vindicated Spiderman, Dashboard Confessional is that girl when it comes to the emo scene. However, Stanli from Summerbruise immediately fell in love with Dashboard Confessional upon hearing them, and we get into all of that in the episode – but for now let’s talk about how this band had to grow on me because honestly, I didn’t get it at first.
The ‘80s had goth, the ‘90s were grunge, and the ‘00s were for the emo kids. I mean, if you didn’t grow up with an overly emotional counterculture that centered around a style of music, did you even do teen angst right? In hindsight, it’s kind of tragic that emo music took off the way it did because a lot of the time, many of us were just trying to find the right soundtrack for our level of post-9/11 trauma-brain depression and anxiety that was hitting us all. With that, emo music took hold of millennials, and for anyone with the internet it’s easy to see – they have yet to let go. Emo Nites happen all over the country, and festivals like When We Were Young have banked on nostalgia. And almost always played or playing at either is Dashboard Confessional, a band, again, that I didn’t vibe with at first.
For those who watched ‘Big Mouth,’ when I was in high school I was like if Missy had the biggest hate worm, a constant shame wizard, a Clifford the Big Red Dog-sized depression kitty, and a hoard of anxiety mosquitoes. All of that balled up inside of me led me towards bands that ranged from ultra mall punk with daddy-issue bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan to Hot Topic rage music like The Used and Story of the Year. For some reason, Dashboard Confessional just didn’t fit in with the depression soundtrack I was building for my teenage angst at the time. However, instead of realizing that, my hate worm made me lash out at them because everything you don’t like as a teenager is stupid and dumb, right?
Even when I liked the song from ‘Spiderman,’ I couldn’t outright admit it. Millennials got a little of that “I have to be cool by being anti-this-and-that” from Gen X. It never made you, me, or anyone else cooler by hating something. You don’t realize that when you’re a snot-nosed kid. Hell, some close-minded adults don’t understand that concept, and many are elected officials. Anyways, the only thing I was doing was missing out on music that was actually, decent.
When you’re the forever passenger, you don’t get a lot of say in the music that is played in the car. Not a problem when your taste with the driver is 90% compatible. It’s when that other 10% comes into play that can be the test…so in college, my BFF was the driver and her 10% included A Perfect Circle and Dashboard Confessional. After years of hearing those two, one of them got to me. The other one would still be considered torture for me.
Whether it was because they are truly one of the greats or because they wore me down as the passenger, Dashboard Confessional is now a band I can say I find pleasantly decent. They might not have made my teenage rage playlists back in the day, but in the present day, I don’t mind a nice sing-along to them every once in a while.
Summerbruise
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