The second worst thing about The Spoony Experiment.
I’m gonna preface this by saying it’s under meme/ humour for the humour part, I am (unfortunately) 100% serious in what I’m about to say. So, in the first unseen poem I talked about the ball simile and how balls are round, like a cycle, like the monotony of life as an adult: get up, work, go to sleep etc. I then proceeded to contrast this with words to the effect of “However, if one were really scraping the bottom of the barrel they might point out that balls are an informal way of saying testicles. Testicles are essential for life due to their production of sperm, which shows the importance of balls in life.“ Then I waffled about how the presentation of balls as both mundane and important or something like that shows the duality of life and the human condition. Am I cooked??
TL;DR
compared the ball in poem one to testicles and the monotony of life to show the duality of the human condition
I really want to find more poems like In The Desert by Stephen Crane or poems like Shel Silverstein's poems please
🫖 Welcome back to the Asylum write-up. This is where you live now.
Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 In this installment, we finally take a closer look at how Emilie Autumn's hyper-loyal fanbase gradually started losing faith in her as, among other things, it became more and more apparent that she... wasn't exactly a reliable narrator – in her semi-autobiographical book, or in general.
HOW IT STARTED: A WOMAN OF MYSTERY
Willow, weep for me Don't think I don't see This life I'm living in two But still it's something I must do I'm not unique in this Nor am I special, sweet, or kind I court a thousand smiles Yet I keep my own to hide behind (“Willow”, 2004 🎵)
I've previously referred to EA as an “expert vagueposter”, and this is relevant here.
For an artist who built her brand on a pledge of raw, rats-and-all honesty, EA has always been quite guarded about the specifics of her personal life. (Until her current partner, for instance, she always danced around calling anyone a boyfriend, even when the nature of the relationship was pretty obvious.) Her whole angle is telling “the truth”, but through whimsical fantasy. As early as the fairy-themed Enchant era, she had her own world, her own vernacular; she spoke in metaphors, in-jokes, and quirky anachronisms. Taxis were carriages, her electric keyboard was a harpsichord, she always capitalized Time and Art like Shakespeare does. On the Asylum forum, automatic word filters would change “fan” to “muffin”, “fairy” to “faerie”, “bra” to “teacup holder”, and “responsibility” to “ratsponsibility”.
She's a chatterbox who loves to share memories and funny anecdotes, but she usually keeps them short and sweet,
Snapple-facts style. 📝 She's great at painting by touches in her storytelling,
revealing just enough to let your imagination auto-complete the rest. 🔍 Even the most banal tidbits are very artfully told, very “on brand”, often dense with symbolism and foreshadowing – but also very abstracted.
She is especially elusive when it comes to her background and formative years. See
the way she catches herself in this interview 📺📝 while describing her “favorite scar”, which is from an eel bite: “My – well, someone I knew... [gasp-laugh] had it as a pet, and...” (She was about to say “my sister”.)
In short, the way EA talks about her life is often very personal, but not all that
candid – and sounds more like it's meant to provide a curated, coherent backstory for Emilie Autumn the character, rather than Emilie Autumn the person.
I'll tell the truth, all my songs Are pretty much the fucking same I'm not a fairy but I need More than this life, so I became This creature representing more to you Than just another girl... (“Swallow”, 2006 🎵)
In the beginning, this guardedness naturally contributed to the mystique. It made it all the more special when, once in a while, she would briefly drop the theatrics to share something earnest and relatively unfiltered. Like
this composed, but vulnerable post from 2004 📝 about her father losing his battle to cancer, and her attempts at closure over their tense relationship. Or
this 2012 anti-bullying campaign thing 📺 in which she opens up about being a target of intense physical bullying in elementary school, to a point that contributed to her being homeschooled at 9.
Fans in the early years were curious about her backstory, of course – but not too prodding or invasive, to my knowledge. I think there was an understanding that EA, like many performers, wanted to come across as human and approachable, while still cultivating an “aura” and retaining some privacy. But obviously, when she announced that she was writing a Tell-All Memoir in 2007, everyone was dying to read it. TEA TIME!
HOW IT'S GOING: A WOMAN OF... MALARKEY???
LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! LIAR! (“Liar”, 2006 🎵)
As we've learned, the original 2009 release of EA's book was highly anticipated, but somewhat tainted by a bunch of shipping delays and unfulfilled promises. From the start of her career, EA had always cultivated a close parasocial involvement with her audience; many fans had as deep an attachment to her, personally, as they did to her art. So, for instance, when EA tweeted about all the personal dedications she was lovingly writing in overdue books, only for the books to arrive many months later and unsigned with no tangible explanation, it wasn't simply frustrating: it was betrayal amongst kin!
Really, it wasn't so much about fans not getting what they paid for – it was about the lack of clear communication or genuine accountability. This is pure speculation on my part, but the poppycock that EA tweeted about signing the books strikes me as the panic-lie of someone who hadn't realized just how many
heartfelt, personalized dedications she would actually have to write when she came home from tour. And then she just couldn't do it, because she was overworked, paralyzed, distracted, depressed, procrastinating, whatever. Which... you know... is unfortunate, but probably not unforgivable. Especially for a touring performer who is open and vocal about their mental health issues.
I'm confident that most fans would have been happy to tell her that her well-being meant more to them than an autograph, or something along those lines. Instead, EA's cagey and avoidant demeanor around this issue left fans very salty – and newly suspicious of their favorite artist's word.
Which was regrettable timing for EA, because they had just received their copies of her
memoir.
Here's a cursory look at some key biographical points that didn't hold up to scrutiny when more and more vexed fans, over the years, started looking into them.
Content warning until end of post:
family estrangement, death by fire, worsening physical health issues, mention of disordered eating / weight loss / thinspiration, and LIES! LIES! LIIIIIES!
“EMILIE AUTUMN LIDDELL (BORN SEPTEMBER 22, 1979) IS AN AMERICAN SINGER-SONGWRITER...” (Wikipedia)
Every fandom has its Holy Grail. Because a number of EA's early releases were limited pressings put out through now-defunct record labels, the EA fandom in its heyday was
a collector's wonderland. 📝🦠 At the height of her popularity, the original
Enchant jewelcase (the one with the puzzle-poster) could easily fetch around $500 dollars on eBay, unsigned. The
handwritten lyrics of an Opheliac B-side went for $940 in 2009. Don't even ask me about the hard copies of her two poetry books: those never even popped up over the five or six years that I had various alerts set up for all EA-related listings.
But the true crown jewel of EA rarities is the untitled promo version of her (also virtually unfindable) 2001 instrumental debut
On a Day... No one knows how many copies exist. The darn thing is so rare that it's not even listed on Discogs. For a while, the only picture of the elusive “Violin” promo CD that was circulated online was
this one.🪞 Go ahead, click the link. Notice anything odd? That black box where one composer's birth year should be?
I'm not sure why the notorious hyper-fan who originally shared this picture on the forum in the early 2010s took it upon himself to censor it before posting. I wasn't able to pinpoint when or why people started questioning EA's age, but clearly, something had already transpired to let him know that not redacting said birth year might, uh... cause an upset. In any case: at some point, people started digging – and eventually, the unredacted version of the “Violin” tracklist (as well as public records and literal receipts from eBay auctions) would be brandished as one more piece of damning evidence that EA was indeed (gasp!) two years older than she claimed to be.
“Okay, and?” you shrug. “What's the big deal?” I'm shrugging too! What can I say? People don't like realizing they've been fooled, even about something stupid. I will note that EA's fall equinox birthday (hence her middle name “Autumn”, yes) had been somewhat significant in the fandom. Over the years, EA's birthdays had been marked by online release parties, Q&A's, community events, special merch sales... A number of fans liked donning her trademark cheek heart on September 22. It felt a bit uncanny to realize that she had been announcing a false age on those occasions. It wasn't “a big deal” so much as it was incredibly odd.
Other than being appalled that Self-Proclaimed Staunch Feminist EA would give in to the cult of youth and not cop up to her real age, many fans were just plain bewildered: who would commit so stubbornly to such an inconsequential lie? What was even the point of lying by two years only? Why did she think anyone would care that she was 28 rather than 26 when
Opheliac came out? What was she possibly getting out of this...??
My completely speculative theory is that, whether it was her idea or her then-manager's, the lie originated as a marketing strategy early on in her career. The “Violin” demo was recorded in 1997, when EA was 19-going-on-20. Per
the liner notes of On a Day... 📝, which came out when she was 22, the demo's purpose was to be “a sort of calling card in the classical music industry”. Evidently, that didn't work out; EA claims, in the same paragraph, to have walked out on a classical recording deal at 18 because they wouldn't give her enough creative control.
