Bandsplain - My Chemical Romance with Hanif Abdurraqib

Episode Date: February 25, 2021

Poet, critic, and author Hanif Abdurraqib joins us this week for a thoughtful examination of the enduring fandom of emo-era breakouts My Chemical Romance. Follow Hanif on Twitter at @NifMuhammad. His fifth book, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance is out March 30. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like Bandsplaine? Welcome to Bandsplaine. I'm your host, Yossi Solic. This is a show where experts come on and explain cult bands to me and to you. Today's show is about famed Warp Tour band My Chemical Romance. If you don't know what My Chemical Romance sounds like, this is what my chemical romance sounds like.

On the show today, we have poet, critic, and author. Hanif Abdurakib. Welcome to the show, Hanif. You're my chemical romance expert. Of sorts. Yeah, I think so. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself before we kick off this party? Yeah, I am a poet and an essayist and a music enthusiast from Columbus, Ohio, who grew up not knowing I was goth until I think I realized it in my late teens, early 20s. And so my chemical romance arrived to me in a perfect time in some ways.

I'll be really honest with you. Like I have like a working awareness of my chemical romance. Like I can picture them in my brain. I remember their band outfits. Some maybe red eye shadow. I think I could only name one my chemical romance song. I think just like age wise, I might be a little too old for like when they hit for me to have like paid attention. I guess I don't know how old you are.

I'm 38. We're like super close at age. I don't know because so what year was my chemical romance like came into the cultural consciousness? For me was 2002 when I bought two, my bullet two bought me your love came out. And they were kind of at that point, you know, a smaller band with a smaller audience. And so they were just kind of like touring in the way that a lot of those bands toured. And I think we'll have to get into genre designation at a different point, but they were by default kind of rolled into the like emo pop punk early 2000s revival.

And so they were playing in these, not only on Warped Tours, they're kind of playing in these same spaces like the Midwest punk bars and whatnot. And so, you know, they came to my consciousness through that. 2002. Yeah. And I, you know, I think. I was maybe like a year or two older than most of their fans. There wasn't a really huge lineation at that point.

And I think a lot of people just thought they were kind of weird, were into them because they were a little weird. Right. Why don't we talk about like their most well-known song? Like what's the song? I mean, it's probably the one I know, but maybe it's not that everyone, the one I know is the I'm not okay song. I don't know if it's called I'm not okay, but that's how it goes.

So the thing that interests me about them as a band is that I think their most well-known song or most beloved song is going to be different depending on who you talk to and the not only the air of the band came to them but the era of the band spoke to them the most. So for me, I imagine their most well-known song as Welcome to the Black Parade, which is a song on their third album. But I think what I'm actually saying is that to me is their best single or their best song that the public got access to not on an album, like not an album cut. Like that song was on the radio. Yeah.

And I feel like I'm not okay, was too. And so was Helena. And, you know, like, they had songs that were big. But another thing I want to say is it's so hard for me to determine, like, what a big song was in that world, in that orbit, in the orbit of bands like My Chemical Romano. And especially in the early mid-2000s, bands like My Chemical Romance, bands like, to some extent, bands like Fall Out Boy. Sure. You know, because these songs were big in my world. but I feel like I could not walk into a house party in the early mid-2000s and put on I'm not okay and have everyone sing along.

There was this kind of boom that was happening, but it was hard for me to figure out the big songs from the songs that were just like, you know, big to my circle. Or the way that I think I figured out big songs was by how turned off the scene was by, them, you know. Right. Like, this is sellout, sellout. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I feel like the thing of my chemical romance is I don't know if they ever got that, at least in this, I don't, I can't really speak for Jersey where they're from or that like corner of the world they're from. But in the Midwest, this thing was happening when those bands like got big and signed big contracts and whatever where the Midwest bands, I mean, specifically Chicago ones in the Detroit ones where people kind of started to bristle at them a bit.

