By: Christina Miller
My Chemical Romance was very popular in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The band helped shape the sound, style, and emotional lyrics of the rock and emo genres. Their influence still carries over into many modern-day bands with theater-like music.
The band helped bring emo music into the mainstream. During the 2000’s, they released the albums Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade, which blew up and widened the audience for emo and rock. They brought emotional lyrics and darker themes.
They influenced others to make their bands more theatrical with stories and themes. When My Chemical Romance made an album, it always had a story to it. The album by My Chemical Romance “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys” has a full story to it; the story takes place in a post-apocalyptic California and is based around the lives of a rebel group called the “Killjoys,” and this helps create the theatrical aspect in the album.
Most rock bands used to be very not emotional, more like “don’t be weak” and “be hardcore”. My Chemical Romance changed that with their emotional lyrics and normalized having deep emotions in songs. Many of their songs explored emotions like grief, isolation, and insecurity. It influenced bands to express vulnerability and real emotion that comes from the heart.
My Chemical Romance proved that rock can expand its sound. The band has experimented with many sounds in their career, like grand opera mixed with the emo rock sound, with their album I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love. It showed other bands that you can mix two genres to make a new sound.
They have influenced so many bands and artists like Twenty One Pilots, Yungblud, and Panic! At the Disco. Even the lead guitarist in the pop-punk band State Champs states, “They weren’t just a rock band, they were a rock band that didn’t look ordinary. They were a rock band that’s very comfortable being different, and that’s very inspiring to see them have so much success from just being themselves.”
My Chemical Romance made a blueprint for newer bands and artists. A lot of bands these days make their music more emotional, with deeper meaning and dark themes, and create their own identity for themselves with the help of the blueprint. The impact that My Chemical Romance has had on the rock genre.
