Idolator
Today's New York Post has an article on Crush Management, the company that guides the careers of Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, and other tortured-dude bands with overly wordy titles. It's a somewhat odd piece, if only because it's peppered with quotes from Butch Walker that sound a lot more derisive than they probably were in context, but it does also float the theory that today's emo is pretty analogous to a rock sub-genre popular about 20 years ago:
...[Crush Management's Jonathan] Daniel thinks that FOB and its spawn are disparaged by critics because "they're very much like the hair bands of the '80s, like Motley Crue - it's, like, heavy metal for girls. This scene is very much like that. It's very female-based."
"He couldn't be more on the mark," says producer Hollander of Daniel's assessment. "Dead on. If you were a hipster, like I was at that, age - God, you wanted to laugh at it. That's exactly right."
"It's not edgy," says songwriter [Butch] Walker (he's also written and produced for Pink, Avril Lavigne and Bowling for Soup). "It's no different than the hair metal movement that Bon Jovi pioneered," he says. "When those girls outgrew New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson and started smoking cigarettes and hanging out with boys who drive Camaros, they started listening to Bon Jovi. And that music was not good either."
Walker, whose tastes run more toward the Arcade Fire, concedes that a lot of the Crush bands sound "so same-y - they all have the same look, play the same guitar songs, all the songs are about the same s - - -. I think that's why the critics don't like it." He pauses. "Jonathan may not be the poster boy for what is indie-cred cool, but if he was, he wouldn't be successful. Let's not have our head up our ass and shoot ourselves in the head with the hipster gun. And I think that's why the company is equally loved and loathed."
To Wentz, it's all just white noise. He sees himself as one in a long line of great artists who, in their prime, were profoundly misunderstood: "You know, Bob Dylan plugged in and everyone started booing," he says. "Thirty years later, he's hailed as one of the greatest artists of all time. There are plenty of ways to get rich. It's very easy. But if you want to be involved in this, you want to be involved for the legacy of your art."
It's really Wentz's comparison of himself to Bob Dylan that makes this analogy fit, doesn't it? The countdown to Fall Out Boy's own The Spaghetti Incident? starts now.
TEENAGE TASTELAND [New York Post]
Related: Poor Patrick Stump. [AV Club]
[Photo: Getty Images]
Comments
The Arcade Fire? Oh Butch.
I don't know of a single male my age who likes any of those bands. Just saying. So maybe that Daniel guy is totally right.
When Dylan was wearing his guyliner around the time of "Empire Burlesque" his music blew too, so Wentz may be on the mark after all...
Pretty good analogy. If true, then we're just waiting around for the next Nevermind to come along and finally put an end to Fall Out Boy. So what, that's like 4 years out?
Pete Wentz wears Donna Karan girls jeans! If that isn't Jovi-esque, then I don't know what is.
Butch has really gotten around in the weird article arena lately. Did you read that strange article/interview with him in June's SPIN about, well, just sort of about rockstars?
That Patrick Stump interview is pretty good. It's easy to hate Wentz, but Stump seems like a pretty decent guy.
He's also probably the only emo/pop-punk/whatever-you-call-it singer in the world who name-drops Terrence Trent D'Arby, and never mentions Morrisey.
Maybe one of the Crush bands stole Walker's basketball.
I like Butch fine, but he's got his chronology hella backwards here:
"When those girls outgrew New Kids on the Block and Debbie Gibson and started smoking cigarettes and hanging out with boys who drive Camaros, they started listening to Bon Jovi. And that music was not good either."
Peak years for Bon Jovi: 1986-88. Peak years for New Kids: 1988-90. If Walker really thinks it's the same pack of girls moving from one band to the other, then it's the opposite: hair-metal first, boy-bands next (with a stopover on Bobby Brown in-between).
Honestly, I think there was some overlap but less than he thinks; the Jon Bon girls and the Jordan Knight girls were two separate but partially overlapping Gen-X girl gangs. The 15-year-olds screaming at a Slippery When Wet show in '87 are not the 12-year-olds screaming at a Hangin' Tough gig in '89.
All I'm saying is, you can only take these analogies so far.
@dennisobell:
It kind of makes me laugh, since its not like Butch ever wrote Purple Rain himself.