But that never really happened in my scene with my chemical romance. even as they were kind of gradually ascending. Part of it, I think, is because they were always as much of a spectacle as they were a band. And so that had this interesting dual impact where either people took them too seriously or didn't take them seriously at all. And that didn't mean that people didn't enjoy them. But it was like, you know, I don't know if I could take the, I'm enjoying the tunes, but I don't, like, this is funny to me too because not theatrical they are. I was, you know, I was of the former camp. I took them as seriously as I seemed to take themselves.

That's why you're the perfect person to be here with me right now. Why don't we listen to Welcome to the Black Parade. Okay, it seems we have another Steely Dan situation on our hands. Honey, if you were not here for the Steely Dan recording, in which I basically slowly realized over the course of the episode that I knew every single song. And I just wasn't aware that it was this band. So yes, I am familiar with this song. it's like purely an osmosis kind of thing because like I can't tell you why I know it or like

where it came from into my brain but it's there okay honey why don't you take me back we kind of touched on it a bit earlier but like take me back to your how you found this band like how did this band come to you what about them spoke to you when you first were introduced to them So I had, if you were, like, around on the scene, there were like these demos that got passed around. And on those demos, there would be kind of like a mix of a bunch of bands, like quote unquote, up-and-coming bands on the quote-unquote scene. And that was the first time I heard my chemical romance. I think the first song I heard was, I would guess that it was Our Lady of Sorrows, which is a song on their first album, but it was a song that was kind of making the rounds on the demos. And then this rumor had gotten out that, of course, would come to fruition that their first album was being produced by Jeff Rickley, who was the front of-out Thursday.

Thursday, right? Friend of the show, Jeff Rickley. And Jeff's great. And that is what really got me on the radar in 2002. Because you were a big Thursday fan. Big Thursday fan. Everyone I knew was just big Thursday fans. And so it was kind of like, well, you know, if Jeff's rocking with them, then I will.

And then they kind of came through the Midwest. And I think I first saw them in Detroit or Chicago. And to see an early My Chemical Romance show was so interesting because they were not, you know, I think the thing about them in their second and third album, runs is that they're so polished. I mean, just like immensely polished and like have thought out the whole arc of the act and all these things. And their first shows or early shows, it was just like completely without polish. Like a lot of vision and a lot of energy kind of propelling them towards that vision, but no polish at all. And that was that was kind of thrilling to me. You know, Gerard was kind of like a wrecking ball at that point where I think he now is a bit more measured on stage. He was kind of just like running around. frantically looking for something to jump on or jump off of.

And so, you know, I think they were a fascination for a lot of us at first. Kind of just like that band with a friend man who looks like he wants to hurt himself. Okay. So you got really connected to my chemical romance. You know, you had this, you had gotten introduced to them through, you know, the production of Jeff Rickley. We were going to see their shows. and it was their energy that you really connected with? Yeah, not even the songs, really.

The songs were good. But I also think like the songs by that point were it's hard to explain for me because they were kind of bouncing between like hardcore punk and heavy metal and sometimes new wave. But the writing was also very odd. not odd in a bad way, but odd in the way that intrigued me, you know, where it was very, of course, like now this makes sense, but it was very comic booklike and very visual and very, um, it's like watching, like listening to a horror novel. Like very descriptive. Yeah. And so that was also compelling to me as someone who was very, has always been very interested in the right, like the lyrical aspect of songwriting. But it. It was so hard for me to appreciate, to see them live,

it was so hard for me to appreciate what the songs were doing until the album came out. So I saw them live before, for the first time I saw them live was maybe like late spring 2002 or early summer 2002. And the album came out in the middle. The first album came out in the middle of 2002 summer. And so the album came out and what happened? Like what, like what did you witness kind of like within the. scene. The album didn't hit for, for, uh, I mean, I don't recall it hitting all that well. I think it didn't entirely go away, but it wasn't, you know, they were like, um, of course I was not

around for this in real life, but the whole thing with the band Joy Division was like, their album came out and no one cared and then they saw them live and were like, we've got to buy this record, we got to get this record. And I feel like Mike Hymooker Romance first album market the same thing where No one in my scene really cared that much about the album until they saw them live and they wanted to get the album. But it also feels like that first album, at least my remembering of it, is that it was really just a setup to get to the second album in a way. Some bands, I think, for some bands that are the first album is an achievement that maybe stifles the vision and space for the next album because of the expectations attached to it. And for some bands, I think the first album acts as an entry point for the imagination of the second album. And I think that for my chemical romance, it was definitely the latter.

