Note to scene: Gender, race and rose-tinted nostalgia in emo

Williams, J. and Sobande, Francesca ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4788-4099 2025. Note to scene: Gender, race and rose-tinted nostalgia in emo. European Journal of Cultural Studies Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

20 years on from its mainstream breakthrough, emo music’s popularity has resurged, offering new opportunities to appraise its cultural legacy. While acknowledging the creative and cathartic qualities of emo as fans, we reflect on how race and gender have (not) been engaged with in prior research on the genre. We also demonstrate how improvements concerning representation in emo are still constrained, with people of colour – particularly Black women – carrying heavy self-advocating responsibilities. Through a two-part case study — first, the marketing and booking of When We Were Young Festival and second, a reflexive first-person analysis of music journalism surrounding emo’s ‘new wave’ acts — we explore how emo has been (re)branded for old(er) and new(er) generations in the 2020s, how musical belonging and expertise is negotiated within the culture, and how nostalgia narratives can serve to romanticize emo’s exclusionary past at the expense of it’s more inclusive future.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Publisher:	SAGE Publications
ISSN:	1367-5494
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	23 September 2025
Date of Acceptance:	5 September 2025
Last Modified:	09 Oct 2025 13:45
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/181297

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