Talented and unique as she was, she was trying to break out in a notoriously elitist and innovation-resistant milieu – and unlike her, most of the 22-year-old classical violinists she was in competition with had actually graduated from their prestigious music schools. But you know what sells better than an ambitious college dropout in her early twenties? Tweaking the truth
just so to market yourself as an unconventional wunderkind, barely out of her teens! Any rendition of a complex, learnèd musical piece sounds more intriguing and impressive if you think it was played by an especially young (and beautiful) person. 20 was plausible, close enough to her real age, barely a lie at all, and such a nice, round number for a debut album.
Notice how much of the
On a Day... liner notes, linked above, center on her precociousness, her uniqueness, and her savant-like dedication to her craft – a focus that seems absent from the promo version (from what I can decipher in those potato-quality pictures, anyway). These talking points would provide the basis for a lot of her early self-promotion and budding stage persona in the Enchant years. Even though the EP failed to make EA a household name in the classical world, the wunderkind narrative was her “in” to grab the attention and heart of a broader audience.
And I guess she's been running with it ever since.
“MY ANCESTRY IS POSITIVELY LITTERED WITH LUNATICS AND GIRLS WHO FALL DOWN RABBIT HOLES ... MY NAME IS EMILIE AUTUMN LIDDELL. YES, THAT LIDDELL.”
Oh, come on. Much as a fan may want to believe, isn't that a little on the nose? The anglophile with an obsession for tea, clocks, and madness... is literally related to
Alice in Wonderland? 🔍 Curiouser and curiouser indeed.
EA came out as Emilie Autumn Liddell in The Book – of course – in a passage where she describes
an interaction with a nurse. 📝 Note how she stresses the authenticity of her name, and how not-chosen it is (and the Alice connection, which just comes up organically) by disclosing it in a scene where she's filling out paperwork.
I'm pointing this out, because it would be tempting to allow room for creative license (and the slightest cringe) in a work of creative fiction based on personal experience. Buuut... TAFWG was not marketed as fiction. The main narrative in TAFWG, according to EA, is an actual fac-simile of the journals she kept during a harrowing stay at a Los Angeles psychiatric hospital following a suicide attempt. This is something that EA has stressed from the inception of the book (and throughout all subsequents re-issues, even as the main narrative was altered and reworked), even claiming that a legal team had advised her to redact some names to avoid potential lawsuits. So, no, she's not doing a bit there.
When, after it made the rounds a few times, it became apparent that
the claim didn't really make sense 📝🔍, reactions were mixed. Some older, diplomatic fans downplayed it as a somewhat embarrassing, but harmless self-mythologizing – similar in nature to her insistence on calling her electric keyboard a “harpsichord”. Devout EA apologists (commonly referred to as “bootlickers” in an increasingly polarized fandom – oh, don't worry, we're getting to that!) invoked the “life as performance art” defense: when she said it was literally her first name, she meant it metaphorically, duh! And either way, she probably had her reasons.
But others took offense at the boldness of the lie, or simply became curious. Was Liddell even her name at all?
If you've checked the link just above, you already know the answer. Per the public California birth log (a somewhat demented invasion of privacy that could well have been avoided by... not repeatedly drawing attention to a name that someone
in the book calls “right out of a movie”?) : yes, no, kind of.
EA was born Emily Autumn Fischkopf* on September 22, 1977. The name came from her father, a first-generation immigrant from Germany. Her maternal grandmother's maiden name was Liddell (but no, not
that Liddell, or so remotely that it doesn't matter). EA may have had it legally changed at some point in the last decade, but as of 2012, based on the public log of foreign visitors to Brazil (where she toured that year), her passport still bore the name “Emily Autumn Fischkopf”.
*No, EA's birth name is not literally “Fischkopf”. It's a non-silly German name that begins with an F. I know that it's ridiculous to clutch my pearls about EA's peace of mind now, but triggering new and disquieting Google alerts for a name she clearly wants nothing to do with (and that you don't care about) just feels... distasteful? I don't know. That info has been floating around long enough, the point has been made; this write-up is not about EA's last name, but about the fiends we made along the way! So Fischkopf it is.