Well, can you tell me a song from the first album that you connected with? Yeah. So the song that I most loved was vampires will never hurt you because it was so weird. I remember first hearing it. It was so weird. Should we hear it? Yeah, we should hear it. Okay. Okay, so I'm just so confused.

Here's some questions that were coming in my mind. Not that I did not like that song. It was a fine song. But I guess, again, it's just like I went straight from like Blink 182, fat records, punk bands. Like, and then my old weird, like, grunge because I was, you know, 12 in 1994. And then, you know, carried that punk and stuff with me into underground hip hop. So this, I missed all this. what like what bands what music was my comical romance steeped in like marinated in to then make this kind of song like what are the influences

i mean i think that lifetime was the band lifetime was a very big influence for them and how would you characterize lifetime oh i mean i would i would say lifetime was a punk band from jersey and but i also think that they have metal influences. And again, I mean, misfits too, punk band. But I kind of think, and I don't know if I ever spoken on this, but I often hear a lot of Iron Maiden in their, in their early work specifically when they're playing more with, like, less with theatrics and more with straightforward metal. I do hear a lot of Iron Maiden happening. Yeah. A lot of like, like, I feel like the drum rolls are very interesting. Really? Yeah, I don't know. It's like, like, again, I'm no music expert at all, but it feels like part, part of the time it's like

kind of straightforward punk drumming and then it like pulls back from that and goes into like almost like misfittsy drums, like, and then more dramatic drums like, do not, do not, you know, I don't know, I'm just hearing like that's, I guess that's what partially prompted my like genre question because the drumming alone is like a little schizophrenic in a way that I found really interesting. Yeah, the drumming's a bit all over the place. But I, and I, but I also think that the drums for this band are, that's where my favorite instrumentation happens.

All like throughout their, you know, like I think throughout their kind of career. But I also think on this early record, they're kind of doing some minor thready things. Like I think hardcore punk is kind of where they were situated on this. first record where a lot of the songs feel like how fast can we get through this song and still honor the kind of lyrical whimsy that is present, which is to say this is a short album. I mean, I'm not, I feel like this album, I remember being like kind of long, particularly the last song, like Demolition Lovers is like seven minutes or something, six and a half, seven minutes. But it still feels like there's something propulsive through all of it.

Okay. So you set it up a little bit earlier, like that this album was basically just kind of paving the way for the second album in many sentences. What song do you want to play next? Is it something from the second album or is it something else? Yeah, let's go to the second album. I love Cemetery Drive from Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Can you tell me why you picked that song in particular off of this album? Yeah, it has this kind of like, um, I, the retro, retro.

growy feel to it, particularly at the end, where, you know, there's kind of the repeated refrain, which, you know, we hear twice. But it feels really romantic to me, which maybe says more about me than the song itself. But even the drumming, despite its pace, has kind of like a retro feel to it. It's a very, I mean, it's fast-paced, but they're kind of like hollowed out so the vocals can sit, can sit in the heart of them really, really beautifully. Do you think that Cemetery Gates lyrical reference was a sly nod to the Smiths, or is that just my quiet hope?

That has to be referenced in the Smiths, because all those bands were so obsessed with the Smiths. Totally. I think, like, one common uniting theme about the artists that we deal with on this show, better, like, you know, for lack of a better term, cult bands, is that in some sense, by at least some group of people, they've been considered, like, really uncool or, like, embarrassing, you know? I can maybe kind of speak to that a little bit because I have some memory of, like, you know, pure punk people,

like, really looking down on all of this kind of music, you know? And I think critics at the time would probably fall into that camp of kind of, like, Gen X, people who are, like, this sucks. But can you talk about that a little bit about the embarrassing, side of my chemical romance? Well, I think it's because they're so theatrical. You know, it's that very, I was, so in high school, I was both a jock and a theater kid. Wow, duality.

