A "vivid and breathless" (Billboard) oral history of emo's takeover from 1999 to 2008, featuring My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Panic! At the Disco, Taking Back Sunday, Jimmy Eat World, Dashboard Confessional.
If Meet Me in the Bathroom traced New York City's early 2000's rock scene, Where Are Your Boys Tonight? is an essential music biography that gives the inside story of the turn-of-the-millennium emo subculture that became bigger than anyone thought possible. There was Pete Wentz, the Fall Out Boy leader who launched a litany of scene-stealing bands and preposterous side-hustles, and Gerard Way, the wizard behind My Chemical Romance and The Black Parade. Panic! At the Disco and Paramore emerged soon after—a pair of intrepid outsiders who got massive playing by their own rules. As they ascended, MySpace took over the internet and the age of influencers dawned, with emo its choice aesthetic.
Music journalist Chris Payne experienced emo's mainstream takeover from sweaty crowds and mosh pits growing up in New Jersey. In Where Are Your Boys Tonight? he offers an authoritative, impassioned, and occasionally absurd account told through interviews with more than 150 people, from the scene's biggest pop punk bands, producers, and managers to the teenage fans who helped redefine American music culture.
This oral history of emo chronicles the explosive decade that changed everything:
- Oral History of Emo: Go behind the music with more than 150 new interviews with the scene's most iconic artists, producers, and managers.
- Scene-Defining Artists: Uncover the inside stories of superstars like My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way and Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz as they went from local heroes to global phenomena.
- The MySpace Era: Explore how the rise of social media and the dawn of influencer culture fueled emo's mainstream takeover.
- Definitive Emo Subculture: Trace the movement from 1999 to 2008, from sweaty mosh pits to the top of the charts, driven by the teenage fans who built a new American music culture.