Let's track the evolution here! It appears that she went by “Autumn Fischkopf” for at least part of her formative years, if we are to believe the credits from
Mark Ruffalo's middling film debut 📺 (she was the child actor's violin-playing body double) and
this random article about a Nigel Kennedy performance in 1997. 🔍 (That last link – possibly her first ever mention in the press? – is a niche favorite of mine. Violin superstar Nigel Kennedy calls her a “talented fiddler”, which suggests that she did have some cred and promise in the classical milieu at a young age, and that there is at least some truth to her claims of being a wunderkind. It also cracks me up that, out of all the things she's reiterated over the years, “I was born in '79” was a lie, but “I was attacked by a pet eel” was fact-checked by Nigel Kennedy.)
At some point in her late teens, she dropped the Teutonic surname and adopted the French ending of her given name (she made it a “LIE”! how poetic) to form the moniker “Emilie Autumn”. I assume that's also when she started privately going by Emilie / EA for short.
So there you have it. The damning evidence. A performing artist...
changed her name. To her
grandmother's name. Riveting stuff!
And to think that her fans could have carried on naively believing “Autumn” was her last name, or assuming it was a romantic
nom de scène she picked during her Ren Fair phase. Or perhaps, even, not thinking much about her name at all,
like normal people.
But nooo, she just had to poke the hornet's nest by making a whole
thing out of it.
“MY ENTIRE FAMILY DIED IN A FIRE.”
If you've never encountered a method-acting con artist or a person who struggles with pathological lying (I'll let you decide for yourself which of these, if either, applies to EA), you probably believe that you'd spot them a mile away. And in my experience, that's exactly why you wouldn't! Whether it's compulsion or calculated strategy, successful fibbers rely on people's natural social cues (like their assumption of good faith, their confirmation bias, their empathy, their desire for validation, their fear of awkwardness, ...) to subtly direct the flow and tone of the conversation. This allows them to short-circuit potential questioning of their claims.
One such strategy, for instance, I call the “I-will-not-further-speak-about-the-incident maneuver”. Out of the blue, you drop a graphic and incisive one-liner about something horrific that happened to you, in a curt or flippant tone that throws the listener off and usually shuts them up – thus sparing you from having to back up your claim with any convincing specifics. I'm not saying that every person who does this is a liar. Horrific stuff does happen to people, and I'm not here to police how they're supposed to disclose it. I'm just saying that if you wanted to fabricate an obvious Tragic Backstory™ and smuggle it past otherwise rational, discerning and reasonably intelligent people, that would be one way to do it. Full disclosure: it does work better in person than it does over the internet, especially when you've kept a blog.
When EA curtly dropped this bomb on Twitter (in response to an innocuous fan question that mentioned her parents – the receipt has sadly been X'd out of existence), and every subsequent time a new fan found out about her family's tragic demise (“I had no idea!”), the response was typically one of shock and sadness – and, in a few heartbreaking cases, commiseration from other survivors of family-annihilating events.
Many fans already had a hunch that
something was up with her family, of course. She hinted at neglect and possible abuse in her book and lyrics. A number of her fans also came from dysfunctional households, so her not wishing to elaborate on the topic would probably have been a non-issue. But now she's saying they're dead? All of them? In a FIRE?! Holy macaroni! And you know it
must have been awful, because EA – the same woman who got a dozen bangers out of a three-month-long toxic relationship, and based over a decade of her work on one bad hospital stay – had never, not once, felt called to share a song or poem about how it might affect a person to... lose all of their entire immediate family to a fire. Hmm. Meanwhile, the handful of older fans who had been following her since Enchant and
remembered her dad passing in 2004 gritted their teeth and rolled their eyes. “Do your research. That's all I can say.” (We'll get into the culture of
censorship free speech regulation on the Asylum forum in due time.)
Before more and more embittered ex-fans started compiling and circulating the receipts in the early-mid-2010s, investigating the whole “dead family” thing was a lonely journey – a coming-of-age expedition for the critical-minded Plague Rat, trawling through free background check websites and old Wayback Machine archives, until you went “Welp, there it is, I guess” and suddenly felt older, stupider, and a little bit hollow inside.