Yeah. I think it's just the way my high school stood up. You could be many things, thankfully. But I was also very aware of, like outside of my school's walls, like the kind of weird shame I felt just by being like I can't hang out to that I got play practice that kind of that kind of I got to run lines you I got to like meet up with my play partner and run lines so I can't you know go to the football game and I feel like my chemical romance have and I've always had because they're so dramatic they've had this kind of like theater kid adjacency or they

they feel like they could easily orbit in that theater kid world and so I think there's a natural uncoolness attached to just being able to move in and out of that world with such ease. But I, you know, for me, I think that's really cool. But they also, you know, they're not as, one thing I will say is that so many bands in the email universe are better or worse and sometimes very much worse. We're so concerned with gaining access to love or a beloved or like the pursuit of, in most cases, because mostly was dudes behind these band, like straight men behind these bands, like, gaining access to a woman at all costs. In their anguish at the inability to do that was a stand in for coolness, even though, like, you know, a lot of that shit hasn't aged well looking back in.

And even in the moment, I think some of it was like, that's too much for me. And my chemical romance was not exactly invested or interested in that as a vehicle for their, like, thematic concerns. Like these, there are songs that are maybe about love and desire, but they're not in the way that, you know, it's like,

oh, you know, if you don't love me, I'm going to die or I would die for you, that kind of thing. There are concerns around death were not predicated on whether or not a woman loved them. Totally.

I think that maybe in some ways made them feel, made people feel like they were nerds or whatever the fuck. I'm having like a better understanding now. as producer Dylan has pointed out, this is like theater kid punk, which, and also by definition, I think, you know, coming into the early 2000s off of the tale of the 90s where like detached irony ruled king and then coming into like this like very visceral earnestness was probably a reason that people were like, no, thank you. Can you tell me a song that sort of illustrates what you're talking about, like that invoking a. of like, I'm going to die, but it's not, I mean, I guess it would be all of their songs maybe, but like, you know, that's not tied to like some love interest or like, you know,

this girl won't look at me or, you know, no hate to dashboard confessional, but that vibe. Yeah, I mean, I always like really adored the song Famous Last Words, which we can listen to if you want before I. That'd be great. Let's hear it. This is Famous Last Words, which is also awesome. of the Black Parade. That was famous last words from the Black Parade. And it is probably my personal top three by Keviken Romance song.

What is this song about, honey? So I like that you ask that. It's like, I don't know. I often think it's about the inevitability of not, being alive. The crushing March of Time? Yeah. You know, it's the final track.

So it's like the final track, or at least the final proper track on the Black Parade, which is, there's like a bonus track that comes after it. But I choose to believe it as the final track because it kind of ties the concept of the album, the Black Parade, up in a bow. and you know it's the video too i mean we're talking about the videos that they've done i mean the video for famous last words is notorious because they're like playing the song in front of this wall of fire and it's like actual fire and they pushed themselves to this limit where you know like drard way hurt his knee and i think it was like frank who got blisters on his hands from from playing in front of the firewall. And his guitar, a few years ago, he, like, showed a picture of his guitar from the video

set. It's, like, burned and charred all the way through. And so they were just kind of, like, I don't really want to overly romanticize the idea of suffering for one's art. But there's something interesting about famous arts where it's the music video, where they kind of push themselves to the brink to execute this idea, to tie a bow on the Black Parade as an album and execute this idea of the inescapability of her own. mortality and how there's no amount of love that can rescue us from that inevitability.

Okay, mellow drama. Suffering for their theater. I'm here for it. Kind of. I've never seen that video. Oh, you should watch the video. You should totally watch the video. Oh, I'm going to do a deep dive after this.

Believe you, me. Okay, so I can hear with my ears how melodramatic these songs are. And, like, it is kind of interesting. Like, in that song, I could hear. so clearly the metal influence also, which is with the drumming again. But then I'm like, I'm just so interested, like, because I think I can see why this spoke so clearly to people where I was like, you know, the bands that we referenced earlier, like the joy divisions and stuff of the world, I feel like they kind of couched their melodrama against,

not like softened it, but like had this sort of like totally other. thing going on with like dance music, you know, or like for lack of a better word. So it was sort of like not so like purely melodrama. But here it's purely melodrama. And I can see how that either makes people, it's the cilantro thing again. It's like I either love this or it tastes like soap. Yeah. You know, a thing that I think about all the time and I promise this is going to return to something thoughtful is just how for me, I guess, as someone who's not entirely, you know, I'm. You know, I'm, you know, I think I look okay, but I'm not really obsessed with my own reflection. And so it's pretty fucked up that I have to live a life where I look in a reflective surface and see myself unwillingly sometimes.

