- Do you know what these two pieces of music have in common?
(upbeat rock music) We'll carry on We'll carry on (energetic classical music) Well, let me explain.
20 years ago, My Chemical Romance dropped what became an icon of 2000s emo, "The Black Parade".
(video screen whooshing) (slow gentle music) A fully realized rock opera, the album has been compared to Queen's "A Night At the Opera" from 1975, and the Beatles, "Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" from 1967.
But what if I told you, this mid-2000s album isn't just an emo version of albums that came from the '60s and '70s, but from a movement that dates all the way back to Beethoven.
(slow Beethoven piano music) So what does "The Black Parade" have to do with the 19th century?
The answer, romanticism.
(energetic Beethoven music) Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that peaked throughout the Western world from 1800 to 1850.
You probably recognize some of its heavy hitters.
(energetic Beethoven music) (fast-paced Beethoven music) (slow gentle Beethoven music) Lots of common ideas and concepts we take for granted today likely come from this period.
Things like emotions, overwhelming reason, burning passion, et cetera come from the romantics!
It's not hard to see these ideas in My Chemical Romance's melodramatic lyrics like, A light to burn all the empires So bright the Sun is ashamed to rise And be in love with all of these vampires And it's really dark romanticism that shines here to be specific.
(dark romantic Beethoven music) Dark romanticism was an offshoot of romanticism with the literary sub-genre centered around everything from death to the supernatural.
At its core, "The Black Parade" is that, but with a bittersweet twist.
(dark romantic Beethoven music) An album about a man dying with death, taking on the form of a parade the man attended as a child.
Here's lead singer, Gerard Way, speaking on the album's premise around the time of its release.
- Death comes for you however you want.
It's your strongest memory.
And for this particular character in this record called The Patient, his strongest memory is of being a child, and his father is taking them to this parade.
So when death comes for him, it comes in the form of a black parade.
- Along with similarities and themes, romanticism and "The Black Parade" also share connection musically.
(energetic classical music) Romantic era composers focused on concepts, like the sublime, and overwhelming grandeur, and emotional nature.
With the romantic movement, classical music was all about the fanfare, bigger, and more emotional, and dramatic.
Orchestras grew in size as well as incorporated unconventional instruments like a cannon.
(energetic classical music) (cannon exploding) That fanfare minus the cannons is what makes, "Welcome to the Black Parade" such a standout.
To see a marching band He said, Son, when you grow up The orchestral swoops, the military drums, it fits right in alongside a romantic era piece, like "1812 Overture", something that a music composition and arranging teacher picked up on in an Instagram video last year.
- Name this tune, ta-dada dada ta-dada.
- "1812 Overture".
- It was actually doing "Welcome to the Black Parade".
It does sound like it.
You think they did that on purpose?
- Yeah, probably.
(energetic orchestral music) - Ultimately, romanticist emphasized the value of embracing feelings and personal emotions over rational thinking.
And it wasn't captured any better than from the poets of that time.
Whether it was William Blake's, "The French Revolution", highlighting the frustration of oppressed people or showing loss and insanity, like Edgar Allan Poe's, "The Raven", a standout example of dark romanticism.
But saying an emo album from the 2000s is a part of this movement is a bit of a stretch, right?
Well, let's take a pop quiz.
(bright upbeat music) Lucia, long time no see.
How's it going?
- Hello, I'm ready to (indistinct).
- I challenged my cohost Lucia to a game.
- So we're gonna play a game here.
- Oh my God.
- Are you down for that?
- Let's do it.
(words whooshing) - Can you tell the difference between a romantic era poem and a My Chemical Romance lyric?
Play along and see how well you do.
(crowd applauding) (words whooshing) First one, and I have to get into my poetic reading,- (gentle piano music) if you know what, yeah, yeah, yeah.
(laughing) - Think I got it.
- (laughing) Get into it.
- Good job, it says, "Don't you breathe for me "Undeserving of your sympathy "'Cause there ain't no way "That I'm sorry for what I did "And through it all, how could you cry for me "'Cause I don't feel bad about it "So shut your eyes and kiss me goodbye" - I think that's a lyric, My Chemical Romance.
- Final answer?
- Final answer, yes.
- (fingers snapping) Ding ding ding ding ding.
(words whooshing) "Because I could not stop for death "He kindly stopped for me "The carriage held, but just ourselves and immortality" - That's pretty dark.
I'm gonna say that's a My Chemical Romance lyric just because the part where it says "immortality" sounds pretty musical.
- This one actually is a romantic poem.
(buzzer buzzing) - Oh, snap.
(words whooshing) "To unexplained the unforgivable "Drain all the blood and give the kids a show "By streetlight, this dark night, a seance down below" - I would say this is a romantic poem.
Yes, romantic poem, that's my final answer.
- Final answer.
(buzzer buzzing) - Ah, this is My Chemical Romance.
- Wrong!
(group laughing) - This is MCR, this is My Chemical Romance.
(audience applauds) - Whoa.
(video screen whooshing) - So it isn't hard to see the connection between these ideas and that of dark eyeliner teens of the 2000s.
(upbeat rock music) Your tears don't fall They crash around me (slow pop music) I can feel you all around me Thickening the air I'm breathing (upbeat pop music) This dizzy dreamer And her bleeding little blue boy (video screen whooshing) There's similarities in visuals too.
Like in My Chemical Romance's distinct black parade uniforms, most notably the military style black ornamental coat.
It's hard not to think about romantic era paintings, like this one.
(energetic classical music) Even the album's vinyl artwork looks like some sort of emo punk descendant of paintings like this.
Then there's the music videos.
In My Chemical Romance's "Famous Last Words", darkness and fire surrounds the band as they perform.
(upbeat rock music) To change (upbeat rock music) (people screaming) Looks a lot like "Battle of Paoli", by Xavier Della Gatta, in which a nighttime battle occurs with riflemen surrounded by fire and smoke.
Romanticism was shaped by three revolutions, the American, French, and Industrial Revolutions.
The first two showed that emotions like righteous anger had real world political power as people fought for freedom and equality and craved expression and individuality.
The third, with its focus on mechanized production and urban development would be something romanticist rejected, instead favoring nature and untamed landscapes, a nostalgia for a past world.
Of course, My Chemical Romance, and by extension emo, weren't the first to heavily channel the themes in visuals of romanticism.
(video screen whooshing) (energetic rock music) A handful of gothic rock acts of the late '70s from Siouxsie and the Bansheese to The Cure, both of whom can count MCR's members as fans, articulated the literary flourishes of dark romanticism in their lyrics.
To this day, romanticism continues to influence and reemerge in different ways beyond My Chemical Romance.
For example, Lana Del Rey's career centers a romanticized nostalgia, a nostalgia for a pre-digital age rather than a pre-industrial one.
I can see That once I was blind Fun fact, her music video for "Born to Die" was filmed at France's Palace of Fontainebleau.
Similarly, romantic era Italian composer, Giuseppe Verdi, set one of the scenes in his opera, "Don Carlos" in Fontainebleau forest.
There's also "Wuthering Heights", the Emily Bronte novel that is being reimagined once again on the big screen, and the accompanying album by Charli XCX.
Always everywhere And "Seminole" romantic works still continue to be reborn in the modern day, like new adaptations of Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein", or "Bram Stoker's Dracula".
Nevertheless, whether it's feature films revisiting the romantic era or a defining emo band, romanticism will continue to carry on.
(energetic Beethoven music)
Passport
Follow Us