Although I don't remember how I personally made my way to The Truth (lol) back in the day, I still have a vivid memory of the moment I found the Facebook profile of EA's Very Much Non-Deceased Mother. It was mostly posts about her costume design work. A few candid pictures with EA's siblings and their kids. Christmas, birthdays, a wedding. Just... aggressively normal stuff. It was bizarre, looking in on this family of cheerful strangers with familiar cheekbones. Knowing that, somewhere out there, was an estranged eldest daughter, who had run off years ago to become a fiddle-wielding rockstar – and was now passing them off as having all died a gruesome death, while her fans secretly stalked their family photos. (Because I know you'll be asking in the comments: yes, EA's family is aware. Her mother once posted a picture of young EA and her siblings on Pinterest, sarcastically captioned
“After most of us were killed in the fire.” 📝)
Again, it's tempting to discount EA's remark as a metaphor for family estrangement, taken too literally by neurodivergent minors who just didn't understand performance art. Well. First of all, even as a metaphor... let's admit, once again, that that 2000s edginess has aged like fine milk. It's a little crass to make a “metaphor” out of a plausible, life-shattering trauma that other people actually have to live with. (
Veronica lost a beloved house to a literal fire 🔍 during her tenure as a Crumpet, for instance; no one died, but that alone seemed pretty rough.)
But, more to the point, evidence suggests that EA also told this to real people in her real, off-stage life – such as her Trisol manager, who
backed the claim on the official Asylum Forum in 2007. 📝 When questioned about this post on a renegade forum in 2013, he had this to say:
I was the fool in this case. EA made that up of course. It’s just one thing on a long list of things she made up. Let’s agree she’s very creative with facts if she wants people to believe a story. (...) I once had a short chat with [EA's mom] and I got the strong impression she wasn’t dead at the time. Haha.
(OK, dude, but did you or did you not sell fake EA tickets on a scammy website in 2008? Because we never did get the skinny on that.)
Fifteens years on,
EA continues to insist, unprompted, that “the fire” destroyed her childhood drawings and baby pictures. 📝 This more recent Instagram post is like a Greatest Hits of her most notorious yarns, to a degree that's either premeditated trolling or a subconscious call for help. She casually, yet pointedly mentions her age in relation to a specific year... and specifically draws attention to the signature, one that she used well into the Enchant era. In doing so, she made me notice, for the first time, that
the A blends into an F. As one could expect from an artsy, Renaissance-obsessed teenager, her OG signature was a freaking monogram for Emily Autumn Fischkopf. It's like “The Tell-Tale Heart” for the digital age!
AM I THE ONLY ONE SEEING THIS?? 🦠 A BIT O' THIS & THAT: MISCELLANEOUS CLAIMS
Just for fun, here are other sundry “citation needed” facts that EA has claimed over the years. All are originally from the book unless sourced otherwise. Some of them may have been jokes, some of them might even be true! Whatever that word still means!
ELECTRIC VIOLIN: UNPLUGGED
You know how whenever a musician starts behaving obnoxiously, old sages will come down from Mount Wisdom to advise disgruntled fans to “simply ignore [behavior]” and “just focus on the music”? Well, in the Asylum, “just focusing on the music” won't always preserve you from EA's shenanigans. This “claim” is a little different, but I've decided to include it because it is so odd, emblematic, and ultimately tragic. I also count it as “biographical”, because it involves a key tenet of EA's character sheet: the violin.
Being a kickass fiddler is one of EA's trademarks, and has always been central to her narrative; as of 2024, “world-class violinist” is still the first claim to fame she lists in the “Story” section of her official website. Which beggars the question: why won't she play it? And why won't she acknowledge that she's not playing it?
We got our hopes up in 2020, with
that one post 📝 about her iconic 1885 Gand & Bernardel getting refurbished by a luthier – a thoughtful birthday surprise from her boyfriend – but despite the promising “More to come...” at the end of the caption, that turned out to be a false alarm. In truth, it may well have been over a decade since anyone has witnessed EA draw a single note from her cherished instrument.
The fact that Lord Autumn was able to sneak it out during lockdown without the Lady noticing tends to confirm that she hadn't been playing much behind the scenes. She seems to be under the impression that
e-violin manufacturer Zeta is no longer in business (
they did close down in 2010 🔍, but reopened under new management in 2012), which suggests that she hasn't been keeping up with the violin scene for a while. Besides,
the fingernails don't lie. 🐀 As the live shows veered more theatrical with the release of
Opheliac, the extended violin features from the Enchant era were cut to two main appearances per concert: “Face the Wall”, a seven-minute-short, Hendrixesque take on Arcangelo Corelli's “La Folia” – and “Unlaced”, an arpeggio-ed frenzy that was originally paired with a stilt-walking and ballet performance by the Crumpets. These two instrumental tracks remained a fixture on four successive tours. And on four successive tours, “Unlaced” was... well...
clearly dubbed. 📺 She was holding her e-violin, her hands were playing the notes, but what was coming out of the speakers was indubitably the studio version.