I have a dog and I have a mirror in between the flight of my steps because I live in an old house. And that's just how houses used to be decorated, I guess. And every day, my dog in the morning, my dog runs down the stairs, sees herself in the mirror, freaks out for a second, then shakes herself off and runs away. And that's how I feel looking in the mirror. And I think all the time about my chemical romance or the idea of melodrama for melodrama's sake as this act of being confronted very brazenly with, you know, I get the same idea. I get the same feeling, the jarring notion of being confronted with my own reflection and the many selves that I've lived and will not get to live. And having to kind of move through that, that is kind of the impulse I get when I hear their most melodramatic work. is that it is a type of reflection,

a type of uncomfortable reflection that is perhaps too calming and too comfortable. You know, like, for me, what's interesting about the Black Parade is that death is honored, but not treated as anything but in inevitability. And an afterlife is not painted or promised or beautiful or anything like that.

It's just kind of like maybe you just die, you know? and that's that's hard okay also I think needed I'm also more you know

for me it's needed I can't say I'm not being prescriptive here for everyone but for me like it is nice to have an album or or an ethos

or an emotional politic that's kind of like you know what fan maybe you just die and people will be left behind but you will have because I think

when I think about it like that and when I consider it like that it is then saying I'm beholden to this one life I have and the goodness that I can squeeze out of this one life I have in the way I can spread myself around to the people I love a lot in this one life I have and everything else is not promised and not certain. Okay, that's really beautiful and that's why you're a poet and that's why I'm disgusting because my whole brain is filled with Nietzsche quotes right now. But also another reason I'm disgusting is I was like simply can't relate. I love

looking at myself in the mirror. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Shout out Botox. Yeah. To be fair, I'm, uh, I don't know. I have a pretty elaborate skincare routine. So, and I, I do it while not looking at myself in there. I like to do it while looking away.

Oh, interesting. Gonna have to start a different podcast to talk about that. Yeah. Um, okay, we've talked so much now about the theater of, of, you know, the visual theater. Can you, can you describe obviously since this is audio? Can you describe a bit, like what did this band look like? Like, what was their aesthetic? Well, I think it depends on the era, right?

They were in the, they're there, three cheers for sweet revenge area. They're very black and red. Black and red was a move, which, you know, they, of course, were not the only band who fell into that kind of. White stripes. Anybody from next door or in Detroit? American Idiot. I feel like Green Day was very into the black and red thing. So a lot of bands moved through the black and red aesthetic.

But the Black Parade era was so interesting to me because they were wearing these like marching band outfits. Yeah. These like marching band jackets. And they were sometimes, you know, like accompanied on stage by people who were like painted like skulls. The Black Parade tour was very fascinating to me. I saw them maybe three times on it. And they were always very good on it. And I feel like the Black Parade is a tour.

where they began to play to like bigger bigger crowds. You know, they kind of stepped into their arena rockness living out their queen fantasies. But they were really aesthetically interesting because of those marching band outfits that they were very dedicated to.

You know, one time I saw them had to be late spring, early summer. It was towards the end of that tour maybe. And I know they were just so hot. You know, they looked like they were just like sweating through the thing, but they were just committed to it. I mean, they were living out those personas that they had built for themselves. Were these band marching outfits like an homage to the Beatles to this, was it a reference? No, I mean, well, I think it was they were, they were the black parade, right?

Like, I think that's the whole thing is that they were, you know, the whole concept was that they were parade leader. Like high school, like a high school marching band. They're constantly self-referencing high school. Yeah, I think they even like dubbed themselves the black parade. Like I remember, a thing I remember, the first time I saw them on this tour, maybe the Flyers or the promotions things where it was like, you're going to see the black parade. You know, the band playing tonight is the black parade.