No clue why I thought Purple Rain. But you get my point.
Freak of the Week? Legendary.
Pot, please meet kettle and discuss your collective blackness:
http://www.geocities.com/decibal1/southgang.htm
I believe their big local hit single was called "White Trash with Cash" if I'm not mistaken. And I'm not.
If emo is the new hair-metal, then does this mean that super-interwebs-post-bloggers of the future, or whatever the next equivalent is in the future, will have emo nostalgia in the year 2022? The same way we wax ecstatic about our favorite hair bands? This frightens me.
Back in the hair metal days, though, chicks thought Jon Bon Jovi was hot. That was largely the excuse. Sebastian Bach was hot. Axl Rose was hot. They thought the NKOTB guys were cute. Even Vanilla Ice was, God help them, attractive to girls. That's how that crappy music was sold to chicks. Is Pete Wentz's ugly mug - a horse face tarted up with Maybelline and a generic razor haircut - what passes as sexy these days? If so, we truly are in the End Times, kids.
I like Butch Walker OK, he seems like a decent guy with a realistic perspective on the music biz, but he was in one of them there hair bands (South Gang) and his next band, Marvelous 3, tried to cash in on the pop-punk thing. More of a follower than a leader, in other words.
What happened with Walker and Rock Star: Supernova? He was on the panel the first episode and then he disappeared. Was he a little to cynical for the manufactured supergroup?
@Xenu: Hate to break it to you but-
http://www.petewentzonline.org/
http://iheartpete.com/
The list could probably go on, unfortunately.
Just wait for the 2025 Fall Out Boy reunion tour. It'll be a blast.
@Xenu: I can't speak for teen girls, but I can tell you this... on a lot of the gay blogs, the homos think Pete Wentz is hot. And everyone knows gays and teen girls share the same tastes.
Personally, I don't get it. Pete Wentz looks like ass to me.
show me a song as fierce as "shout at the devil" coming from these petulant pansies and i'll send you a case of aqua net, extra firm hold.
Wentz comparing himself to Dylan is like when Scott Stapp said that Creed was as misunderstood critically as Led Zeppelin were in their time.
Oh, if only that were true, Pete Wentz!Can we place a moratorium on abusing that little dylan anecdote? FOB playing shitty recycled arena wuss rock and having it panned by all living human beings outside of the 12-17 yr old female demo is slightly different than Bob Dylan destroying his own image in an attempt to reinvent himself and transcend genres. I don't even like Dylan, but I respected what he had the balls to do. Putting on makeup and singing about being heartbroken was done to perfection in the mid 80's (see: The Cure) and doesn't make you misunderstood, it just makes you a cheap plagiarist.
@Xenu: Xenu, I am patiently waiting for the happy day when Pete Wentz trips and falls, ass-first, on my face. His cock ain't bad, too!
Chow down, chowhound.
@chrisb: That does it. I am officially preparing for The Rapture.
Walker's quote is like Ann Coulter-level wrong, like so many things wrong you can't even keep track of what's wrong. Here's a few, though:
a) backwards chronology
b) Bon Jovi was good
c) someone who wrote for Avril saying Bon Jovi sucked wtf, SAME SHIT DIFFERENT DECADE DUDE
d) critics like MCR
e) if your head's up your ass how do you shoot it?
Butch Walker is a god among mere mortals.
Yeah, I'm not a huge Bon Jovi fan(more of a Def Lepp kind of guy)or Fall Out Boy, but if there was ever a band who tried to sound like BJ, it was Butch's band South Gang. They were terrible. Plus Butch used to wear eyeliner in Marvelous 3.
Enjoy "Tainted Angel"(written by Bon Jovi's long time collaborator Desmond Child)
Shut up, Butch...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42u6THtPEew
There is nothing "edgy" about Butch Walker. He produces pap. He gloms onto whatever is going to be the new big thing in hopes of making it. He was in a hair band and grunge came along, so then he got edgier and punk rock and no one bought his schtick. Now he's all about the Arcarde Fire and ilk? I say "Pfft" to Butch Walker and can't wait till he comes up with a new history for himself and starts appearing on CMT.
Why do these article always forgive My Chemical Romance? - awful.
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