There were possible explanations, of course. Some sound buffs pointed out that “Unlaced” has multiple violin layers, and that
a live violin solo would have sounded harsh and unbalanced over the supporting tracks 🔍 – but then, why pick an unplayable song as a staple of the show?
The violin-miming wasn't even very hush-hush, she didn't try that hard to hide it – it was just never addressed or acknowledged. On “Unlaced”, Veronica was usually summoned to “play” the keyboard – and we knew
that was make-believe,
they had a whole skit about it. 📺 Ditto when EA would play the intro to a song, then get up from the keyboard as she started singing, and the harpsichord track just kept going. It was part of the theatrics, the suspension of disbelief; live playing just wasn't the focus.
Still, because playing two songs should have been in her wheelhouse, EA's choice to stand on stage and mime along with her own world-class violin skills was puzzling. We knew EA was capable of playing “Unlaced”: “Face the Wall” was proof enough that
she could still shred like nobody's business, and some lucky fans got to hear her
nerd out about pitch standards and rock some Bach at VIP showcases in 2011 (though it was always the same piece, and reportedly not always on point:
“she made beginner mistakes, like weird jaw, wrist, elbow placement and tension...” 🐀). And sure, “Face the Wall” was an intense piece, but... it was one of two in the show. The same two, always. She was supposed to be classically trained...!
As EA's fabrications became more common knowledge among the fanbase, people took increasing issue with this odd staging choice – particularly after “Face the Wall” was retired partway through the 2011 tour, leaving only the pantomime,
with nothing else happening on stage to distract from it. 📺 People started fixating on her constant and inexplicable tweaking of the truth. Fake name, fake age, fake promises, and now she was fake-fiddling and making a grand show of it? Was she outright mocking her audience, daring them to call her out? Milking a skill she had grown bored with, in the lowest-effort way possible, knowing that goo-goo-eyed fans would still pay to see it? Playing them the world's saddest song on the world's quietest e-violin?
The release of new album
Fight Like a Girl in 2012 did little to soothe the Plague Rats' fiddle blues. The violin was much less prominent on FLAG than it had been on
Opheliac and
Enchant. There were almost no solos, which provided fewer opportunities for playing
or miming on stage. “Unlaced” was retired from the touring setlist. One night in Texas during the 2012 tour, due to being on vocal rest,
EA played the melody line of “Liar” on the violin. 📺 And that was pretty much the last time world-class violinist Emilie Autumn was heard playing her instrument, on stage or in recording – to the dismay of many fans who had loved her for it.
Can someone please grab this woman by her hand, lead her across her livingroom/bedroom/study, and point at that lonely forgotten dusty violin in a corner of hers so she remembers that she actually owns it? (🐀)
It was yet another bizarre, glaring inconsistency in EA's narrative that fans seemed expected to ignore. Another elephant in the padded room. (Personal anecdote that I don't have a receipt for: in early 2012, when I asked if there was a possibility of EA playing another baroque set for the VIP events on the upcoming tour, her then-manager responded that that wouldn't be possible because venues didn't have the proper acoustics.)
Through some her posts over the years , attentive fans pieced together the likely truth of EA's effective retirement as a violinist. It's actually quite sad, and may cast a different light on EA's artistic shift.
The 2011 tour was initially scheduled for late 2010. It was postponed because EA had been neglecting a jaw injury for years, and needed emergency surgery
to avoid “serious and irreversible damage” to her one violin-holding jaw. 📝 She had the surgery early in September; in late November, she performed all over Latin America for six nights straight, and by January, she was back on tour. The same tour during which she made “beginner's mistakes” on the Bach partita, and retired “Face the Wall” for good after a few shows.
