Emo Census 2023
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Back at the end of 2022, I was home for the holidays and found myself in the back seat of the family van, accompanying my parents and our dog on a trip out to the Oregon Coast. Struck with an eerie mixture of nostalgia and childhood restlessness, I decided to surrender to the weird vibes and make a playlist of emo music.
It was mid-December, peak list season, and as a guy who runs his own little music blog, I was still in the thick of tinkering with my own AOTY list. I spent countless hours considering album placements, refining my Topster, pruning paragraphs, and reading the lists of friends to ensure I didn’t miss anything major. As I considered the shape of my 2022 album of the year list, my mind drifted to emo music, as it often does. It had been an exceptionally notable year for the genre: Pool Kids had come back better than ever, as had Short Fictions, Oso Oso, and Future Teens. Groups like Ben Quad, Sweet Pill, Carly Cosgrove, and Arm’s Length had all released impressive full-length debuts after all coming off promising EPs, splits, and singles. It felt like a bounty, and my mind was swimming with how much fantastic music the scene had been blessed with that year. I made a playlist of every emo album and EP I could think of for the year and organized it just by what I was listening to most at the time. I named this playlist Emo Census 2022, and for months, it proved to be a reliable way to listen to my favorites of the year.
When 2023 started, I had to ask myself whether I wanted to make a 2023 version of the same playlist. At first, I wanted to wait until December to make it more of a “retrospective” overview of the year, as I did in 2022. Of course, my excitement got the better of me, and by Valentine’s Day, I caved and created an Emo Census playlist for the new year. Sure, I started that new playlist out of excitement, but also because there was music I was afraid I’d have forgotten about by the end of the year. Not because they were bad or anything, just the way that some January releases are bound to be forgotten eleven months later, it’s just the nature of our brains; we can only hold so much stuff at once.
Things were coming out so frequently that, at times, it genuinely felt like there was an exciting new emo project coming out every Friday. Due to the “scale” of this music, it feels like bands and labels can move a little quicker. Standalone singles, splits, and random midweek EPs are all more common in emo/punk/DIY spaces, and that frequency is one of the reasons why I find myself endlessly pulled to the genre; there’s always something to listen to.
As my playlist ballooned in size throughout 2023, it soon dwarfed the original Emo Census. While last year’s playlist was a hearty 586 songs, clocking in at a respectable 31 hours and 8 minutes, its younger brother is sitting at around double its size, currently weighing in at 1,147 songs and just about 60 hours of total music. That’s a lot, but it’s not meant to be taken in at once.
Even as our online platforms like Twitter and Bandcamp sat on shakier and shakier ground throughout the year, I found joy in discovering new bands and local scenes, even reuniting with some old friendly faces. I dipped my toe into Zoom Interviews with Ness Lake and Summit Shack, the latter of whom put on Fauxchella VI, which honestly feels like a perfect temperature check of modern emo if you wanted a vivid depiction of how wholesome, communal, and mutually uplifting this entire community is.
What I’m saying is that I liked emo music this year. I liked riffs, and I liked rockin’ out. And brother? If loving riffs is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.
Okay, enough of that guy.
What I’m actually trying to say is that I’ve had a blast keeping tabs on emo music and pop-punk this year. I spend my days sifting through emails, Bandcamp notifications, Twitter discourse, and Discord slop to find the new music so you don’t have to.
I’ve shared out my Emo Census 2023 playlist a few times, usually to pretty rousing success, so I think people find this sifting helpful. Even if a lot of this music is redundant or expected or even just okay, I wanted to make a playlist that feels emblematic of where we’re at this year and what I’ve spent my months listening to. It’s far from comprehensive, but I’ve enjoyed making this collection of songs my little project throughout the year. I’ll probably set this playlist down soon in favor of a refreshed 2024 edition, but until then, but until then, it’s been an honor serving in the trenches with you all.
To every DIY person making music or art or things on their own terms and sharing them with the world, I genuinely thank you. We’re so much stronger together. Same time next year?