And so there was all this initial confusion where it was like, are, yes, but is my chemical romance coming? Or is this like another band, like a new band? Right. And so that's, you know, I think that also played into it. They're kind of, their mystery. Just quickly, was this also red eye shadow era or was red eye shadow era a different time? The red eye shadow era was three cheers for sweet revenge.

That's burned into my brain. Okay. Do you have another song from Black Parade that you want to play? I do, but I think it might be better to play a song from May Death Never Stop You, which was their like after they broke up or went on hiatus, they came out with their compilation album of their greatest hits. And then one new song called Fake Your Death. And I feel like playing that would be cool.

Yeah, let's hear it. That was Fake Your Death from the My Chemical Romance compilation album. May Death Never Stop You. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm just laughing really hard because in my mind I just kept hearing. This is the song Death, Death, Death, Off of the compilation. We love Death.

Death is the best. death is inevitable death. Just going to say that producer Dylan and I have conferred and we both really like this song. I love this song. This is maybe my second or most favorite of my chemical woman song. And I thought, so this song came out again, like after they had announced the hiatus, this song kind of like emerged. And for me, I was like trying to read into it too much.

I was like, oh, I don't think they're, maybe they're not broken up. Maybe they're coming back. And then they did not come. back, at least not for several years. This song sounds different than the other songs. What's happening? Oh, it sounds different because it does not actually that sound that different in context of their like Danger Days album, which came

out in 2010, which I think has a sound more adjacent to this. I just did not go down the road of that album or any of that album songs because a secret is that I don't really love that album. You hate that album. I don't hate it. It's just not my thing. And I, you know, I do think there is a sect of my chemical. Romance fandom that is really in love with that album and I, you know, I don't want to dismiss them at all because I think any entry point to this band I love is a good entry point. But that album is kind of a tough one for me to get into. I keep trying to revisit it to find something I love in it and I have yet to do so. Would you say like most My Chemical Romance fans feel the same as you about it? I know you said there's a small sect, but that sounds. Maybe it's maybe I'm dismissing.

I shouldn't dismiss us to them by saying a small sect. I think that a lot of my chemical romance fans like it, at least a lot of the ones that I know. I guess I can't speak broadly, but a lot of the ones I know actually like it. I'm in the minority. So maybe it's a small sect of the fans do not like it. This is actually a good time to talk about the fandom.

Can you tell me about the My Chemical Romance fandom? Like, I know we said earlier that it spans genres, but like, what is the quality of this fandom? Like, what are they like? I mean, for me and my friends, I think, I can, again, I can only speak for me and my friends and the fans I know. Dramatic, perhaps, but like healthily dramatic. Or dramatic in a way where being dramatic helps to serve as a lens on the world.

And that feels like it aligns with my ideas of them. Like, I think that their melodrama has, kind of flooded into my own interests around death and loss and grief, which has made those things, my investments in those things larger and more open to interpretation and possibility, which means that I think the people I love who are no longer here get to live on more robustly because of how my imagination has been pushed forward by bands like my chemical romance. And so, yeah, dramatic, but not to no end. Why are you so smart?

I don't understand. That's really impressive. We actually talked to a bunch of my chemical romance fans about why they love the band. And I'm interested for you to hear so we can see if they share any inkling of the sentiment that you have. I was introduced to them through the Helena music video, which is just so beautifully dreary. I remember seeing the Helena video on MTV2 or something and just being with. like, wow, this is sick. The I'm Not Okay video came on MTV one day and just blew my mind.

It was a 15-year-old Somali girl growing up in a refugee family in Seattle. Internally, I didn't feel like I really fit in anywhere. MCR helped me realize that my alienation, loneliness, and sadness were normal, that I was allowed to be weird, to be vulnerable, to not be okay. They emerged in post-9-11 America, and so we were just inundated with militarism, hyper-masculinity, patriotism, And here comes Girard Way, wearing eyeliner, singing about vampires. Their music is so larger than life.