She underwent jaw surgery again in 2018, after three years of orthodontic treatment which she said had “prevented [her] from performing”. It was the first anyone was hearing of this (she said she hadn't been touring because she was writing the musical!), and it's as far as EA ever got in terms of half-addressing the obvious: that after dedicating a third of her time on Earth to her craft, after years of pushing through the pain night after night, rushing through recovery periods, and making compromises so the show could go on... she may not be physically able to play concert-level violin anymore.
Once again, something that should (and would) have elicited empathy and support from most fans turned into a point of frustration, speculation and mockery,
for years – because EA continued to favor pretend-play and fantasy over the sobering, unglamorous truth. Well, at least everyone's unhappy.
CONTINUED IN COMMENTS
Hi everyone ! Before i start i justed wanted to say i'm happy to be here because i discovered a good amount of greats Emo records in this sub, thanks to this community. You guys are great, really educated about the scene plus you're funny af xD Anyway, greetings everyone, my name's Alice. I'm from France ! I'm into Emo music, Poetry (i also write my own poems), i love going to screamo/post-hardcore concerts near the city centre and watch cartoons/movies and Animes !
I wanted to get this off my chest for quite a while so here goes ! I wanna talk about the contradictions/flaws concerning the arguments defining the Emotional Hardcore scene. Now before you attack me and say i wasn't there to experience whatever or some shit, i'm not trying to disregard the history of Emo music in any way.
Eor months (even before i entered this subreddit) i studied the subculture and the evolution of the scene, i came accross many YT videos and i wanted to find new albums so that's why i'm here. Since my arrival here, i was always checking to see if the bands i cherished were actually considered a part of the scene. Eventually i found that a good portion of the redditors here were showing disdain at the Third Wave Bands from the 2000's and even more to the Emo Rappers.
I wanted to writed this to give you my point of view on the subject matter. I thought that it would be great for me to share how i see it. Just to clarify, i'm into Emo-Pop and Emo Post-Hardcore (which some of you call mallcore. My favourite bands are:
Alesana, Pierce The Veil, Senses Fails, Silverstein, Chiodos, Taking Back Sunday, Mayday Parade, MCR, Thursday, Flyleaf, Scaring Kids Scaring Kids, Hope Dies Last, Eyes Set To Kill Funny enough i also love Midwest and Emocore bands. Here are my standouts:
( Midwest: Cap N Jazz, Modern Baseball, SDRE, The Promise Ring, Modern Baseball, American Football, The Hotelier) (Emocore: Embrace [my favorite out of all of them], Moss Icon, Gray Matter and Gauge) But i digress, i noticed there's a contradiction in most arguments coming from both of musicians and the fans of the scene, i will try to understand all of the points you guys argumented in this sub without going to much in detail as much as possible, so here we go.
- 1- Third Wave: being called fake emo or Mallcore
First off i wanna talk about the biggest elephant in the room. Can you guys explain in what way the Emo-pop and Emo Post-Hardcore bands are not Emo? I noticed a recuring pattern that says that bands like My Chemical Romance, Pierce The Veil, Sleeping With Sirens, Fall out Boy are not Emo because either:
A- they're from a major label
B- Their music is not considered Emo (which you need to remember
means Emotional Hardcore (just without the core part)
All of theses bands are Post-Hardcore ones and yes maybe they're not 90's Post-Hardcore Bands that's why i use the word Emo Post-Hardcore. They're Post-hardcore bands that were influenced by Emo, Pop Punk and Post-Hardcore bands. I think this helps breaks the confusion everyone has with the "Post-Hardcore" term.
However if others bands are Emo-Pop they
STILL have Post-Hardcore roots (not HARDCORE ROOTS) even if they're from a major label, even if they're mainstream that doesn't remove the fact thaty're an
EMO POST-HARDCORE which is something entirely different than regular Post-Hardcore or regular Emotional Hardcore bands.
They're
between the lines of these two, that's the nuance that i want to show you. We should
NOT OVERLOOK that they still have hardcore into their sound, they got the speed, they got the guitars, the distortion, the desperate vocals, the only difference between a MCR, FOB, The Used song and a The Get Up Kids songs is the polished studio mix and mastering.
- 2- What does Emotion Hardcore mean ?!
I think part of the problem who confuses everyone comes from the original tag itself. The thrasher magazine used to call Emo-core bands likes Embrace. And honestly the the genre's name is too MUCH VAGUE ! In French:
Emotional: In relation to emotions. On the other hand, in America/UK you guys have a different meaning of the word "Emotional". There's a cultural difference.
