Why We Fight: Your Chemical Romance | Features | Pitchfork
Nitsuh Abebe connects the large-scale emergence of My Chemical Romance, and the aesthetics that drove them and related acts, to the current rise of Skrillex, and discusses how their successes have as much to do with sheer numbers of youth listening to, or even just exposed to, their values and styles, as it does the music itself.
I’ve been bothered by Skrillex’s popularity recently, as have a lot of other dance music fans; but as much as I dislike his music, I was bothered more by the idea that my dislike for him was a sign of pure snobbery, or being completely out of touch with people younger than myself. Abebe’s connection to the plain huge number of kids, looking at annual birthrates, who grew up primarily listening to “mall-rock” and the mainstreamed aesthetics of emo et al, makes me feel a bit more reassured, as it offers some kind of concrete explanation of how something so terrible can be adopted so readily, and get so massively popular.
So yes, it is a generational gap in my understanding, but I can see now how Skrillex is a lot more appealing to someone who’s primary musical exposures were “commercial rock, emo, scene, neon-pink pop-punk, anyone with a chopped haircut and a major-label deal,” than to someone a few years older, raised on Mellon Collie, Kid A, and Is This It. And for what it’s worth, My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy (and Blink-182) are known to pop up on my Spotify shuffle.
