Emo…tional that I was gone for weeks 😅 

Alright, first things first - I have been gone! I needed to take a break for the last couple of weeks (def more than a couple, Richard 🙄) to sort of nail down more of a “content calendar” for myself to make week-over-week a bit easier coupled with a bit of change happening in my real life! I appreciate your patience, hopefully, you are still here with me. With that said, I am sort of doing something new here that I think could be quite fun.

I am going to be doing a three-week “series” (for lack of a better term) talking about emo! I will likely do this for other genres, maybe even ones I’ve already covered or made recs on, cause that sounds fun. One of my main thoughts here with this is to get all of my thoughts out (for now!!! 👿) on a specific genre or artist but still make the newsletters here more bite-sized and digestible semi-quickly. Let me know your thoughts on that (via Twitter is prob best, or directly at [email protected]!

NOW… with that, let’s jump into what the next three weeks will look like!

Week 1: Emocore / First Wave Emo (throwbacks babbbyy)
Week 2: Midwest Emo (like older stuff but also newer midwest emo)
Week 3: Third Wave Emo (some older but also some newer-ish)

With that, I hope you all are looking forward to the next few weeks! To hold you over, I’ll give some recs below to give you a taste of some emo to be seen/heard about in the weeks to come…

I mean.. with emo it kinda is… BUT WE JUST MOVE TO A NEW PHASE, YEAH?

Alright, let’s toss some recs in here.

Embrace - Embrace’s record Embrace (the creativity is awe-striking) is a heavy kickstart for emo. I’ll go more into this album/others next week, but expect to hear some artists similar to this in next week’s recs. For all of you late 70s/early 80s punkheads and rock enjoyers, this album has some of those punk influences from the decade prior (groups like Minor Threat and Circle Jerks) but with the more random and/or emotional lyrics that we know of the emo genre as a whole!

album rating - 7/10, fave track - Money

Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary. This is a fun one! This record sort of helped establish Midwest Emo alongside records like Shmap’n Schmazz by Cap’n Jazz. Like the above rec, on Midwest Emo week I will chat more about the sounds you can expect to be present when jumping into Midwest Emo, but I wanted to throw it back with an “oldie” in here!

album rating - 8/10, fave track - In Circles

My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. A record that SO many people know - this album is, simply put, incredible. I cannot say with greater certainty that this album is one of the best ever. This sort of introduced third-wave emo alongside groups like Brand New, The Get Up Kids, and Jimmy Eat World. I’d say listen to the whole record and get ready for the records in third-wave emo week.

album rating - 9/10, fave track - Helena

I hope you all have enjoyed this week’s Finetuned! Share your thoughts by replying to this email here, or shoot me a message on Twitter. I want to hear from you! (email is fine too, [email protected])

Please do share Finetuned with your friends & fam! I believe great music should be shared, cherished, and understood from all sorts of perspectives.

Little note here, most of the links to albums will be on Spotify, where I also have playlists that feature my recs based on the month their newsletter came out. You can find those here!

See you all next week! 🙌