In English means:
If someone is or becomes emotional, they show their feelings very openly, especially, because they are upset.
But why does being Emotional only comes from a place of sadness? And why should Emo music be the only music genre that provides this such harsh feeling ?
My answer is that it only works in the context of the Hardcore scene + the socialpolitical context. Being quote on quote "
EMOTIONAL" was seen as fragile/weak in the Hardcore scene, you could only talk about Politics because that's whats the Hardcore Punk was about. So that's why in context, in the 80's "Emotional" was such controversial ! And it still is to this day, mens all around the worlds are scared to show dispair and sadness.
The problem is, every musical genre can be used to display sadness, hate, anger, etc. Plus
Emotional Hardcore does not mean: "
Hardcore Punk without the political themes, that talks about negative feelings". It means: "the
CENTER of
Hard Emotions". EMOTIONAL. TO. THE. CORE. That's the meaning of the word "Hardcore".
Therefore you should see Emotional Hardcore as way of being Emotional without social norms, without political norms, without any others obstacles. The Emotions of sorrow
ARE THE CORE of the musical genre and since it doesn't tries to be fancy or socially acceptable in our society, it's gonna be insulted and made fun of.
THAT'S WHY people hate Emotional Hardcore, it's dark, it's in your face, it's disgusting, it's tragic, and theses emotions, these negatives traits represent a taboo. It's against any social and acceptable status-quo.
To make it simple: Every musical genre provide a variety of Emotions.
But that's the way that EMO does it that's different from the rest of it. It's the sincerity, the honesty behind it that makes it so much scary and intimidating. The intimacy is far too strong for casual or sensitive people to tolerate.
- 3- The arguments of the influences
Another point that i always see is that Emo bands can only be defined as Emo if they were touring with other legimitate bands of the genre of if they were influenced by them. This argument doesn't fucking make sense at all. In some sense, i agree with it
BUT ONLY if you can hear it the resemblance.
How the fuck midwest bands were influenced by 1st wave Emotional Hardcore bands like Rites Of Spring? There's no remotely a similarity between the two ! And btw, how exactly are they hardcore in the same way of the first hardcore bands? In terms, of lyrics and singing, maybe but in terms of sounds, no.
In fact, i'd argue that Emo Post-Hardcore bands are more
CLOSER to the sound of Emotional Hardcore from the 80's than the Midwest Wave of the 90's, but that's just me i guess. The problem is that all of you only define an Emo band/artist by influences and vague resemblance to the hardcore sound. But it's nonsense.
If Taylor Swift said she was influenced by Moss Icon would you categorize her music Emo? Would you call her "Emocore" if she was touring with all these obscure Hardcore Bands ? I don't think so...
For example, Michael Jackson said that he was influenced by james brown. Sur they maybe have simikarities in terms of singins or dancing but
NOT in terms of
SOUND ! Sound Influence is the only type of influence we could judge and agree on some musician legitimacy.
- 4- Bands refuting that they're an Emo band
This one will not be long but i just wanted to say
JUST BECAUSE AN ARTIST SAYS HE'S NOT FROM A CERTAIN SCENE OAND MUSICAL GENRE DOES NOT MEAN IT'S TRUE ! Robert Smith said that The Cure is not an Goth Band even though they literally made Pornography.
Same here. The musicians
DO NOT CARE ABOUT LABELS AS MUCH AS WE DO They're supposed to just make the music, the rest is superficial to them.
5- What makes a song Emo I listened to all the Emo waves from now to all way back in the 80's. And it's safe to say
THERE ARE ways to tell True and Fake Emo songs apart:
- The lyrics are confessional similar to the Elegy (a special type of poetry)
- The themes are around sadness, anger and pain
- The singing is desperate/whiny
- THE MUSIC FUCKING KICKS ASS lol
I’m looking for a book of poems my family used to have in the early 2000’s. I can only remember two of the poems in it. One I remember was called Molly McPolly McDolly McBean and it was about a girl who rolled in the grass and turned green. The other was about an elephant’s snore illustrated with a lion, zebra, and monkey covering their ears. It was a a collection of eclectic poems with all different brightly colored illustrations and most likely different authors. It’s not a Shel Silverstein, and from what my siblings and I remember it was a large blue book with a moon and/or stars on it but we can’t fully remember.