It's like their songs are these tiny movies full of romance and betrayal. I love the lyrics. They're so unique and always tell a story. They were weird and dark and honest. They revived 70s glam rock androgyny, but made it for a generation of teenagers who felt like zombies. But it was never just about the music. It was about how they made you feel. Not everyone's going to understand you.

Not everyone's going to understand MCR, but that's okay. You know, like, you're never really alone. I just fucking love that band. That was so nice. You know, I think the 9-11 point is great. I do think that there was a point. So it's funny. I think that Mike and Woke Romance music radio that people remember are like Helena or I'm not okay.

The one I remember is Ghost of You because, it is like a war video. Like it was in the era of like war-ish videos, like, wake me up with September ends and whatnot. It's a video. And it's not like a modern day war video. It's like a flashback war video. But I remember that. I remember being like, oh, this is different for this band.

I also, I mean, I love that song. This isn't really a criticism of that video. It's just thinking about how they were situated in the like wartime aesthetic of the nation. I feel like the video point is really interesting. And I think it's something we talked about earlier. Like this band was an MTV band. But I think what I was really struck by those fan voices, and I think kind of I hear echoed in what you've been saying this whole time,

although it sounds like you might have been just a bit older when you came to my Camel for romance. But it's just this like teenage connection, like this like I don't feel understood. I don't feel okay. I don't know how to express my emotions. And this band helped me to feel I could or express them for me, which is really all anyone needs in any band. Yeah. I mean, I think it is, at least for me,

it was decidedly not a good feeling to like really actually not fit in. But it was a kind of interesting feeling to fit in some places, but feel like I could or convince myself that I did not fit in at all. Because like that led to some real healthy seeking. You know, it's like if I can build up this mythology of being misunderstood and not fitting in anywhere, then kind of through that, I can feel my way around until I stumble upon some music or some art that makes me feel understood.

And I think that's the point I was at when I found my chemical romance where it's like there are places I fit in. I think that I spent a lot of time alone convincing myself that it was impossible for me to fit in anywhere. And that is how I built up these relationships with bands and with songs because I didn't need to rely on the actual people behind the bands or the songs for any actual real emotional support. It was just like, okay, I'm getting all I need from this thing you've created. And that's kind of all I need. I mean, what can I even add to that? nothing okay i think we've covered some really good ground um i think you know nostalgic

millennials make up a big chunk probably of this my chemical romance fan base and that is fine um is there a my chemical romance song that you you know we're trying well we're not you're trying to make the case for my chemical romance here basically what's a song that you want to leave the listeners with to kind of like really drive drive at home. So I'm going to play teenagers off the black parade because it is the album or the song that is, I think, in their catalog, the most fun and sing-alongable to, the one that lends itself most to a sing-along ability or a karaoke-esque type of jam. And it is a song of theirs that in the chorus I think feels the most communal.

And I love it for that. Well, thank you so much, honey, for being on the show. I stick by my statement that you are too smart to have been here. And you said too many beautiful things. But it was a really nice time regardless. And I think I learned a lot about My Chemical Romance that I didn't know before because I really only knew red eye shadow in two songs. I'm glad I could be a vessel for your My Chemical Romance College. Thank you for having me. All right. Let's go out with teenagers. If you like what you heard today, subscribe to bands,

for more episodes only on Spotify. Fansplain is a Spotify original series produced in partnership with Spoke Media. This episode was produced and edited by Cody Hoffmuckle with help from Sherita Lynn Solis and Dylan Rupert, mixing in sound design by Will Short. Our executive producers for Spoke Media are Aaliyah Tevacoleon, Keith Reynolds, and Jean-Yelle Kassner. Our executive producers for Spotify are Liz Gatley, Gina Delvac, and me, Yossi Selleck. Our catchy and gorgeous theme song was composed and performed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Claven and graciously recorded by Carlos De LaGarza.

Big shout out to the My Chemical Romance fans who provided their voices for this episode. Thank you, Ifra Ahmed, Heather Fortune, Jeremy Warden, Paloma Ghosh, and Susie Expozito. Special thanks to Felipe Guillermo, Leah Edwards, Dana Meyerson, and the frame drawing of Dave Matthews I got on Deepop, whose spirit guides this entire show.